The CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals have reached an important crossroads. They are already widely acknowledged as the UK’s top children’s book awards and they are highly regarded by authors, illustrators and publishers – but there is still a frustrating lack of recognition in the public at large.
Our aim is for the medals to be the top children’s and young people’s book awards, promoting excellence in children’s books and taking reading enjoyment to the widest possible audience. They also have a very important job to do in promoting the knowledge and expertise of children’s and young people’s librarians and in bringing CILIP as an organisation to public attention.
So why aren’t the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals as widely known as the major awards such as the Mann Booker, the Whitbread Awards and the Orange Prize? One of the issues is that the book trade has limited involvement. Historically this has been because books for children and young people haven’t been as commercially important as books for adults, but this has changed since major successes such as the Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. So what’s stopping us now?
We have identified the need to build stronger working relationships with publishers and retailers in order to bring them on board and to understand their needs. We have begun regular meetings with representatives from the Children’s Book Group of the Publishers Association and with members of the Booksellers Association.
These meetings have demonstrated a real enthusiasm for promoting the awards more effectively. Publishers too would like to see the shortlists for the awards promoted with special displays and point-of-sale materials in the major retail chains – not just the specialist independents.
Through these meetings we have uncovered a major stumbling block for the trade – the timetable. The timetable has also been shown to be problematic in regular feedback from librarians, teachers, journalists and publishers, and comments sent to us as part of the 2003 consultation on the awards. There is now an even more urgent need for change, which could make the difference between maximising the potential of the awards to deliver the sort of profile that everyone involved would like them to have, and the awards stagnating or even declining due to lack of support.
The main problem with the current timetable is there is insufficient time between deciding the shortlists and announcing them, which means that we cannot guarantee book supply. Retailers won’t promote books they don’t have available to sell, and so are unwilling to promote the shortlists. To get to a point where publishers will have time to re-print shortlisted titles, we need to build in a 12-week period between deciding the shortlists and the announcement.
This year’s awards will run to our usual timetable (see www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/shadowingsite/timetable for details) but a new timetable will be adopted this autumn:
Medals timetable – 2006/07
Eligible books published between - 1 January 2006 - 31 August 2006
Open for nominations - 1 September 2006
Close of nominations - 3 November 2006
Nominations announced - 20 November 2006
Shortlist judging meeting Week of 15-19 January 2007
Shortlists announced - 16 April 2007
Ceremony and winners announced - 22 June 2007
2006 will be a transition year with a shorter eligibility period to enable us to amend the timings. The eligibility period for the following year will be a full 12 months, 1 September 2006 – 31 August 2007.
The awards have many, varied stakeholders – not least the 2,400 shadowing groups in schools and public libraries across the UK and internationally – and the change in timetable will involve inconvenience and hard work for many of them. But the CKG working party believes that the benefits of change outweigh the disadvantages.
The benefits of change
- Retail involvement – especially if we can get the major chains on board – will take awareness of the awards, children’s librarians and CILIP to a completely different level.
- The changes will help secure future funding from CILIP, from publishers and from current and future sponsors.
- The interest from publishers and booksellers is unprecedented. If we don’t try and accommodate their needs now, we might not get this opportunity again. Moreover, we could damage our relationship with publishers and booksellers and risk damaging the reputation of the awards and of CILIP.
- At a strategic level, the profession is engaging in public private partnerships, through initiatives such as the Reading Agency’s ‘Reading Partners’ scheme. We are in a strong position to benefit from the heightened awareness of libraries and the work of librarians which these schemes are achieving.
- Moving the ceremony date forward in 2007 means that schools in Scotland and Northern Ireland will feel able to participate.
- There is more time between the end of the eligibility period and the close of nominations, as well as slightly longer for the judges to read the nominated titles.
- The confusion about the year of the award will be cleared up. Currently when we say ‘the winner of the 2004 Carnegie Medal’ we mean that the winning book was published in 2004 and the medal presented in 2005. It makes more sense if the year refers to the year the medal was awarded. So the 2007 medal would be presented in 2007.
Next year we begin celebrating the 70th and 50th anniversaries of the medals (Carnegie is 70 and Greenaway is 50). This forms an ideal springboard for heightening public awareness of the medals, but we can’t do it on our own. We need to harness the power and support of key players such as the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association and the whole of the library and book trade. Changing the timetable to enable them to be involved means that everyone can benefit – publishers and booksellers sell more books, shadowing groups have better access to supplies of shortlisted titles, CILIP and its members receive more publicity and we achieve our goal of taking reading enjoyment to the widest possible audience.
If you would like further information about the awards, shadowing or the new timetable please contact Louisa Myatt (020 7255 0650; louisa.myatt@cilip.org.uk).
Don’t forget that you can nominate for the 2005 medals (presented in 2006) at www.ckg.org.uk/nominate
The closing date is 18 February.