Twenty-one keen readers from OLA had a wonderful day at Abingdon Guildhall to reward their reading and reviewing of the books nominated for the Carnegie Medal, the prestigious children's book award, whose past winners include The Borrowers, Watership Down, Tom’s Midnight Garden and Northern Lights. Joining with other readers from the six secondary schools in Abingdon they discussed the eight books on the shortlist and then concentrated on their favourite title, preparing a short visual review to convince a panel of judges to read ‘their’ book.
This successful reading partnership of the six state and independent schools has been running for 10 years, and has lead to joint book quiz sessions, author talks and culminates in an annual Abingdon Carnegie Forum organised by the schools’ Librarians, with over 130 teenagers, Librarians, English teachers and guest judges participating in a day to celebrate reading.
This year the six schools had special cause to celebrate as Marcus Sedgwick, one of the shortlisted authors came to Abingdon to speak to the Carnegie shadowers, following a writing workshop earlier in the day with Year 9 at OLA. At the end of the afternoon the Shadowers voted for their winning book, which was Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson with just one vote separating it from The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness. All eight books were outstanding in their own way and fully deserved their place on the Carnegie Medal shortlist.
The winner of the Carnegie Medal, announced the following day, was The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which joins the ranks of the best in children's literature.
