Carnegie & Greenaway shortlists for 2022 announced

The shortlists for 2022 are announced for the UK's longest running book awards for children and young people, the prestigious Carnegie Greenaway Awards.

Authors Katya Balen, Phil Earle and Alex Wheatle are among the authors shortlisted for the first time for this year's Carnegie Medal while four debuts are recognised - Sue Divin for the Carnegie and George Butler, Danica Novgorodoff and Peter Van den Ende on the Kate Greenaway list.

Most of the Carnegie shortlisted books are based on real-world events - from Tacky's War to WWII; the legacy of the Troubles to the refugee crisis; the 2011 Japanese tsunami to the Central Park Exonerated Five case - with many demonstrating the power of friendship to help young people overcome challenges and celebrate difference.

The Awards celebrate outstanding achievement in children's writing and illustration respectively and are judged by children's and youth librarians, with the Shadowers' Choice Award voted for by children and young people.  16 books have been selected in total - eight for the Carnegie Medal and eight for the Kate Greenaway Medal - from a longlist of 33 titles. They were chosen by an expert team of volunteer judges, featuring 14 librarians from CILIP's Youth Libraries Group based across the UK.

The 2022 Yoto Carnegie Medal shortlist (alphabetical by author surname):

· October, October by Katya Balen, illustrated by Angela Harding (Bloomsbury)

· Guard Your Heart by Sue Divin (Macmillan Children's Books)

· When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle (Andersen Press)

· Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (Faber)

· The Crossing by Manjeet Mann (Penguin Children's Books)

· Tsunami Girl by Julian Sedgwick, illustrated by Chie Kutsuwada (Guppy Books)

· Cane Warriors by Alex Wheatle (Andersen Press)

· Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam (HarperCollins Children's Books)

The 2022 Yoto Kate Greenaway Medal shortlist (alphabetical by illustrator surname):

· Drawn Across Borders illustrated and written by George Butler (Walker Books)

· The Midnight Fair illustrated by Mariachiara Di Giorgio, written by Gideon Sterer (Walker Books)

· Too Much Stuff illustrated and written by Emily Gravett (Two Hoots, Macmillan Children's Books)

· Long Way Down illustrated by Danica Novgorodoff, written by Jason Reynolds (Faber)

· Milo Imagines the World illustrated by Christian Robinson, written by Matt de la Pena (Two Hoots, Macmillan Children's Books)

· Shu Lin's Grandpa illustrated by Yu Rong, written by Matt Goodfellow (Otter-Barry Books)

· I Talk Like a River illustrated by Sydney Smith, written by Jordan Scott (Walker Books)

· The Wanderer illustrated and written by Peter Van den Ende (Pushkin Children's Books)

Shortlist celebrations

This year, the Carnegie Greenaway Awards are running a series of #YotoCarnegieReadAlong and #YotoGreenawayDrawAlong events. There will be two live events, along with shortlist packs available for schools and libraries to enable them to host their own celebrations. More details will be released soon.

The Awards are also expanding their reading campaign with shortlist POS packs being made available to public and school libraries as well as to retailers for the first time, including stickers, bookmarks and posters.

Shadowing the awards

The 2022 Shadowing process launches today. Now in its fourth year, the Shadowers' Choice Award - voted for and awarded by the children and young people who shadow the Medals - will be announced at the ceremony announcing the winners of the medals. 

Winner announcement

The winners will be announced and celebrated on Thursday 16th June at a lunchtime ceremony at The British Library, hosted by award-winning poet and novelist Dean Atta, who won the Carnegie Shadowers' Choice for The Black Flamingo in 2020.

The winners will each receive £500 worth of books to donate to their local library, a specially commissioned golden medal and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize.

