Winners of the CILIP Carnegie & Greenaway Medals announced

The 2010 CILIP Carnegie Medal was awarded to Neil Gaiman for The Graveyard Book.
The Graveyard Book has already won the 2009 Newbery Medal, the prestigious US equivalent of the Carnegie, making Neil Gaiman the first author to complete the ‘double’ being awarded both these internationally recognised prizes for children’s fiction for the same book ensuring his place in literary history. The Graveyard Book also narrowly missed a ‘triple’ in 2010. Illustrated with evocative line drawings by Chris Riddell, it was also shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for outstanding illustration.

The Graveyard Book is the spooky reworking of Kipling’s The Jungle Book. The story opens with the violent murder of a toddler’s parents and sister that manages to be horrifying without mentioning a drop of blood. The two year old, having escaped his fate, finds himself in a graveyard. There he is adopted by its resident ghosts who bring him up and call him Bod, short for Nobody Owens.

Australian illustrator Freya Blackwood has won the 2010 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, the UK’s most prestigious children’s illustration award for Harry & Hopper (text by Margaret Wild).
The book movingly portrays a young boy, Harry, coming to terms with the sudden death of his much-loved dog, Hopper.
Blackwood’s pictures for Harry & Hopper were partly inspired by one of her own childhood pets; Furlani, a beautiful grey whippet who met a similarly sad and sudden end.