Today history was made! For the first time in over 20 years the same author has won the Carnegie award for the second consecutive year (Patrick Ness) and for the first time in the history of the awards the same book has won both the Carnegie and the Kate Greenaway Awards.
The best part of the ceremony (for me anyway) was that I was there! It is the first time I have attended a CKG Awards ceremony and it was fantastic! I was in a massive room at the Barbican surrounded by fellow librarians, publicists, publishers, authors and several shadowing groups and there was an amazing buzz in the air. I was chatting to Karen Robinson – CKG judge & soon to be chair of the judging panel and mentioned that I had seen that e-mail notifications of the winners had gone out, she was dismayed and said she hoped I had not read the e-mails (I hadn’t) and that I would be happy with the choices.
Rachel Levy, current judging chair gave an impassioned speech on libraries and books giving hope followed by a speech by Phil Bradley CILIP president about reading as a child and being introduced to the Carnegie short-list.
the videos of the judges speaking about the books on the short-lists were fantastic and the acceptance speeches by Jim Kay and Patrick Ness were impassioned and from the heart.
Patrick’s speech was slightly more circumspect than his 2011 speech but he was particularly scathing about volunteer run libraries, Ed Vaizey (“how would he feel about having his appendix removed by a volunteer surgeon? It would save money by not having to pay his salary after” – that got a laugh) and Michael Gove.
What shone through in Jim & Patrick’s speeches was a love of reading, libraries and a positive view of young people. I felt like standing and applauding when Patrick made his views on how young people are treated known, how the negative is magnified and the positive things they do is marginalised and ignored. We need more high-profile public figures to be more outspoken about all the good things that are accomplished by the young people of today.
Hell I am going to be more outspoken, I work with teens out of choice and am going to start celebrating their accomplishments!
The awards were well-chosen and Patrick, Jim and Siobhan are all deserving of them, it was said that this was one of the strongest short-lists in years and it must have been a difficult decision to make, but it was the right decision!