The 2025 Carnegie Medal for Illustration has been awarded to Clever Crow illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill and written by Chris Butterworth.  Olivia kindly took time out to answer some questions about illustration.

(1)  What books do you remember from childhood?

When I around seven or eight my dad read me The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.  I grew up with the illustrations from the calendars and also enjoying Tolkien’s own illustrations.  I also admired the works of E. H. Shepherd and Judith Kerr.  When my boys were young, I became interested in David McKee’s work and we exchanged a few cards.  We have some of his lovely envelopes!

(2) The first book you illustrated was Where My Wellies Take Me by Clare and Michael Morpurgo.  It was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway medal.  How did that come about?

I was on holiday in Brittany and was staying with my parents-in-law.  I always like to go out and see things and I’d seen a poster advertising a book festival for young people.  We took a picnic and went to visit the festival.  The organisers found out that Vincent had grown up down the road but that we were now living on the Scottish Borders.  It was exciting to them that we’d travelled so far and were at the festival.  The organiser said they had a very famous English author and that we should meet them.  She asked three times, it was like the rooster in the bible.  He asked about my son and what his name was, I explained that he was called Elzeard.  Michael was the first and last person to understand his name.  It’s from The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono.  We kept in touch ever since and Michael sent me the manuscript for Where My Wellies Take Me.

(3) How did you approach working on the book?

I saw that it was a story of a girl having a walk in the countryside in real time.  The poems just appeared throughout the story, so I began thinking about who put them there and why.  I thought this is a story written as a journal by the girl.  She’s chosen these poems and cut and copied them on her dad’s typewriter and stuck them in her journal to explain why they were there.  That’s how the book happened, although it probably all happened the wrong way round.

(4) Clever Crow is the winner of this year’s Carnegie Medal for illustration.  The relationship between people and nature is really fascinating.

Over the last thirty years I’ve retreated quite a lot from what might be considered normal society.  I’ve chosen to live in isolated rural places and I’ve been influenced by growing up on a smallholding, I’ve increasingly steered towards semi self-sufficiency.  We tend to think of civilisation as how far removed we have become from the land, the soil and the dirt.  But we are waking up to the fact that we’ve created an entirely unsustainable way of life.  All of the time I’m thinking about our interaction with the natural world. 

(5) You used a range of different artistic technique and media through the book.

I used collage here and there and I don’t really do anything digitally so it’s literally just how I work the paper.  I think maybe one of the differences is that I generally work on brown or ochre coloured paper which means any white areas I have to add so I work in a slightly back-to-front way.

Everybody loves old dictionary pages and the old typewritten print, so it just helped some of the themes in Clever Crow.  I enjoy when you can see the mark of the maker and the way the work is constructed. 

Thank you to Walker Books for allowing the creative freedom to embrace these techniques and approaches and for championing the roles that children’s book illustration can play.

(6) The Carnegie Medal for illustration seeks to recognise an outstanding reading experience created through illustration.  What do you think helps constitute this?

I’m not trained in illustration, but I still feel that a drawing that works as a drawing or a painting that works is going to work as an illustration.  I still don’t quite see the difference between making an artwork and creating illustration except and illustration is an artwork interpreting a bit of text by somebody else - or up until now for me it has always been by somebody else.  I approach it pretty much as making a picture as I would if there wasn’t text.  It’s still a composition and it still has to work on the page. 

(7) Your work is now added to the list of winners of the medal for illustration are there any past winners whose work you particularly admire?

Edward Ardizzone      Tim All Alone 1956

Brian Wildsmith           Brian Wildsmith’s ABC 1962

Charles Keeping           Charlotte and the Golden Canary 1967

Shaun Tan                    Tales from the Inner City 2020

Congratulations to Olivia Lomenech Gill and thank you for the opportunity for the interview.