This Thursday the winner will be announced of the Carnegie Medal – one of the most prestigious British annual awards for young people’s literature [click on the link above to check out this year’s shortlist]. Schools and libraries all over the UK have been ‘shadowing’ the award – reading the shortlisted books and organising their own events to celebrate and discuss them – and today it was my great pleasure to attend the first of two such do’s I’ve been invited to this week!

Now, I’m not on the list! ;p But as anyone who’s been following this blog will (or should!) know by now, I’m always up for doing anything I can to support the cause of young people reading, especially in my local area. So it was an honour and a privilege to come out to the wonderfully grand Council Chambers of Hackney Town Hall for this terrific event.

Teams of students from schools all over the borough had prepared presentations about the Carnegie shortlisted books. The presentations themselves (particularly, imho, the Cardinal Pole team’s one for Philip Reeve’s HERE LIES ARTHUR – my favourite book from the list!) were all AWESOME. But where I and (pictured) authors Anne Cassidy, Catherine Johnson and Linzi Glass (shortlisted for RUBY RED) came in, was in helping to kick-start the students’ discussion about the books afterwards.

Well they didn’t seem to need much pushing from me, I can tell you! 😉

There’s almost nothing I love more than a spirited exchange of opinions about stories, so witnessing this whole roomful of passionate and enthusiastic young people all arguing their case for which book on this list should win was absolutely brilliant. Just when I thought I had a handle on which one people generally preferred (Tanya Landman’s APACHE say, or Jenny Valentine’s FINDING VIOLET PARK) someone from another group would chime in with another view that would reverse things completely (WHAT I WAS, by Meg Rosoff, or the aforementioned RUBY RED). It was EXCELLENT – not to mention hugely inspiring. My thanks to Jo at Victoria Park Books for inviting me.

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