The shortlist in more detail

Friendships come to the fore in titles across the Yoto Carnegie shortlist from the angry boy and his gruff zoo-keeper host during the Second World War in When the Sky Falls, the 20th book from children's publishing professional and former bookseller Phil Earle; to the two teenagers from opposite worlds brought together by the refugee crisis in the Costa Children's Book Award-winning The Crossing from Manjeet Mann. Mann was the 2021 Carnegie Shadowers' Choice winner for Run, Rebel and is an actress, playwright, and founder of Run the World, which empowers women and girls from marginalised backgrounds. In her debut, Guard Your Heart, which was joint winner of the Irish Novel Fair, Sue Divin uses the experience of her day job in peacebuilding in Derry to chart the relationship between two teenagers born on the day of the Northern Ireland peace deal - Aidan, Catholic, Irish and republican, and Iona, Protestant and British - as they navigate their differences.

Real-life events are the inspiration for the majority of the Yoto Carnegie shortlist novels, including Cane Warriors, which follows the slave rebellion known as Tacky's War in 18th century Jamaica from the perspective of 14-year-old Moa. It is written by Alex Wheatle, the ‘Brixton Bard' and bestselling author born to Jamaican parents whose life inspired an episode of Steve McQueen's Small Axe series. Punching the Air by New York Times-bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and poet and activist Dr Yusef Salaam, a member of ‘The Exonerated Five', is a novel in verse based on Salaam's experience that looks at the reality of the criminal justice system for young people of colour in America. The 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami is at the heart of Tsunami Girl, a part-prose, part-manga coming-of-age story, illustrated by Chie Kutsuwada and written by Julian Sedgwick, the 2020 Carnegie-shortlisted co-author of Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black.

Another illustrated title on the Carnegie shortlist is October, October, the story of a girl whose wild life in the woods changes dramatically the year she turns 11. Accompanied by drawings from Angela Harding, it is the second novel from Katya Balen, author and co-director of Mainspring Arts, an organisation which runs creative workshops for neurodivergent people. A rural setting and strong sense of place is also captured in the final shortlisted title, Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town, which follows the interlinked stories of teenage secrets, rage and love across the American West. It is also the second novel from Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, who was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2017 for The Smell of Other People's Houses, a long-time journalist for Alaskan Public Radio and a former commercial fisherwoman.

On this year's Yoto Kate Greenaway shortlist several of the books use imagery to help young readers to better understand the world and its challenges. Award-winning current affairs artist and co-founder of the Hands Up Foundation, George Butler has drawn on his experience of reporting on global crises to create his debut Drawn Across Borders, a record of human migration which introduces the humans behind the headlines. Teenage gang violence and grief is explored in writer, graphic designer and horse wrangler Danica Novgorodoff's graphic novel edition of the 2019 Carnegie-shortlisted and UKLA Book Awards winner Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Reynolds was also last year's Carnegie Medal winner for Look Both Ways). Emily Gravett, two-time Kate Greenaway Medal winner (Wolves, 2005 and Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears, 2008), uses her rhyming picture book Too Much Stuff featuring two magpies who like to hoard to warn about the perils of overconsumption.

Other titles on the shortlist support children in navigating and embracing difference and in finding their own place in the world. Sydney Smith, who has also won the Kate Greenaway Medal twice (Town Is by the Sea, 2018 and Small in the City, 2021), is shortlisted for I Talk Like a River. Inspired by poet and debut picture book author Jordan Scott's own experience, the story is about a lonely boy who stutters but finds comfort in nature and sharing his experience with his father. The New York Times-bestselling Milo Imagines the World is from Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator and Pixar and Sesame Street animator Christian Robinson and written by Matt de la Pena. A lesson in not judging by appearance, the story follows a boy watching strangers on the train ride to visit his mother in prison. Shu Lin's Grandpa, from award-winning picture book illustrator Yu Rong, who studied her MA under Quentin Blake, and author Matt Goodfellow is the tale of a Chinese immigrant girl struggling to fit in at school, until her grandpa pays a visit and shows the class his paintings.

The final two books on the shortlist are wordless explorations of nature and animals. The Midnight Fair from illustrator, storyboard artist and concept designer Mariachiara Di Giorgio, and written by Gideon Sterer uncovers the secret life of animals that make their own fun in a fairground at night. Peter Van den Ende, a Cayman Islands nature guide, used the beauty of the sea as his source of inspiration for his debut The Wanderer, the story of a boat ride home through oceanscapes full of fantastical creatures.

carnegiegreenaway.org.uk / #CKG22