CKG Shortlists announced!

Before I even got to school this morning the shortlists were announced:

CILIP Carnegie Medal 2014 shortlist:
Julie Berry ALL THE TRUTH THAT'S IN ME Templar (14+)
Kevin Brooks THE BUNKER DIARY Puffin (14+)
Rachel Campbell-Johnston THE CHILD'S ELEPHANT David Fickling Books (11+)
Susan Cooper GHOST HAWK Bodley Head (11+)
Anne Fine BLOOD FAMILY Double Day (14+)
Katherine Rundell ROOFTOPPERS Faber & Faber (11+)
Rebecca Stead LIAR & SPY Anderson Press (9+)
William Sutcliffe THE WALL Bloomsbury (11+)

CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 2014 shortlist:
Rebecca Cobb (illustrator) Julia Donaldson (text) THE PAPER DOLLS Macmillan Children's Books (3+)
Olivia Gill (illustrator) Michael Morpurgo and Clare Morpurgo (text) WHERE MY WELLIES TAKE ME Templar (8+)
Oliver Jeffers (illustrator) Drew Daywalt (text) THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT HarperCollins Children's Books (5+)
Jon Klassen (illustrator) THIS IS NOT MY HAT Walker Books (5+)
Jon Klassen (illustrator) Lemony Snicket (text) THE DARK Orchard Books (5+)
Dave McKean (illustrator) David Almond (text) MOUSE, BIRD, SNAKE, WOLF Walker Books (9+)
Birgitta Sif OLIVER Walker Books (5+)

Some overlap with my lists but a few surprises!
 

CKG 2014 shortlist predictions

The official shortlists will be announced on Tuesday 18th March but earlier this week I, along with some other fantastic librarians and bloggers, made our predictions for the Carnegie shortlist on acaseforbooks.  I thought I'd just quickly put mine on here as well:

but also share my Greenaway predictions having had a chance to look through 17* of them today:

Open Very Carefully by Nicola O'Byrne (illustrator) and Nick Bromley (author) (Nosy Crow)
Weasels by Elys Dolan (Nosy Crow)
Puss Jekyll Cat Hyde by Jill Barton (illustrator) and Joyce Dunbar (author) (Frances Lincoln Children's Books)
The Day the Crayons Quit by Oliver Jeffers (illustrator) and Drew Daywalt (author) (HarperCollins Children's Books)
Mouse Bird Snake Wolf by David McKean (illustrator) and David Almond (author) (Walker Books)
Oliver by Birgitta Sif (Walker Books)
Jemmy Button by Jennifer Uman and Valerio Vidali (illustrators) and Alix Barzelay (author) (Templar)
Too Noisy! by Ed Vere (illustrator) and Malachy Doyle (author) (Walker Books)

This personal shortlist could very well be different to the 'real' one as I didn't think too much about the criteria, I just went for those I loved for their cleverness, cuteness (not allowed in the judging room) and originality!  My favourite is The Day the Crayons Quit.

*I wasn't able to get hold of:
The Dark by Jon Klassen (illustrator) and Lemony Snicket (author) (Orchard Books)
Where My Wellies Take Me by Olivia Lomenech Gill (illustrator) and Clare and Michael Morpurgo (authors)(Templar)
The Journey Home by Frann Preston-Gannon (Pavilion Children's Books)

Greenaway shadowing again...

Continuing shadowing the CILIP Greenaway award with a group of Year 7s. Have a look at my last post about it to see what we've looked at so far.

I wanted to show my pupils that illustrating isn’t as easy as it looks today, with 2 of their favourite from the Greenaway shortlist. 

Wolf Won’t Bite has deceptively simple illustrations while Can we Save the Tiger includes a lot of black and white pencil drawings with only some coloured.  I started the lesson by introducing them to the two books.

 …Tiger is not a typical picture book with the beautiful illustrations being complemented by scientific descriptions of the animals, and the story told is all true, about how a variety of animals are in trouble due to human activity. I read them the introduction and pointed out some of my favourite pages. I read the whole of Wolf… to them because it is a nice, quick, funny story.

I had photocopies of some pages from each for them to get inspiration from – the task was to either draw one of the endangered animals or to think of something else the pigs could get the wolf to do! The class was pretty evenly split as to which book they chose – I was surprised that 2 out of 3 boys decided to draw the tiger – while a couple of them had brilliant ideas of how the wolf could be tormented further. I particularly liked the wolf jumping through a flaming hoop, and wasn’t sure whether to be a bit alarmed by the idea of the pigs cooking him in a cauldron to eat for dinner! I like to do a display of their drawings alongside a display of the books in the library, last year’s was great but it was a bigger class and so a bigger display, at the moment most of them haven’t finished their picture so hopefully I’ll have a couple more brought to me next week.

At the end of the lesson we had heads on desks and eyes closed to anonymously vote for our favourite of the two – the other we will not look at again as part of the challenge. It was a really close thing, with a number of them having trouble deciding because they love them both, but in the end Can We Save The Tiger won with 60% of the vote.

So still in the running as far as we're concerned: Can We Save the Tiger?, Slog's Dad, The Gift, Puffin Peter and A Monster Calls.  We finished reading Slog's Dad and thought it was really good, they found some of the illustrations very disturbing!  The only one we haven't yet looked at is A Monster Calls.  It is beyond most of them to read but I think I'll show them the clip of Patrick Ness reading an excerpt that is available on the shadowing site to give them a feel for it.

Greenaway shadowing continued...

Have a look at my last post about shadowing the Greenaway award to see how we narrowed down the books to look at 4 of them in session 2...

Firstly, I gave them a simplified version of the criteria and we discussed what each aspect means and how we should assess the books. One thing they find very difficult is to recognise that the fact a book is babyish doesn’t mean it is bad but that it is aimed at a younger readership, with this in mind it wasn’t surprising that 3 of the ones they liked the least last week are the ones that are the  classic definition of ‘picture book’. While we discussed the criteria I showed them pages from the 4 books that demonstrate what we were talking about, and then gave them a brief summary of what each story is about. The task for the day was, in pairs or threes, to look at one of the books in more detail to decide why it is a worthy contender for the prize.  They had 10minutes to do this and then present their reasons verbally to the rest of the group while showing them their favourite pages.

Puffin Peter’s readers loved the colours, Solomon Crocodile’s readers loved the expressions on the characters’ faces, while There are no cats in this book led discussion about the different methods of illustration that are used in it and how it involves the reader. Those looking at The Gift initially said they didn’t like it, but I said they have to think of something positive to say so have a closer look, and eventually the brilliance of the cut out design of the pages brought them round and they spoke really well about how detailed the pages are and how effective the use of one colour on each page is.

The goal was to persuade the rest of the class that the book was a worthy contender, and the end result was that we had to vote out 2 of the books. They put their heads on the desk so they couldn’t see what the others were voting for and put their hands up when I called out titles. The two we’re never going to look at again…Solomon Crocodile and There are no cats in this book! I was very surprised that The Gift ended the lesson as a favourite as none of them had wanted to have it as their book to promote, but I think it is their dislike of babyish things coming out again. The Solomon Crocodile team were very disappointed but everyone agreed that we needed to let the cats out into the world...

In another session I decided it was time to do some reading, so we started Slog's Dad together, looking closely at the pictures and discussing what story they are telling.  I wouldn't say they're enjoying it because they know it is really sad and they're pretty squeamish about how his Dad wastes away, but I think they are appreciating how well the pictures tell the story without even really needing the words.  I wouldn't be surprised if it stays a favourite right to the end of our shadowing.

Greenaway shadowing

I don't have a Carnegie shadowing group at school, the library is too busy for me to be able to concentrate on a reading group after school so I just make do with informally saying to regulars 'read this, it is amazing and it has been shortlisted for the Carnegie', followed with an explanation as to why that is important.  What I am doing, for the 3rd year now, is shadowing the Kate Greenaway award with a group of Year 7s in their weekly lesson.  Today I told them about the award and showed them some previous winners, then introduced them to the books by making them "Judge a book by it's cover".  Obviously they can't be trusted to just look at the covers and not open the books, so I wrapped them in cling film first and gave them about a minute per book to rate them out of 5.

While I totted up their scores they had a browse of the previous winners and shortlists to see what kind of thing appeals to the Greenaway judges, and then I announced our favourites so far.  Next lesson we will only look at the 4 they liked the least based on the cover, those were 'Solomon Crocodile', 'Wolf Won't Bite', 'Puffin Peter' and 'The Gift'.    We'll discuss the criteria for the award and actually open the books this time, ooo, and get to know them a bit better.

The winner will be announced in about 9 weeks, we won't have 9 lessons looking at the books as there are other things to do as well, but I'm planning a few more sessions for us to whittle the shortlist down to our favourite.

I was surprised to see that the overwhelming favourite so far is 'Can we Save the Tiger?', I'll be interested to see how much opinions change when they see what's inside them all!

YLG London CKG Nominations evening

This evening the Youth Libraries Group London is meeting to decide which books they will put forward as a group vote for the CILIP Carnegie Greenaway awards awards this year.  The committee has decided on a shortlist and each of us is going to tout one or two of them to the rest of the group.  The Kate Greenaway award is for an outstanding picture book, as I don't see many picture books nowadays I'll enjoy watching the others pitch them.  I'm nominating My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece by Annabel Pitcher  for the Carnegie, which is for an outstanding piece of literature for children or young people - here's my pitch:

Her first book, it is for a younger audience than many other Carnegie contenders or past winners, has a lovely simple and accessible style.

It is a story about a family coping, or not, with the death of Jamie's older sister Rose in a terrorist attach a few years before we meet them.  Mum deals with it by running off with a member of her support group, Rose's twin sister Jas deals by rebelling against their parents' image of her.  Dad deals with it by turning to drink, and turning against Muslims who he blames for his daughter's death.

Jamie, our protagonist, is too young really to remember Rose, and believes his Dad when he says that moving to the Lake District will be a fresh start, until Rose's urn goes straight on the mantlepiece and he finds empty vodka bottles in the recycling.

To make matters worse, in his new school he is sat next to <gasp> a Muslim girl who, shock horror, turns out to be lovely.  We follow his innur turmoil as he tries to reconcile his feelings for her with the opinions of his father, and as she turns into his best friend, trying to keep her a secret.

It is a very moving and well written book, a perfect candidate for the Carnegie!

The others being put forward for the Carnegie are:

My Name is Mina - David Almond

0.4 - Mike Lancaster 

Small Change for Stuart – Lissa Evans

Noah Barleywater Runs Away – John Boyne

One Dog and His Boy – Iva Ibbotson

I've read My Name is Mina and Noah Barleywater, have you read any yet?  I'll let you know whether I can persuade a room full of Librarians that my choice is the right choice!