Carnegie Award Winners

I have read many children's books in my time, but I wonder how many have been award winners? Here is the list of Carnegie Award Winners from the last 70 years ... the ones I have read are highlighted.

2007 Meg Rosoff, Just in Case, Penguin
2005 Mal Peet, Tamar, Walker Books
2004 Frank Cottrell Boyce, Millions, Macmillan
2003 Jennifer Donnelly, A Gathering Light, Bloomsbury Children's Books
2002 Sharon Creech, Ruby Holler, Bloomsbury Children's Books
2001 Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Doubleday
2000 Beverley Naidoo, The Other Side of Truth, Puffin
1999 Aidan Chambers, Postcards From No Man's Land, Bodley Head
1998 David Almond, Skellig, Hodder Children's Books
1997 Tim Bowler, River Boy, OUP
1996 Melvin Burgess, Junk, Andersen Press
1995 Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials: Book 1 Northern Lights, Scholastic
1994 Theresa Breslin, Whispers in the Graveyard, Methuen
1993 Robert Swindells, Stone Cold, H Hamilton
1992 Anne Fine, Flour Babies, H Hamilton
1991 Berlie Doherty, Dear Nobody, H Hamilton
1990 Gillian Cross, Wolf, OUP
1989 Anne Fine, Goggle-eyes, H Hamilton
1988 Geraldine McCaughrean, A Pack of Lies, OUP
1987 Susan Price, The Ghost Drum, Faber
1986 Berlie Doherty, Granny was a Buffer Girl, Methuen
1985 Kevin Crossley-Holland, Storm, Heinemann
1984 Margaret Mahy, The Changeover, Dent
1983 Jan Mark, Handles, Kestrel
1982 Margaret Mahy, The Haunting, Dent
1981 Robert Westall, The Scarecrows, Chatto & Windus
1980 Peter Dickinson, City of Gold, Gollancz
1979 Peter Dickinson, Tulku, Gollancz
1978 David Rees, The Exeter Blitz, H Hamilton
1977 Gene Kemp, The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler, Faber
1976 Jan Mark, Thunder and Lightnings, Kestrel
1975 Robert Westall, The Machine Gunners, Macmillan
1974 Mollie Hunter, The Stronghold, H Hamilton
1973 Penelope Lively, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, Heinemann
1972 Richard Adams, Watership Down, Rex Collings
1971 Ivan Southall, Josh, Angus & Robertson
1970 Leon Garfield & Edward Blishen, The God Beneath the Sea, Longman
1969 Kathleen Peyton, The Edge of the Cloud, OUP
1968 Rosemary Harris, The Moon in the Cloud, Faber
1967 Alan Garner, The Owl Service, Collins
1966 Prize withheld as no book considered suitable
1965 Philip Turner, The Grange at High Force, OUP
1964 Sheena Porter, Nordy Bank, OUP
1963 Hester Burton, Time of Trial, OUP
1962 Pauline Clarke, The Twelve and the Genii, Faber
1961 Lucy M Boston, A Stranger at Green Knowe, Faber
1960 Dr I W Cornwall, The Making of Man, Phoenix House
1959 Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers, OUP
1958 Philipa Pearce, Tom's Midnight Garden, OUP
1957 William Mayne, A Grass Rope, OUP
1956 C S Lewis, The Last Battle, Bodley Head
1955 Eleanor Farjeon, The Little Bookroom, OUP
1954 Ronald Welch (Felton Ronald Oliver), Knight Crusader, OUP
1953 Edward Osmond, A Valley Grows Up
1952 Mary Norton, The Borrowers, Dent
1951 Cynthia Harnett, The Woolpack, Methuen
1950 Elfrida Vipont Foulds, The Lark on the Wing, OUP
1949 Agnes Allen, The Story of Your Home, Faber
1948 Richard Armstrong, Sea Change, Dent
1947 Walter De La Mare, Collected Stories for Children
1946 Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse, University of London Press
1945 Prize withheld as no book considered suitable
1944 Eric Linklater, The Wind on the Moon, Macmillan
1943 Prize withheld as no book considered suitable
1942 'BB' (D J Watkins-Pitchford), The Little Grey Men, Eyre & Spottiswoode
1941 Mary Treadgold, We Couldn't Leave Dinah, Cape
1940 Kitty Barne, Visitors from London, Dent
1939 Eleanor Doorly, Radium Woman, Heinemann
1938 Noel Streatfeild, The Circus is Coming, Dent
1937 Eve Garnett, The Family from One End Street, Muller
1936 Arthur Ransome, Pigeon Post, Cape

The books I read in 2007 ...

I don't want to lose the list, but since it's on my other blog, I thought I'd copy it over here too. Also, I wondered how many I had read ...

(This is in reverse order ...)

28* From Ganglands to Promised Land - John Pridmore
27* Chicken with Plums - Marjane Sarpati
26* Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
25* A Spot of Bother - Mark Haddon
24* The Memory Keeper's Daughter - Kim Edwards
23* Disgrace - JM Coetzee
22* The Outsider - Albert Camus
21* A Burnt-Out Case - Graham Greene
20* The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
19* The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
18* Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
17* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling
16* Don't Tell Mummy - Toni Maguire
15* Knocked out by my nunga-nungas - Louise Rennison
14* The Boy Who Lost His Face - Louis Sacher
13* Checkmate - Malorie Blackman
12* Just in Case - Meg Rosoff
11* Dangerous Reality - Malorie Blackman
10* Wild Swans - Jung Chang
9* Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter
8* Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
7* After the Quake - Haruki Murakami
6* The Breast - Philip Roth
5* Silk - Alessandro Baricco
4* A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka
3* Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
2* Like the Flowing River - Paulo Coelho
1* Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

So, 28 books. Plus those academic books that I read for my Masters (Pass with Merit!) and other courses that I completed throughout the year. Which is not too bad, I suppose - about one a fortnight. And some real gems among them. I'm glad I decided to use "1001 Books to Read Before You Die" as an inspiration. Although some were better than others! Anyway, I wonder if I can beat that this year. Must read at least 30!

Misadventure in the Middle East by Henry Hemming

Henry Hemming is an artist who decided to travel around the Middle East with a friend, Al Braithwaite, and a car called Yasmine, not long after 9/11. They wanted to make art about the Middle East ... and soon discovered that there was not just one "Middle East" that could be summed up in the work. The book is a discovery of the vastly different people and places that Henry, Al, and, intermittently, Stephen and Georgie, made while passing through and exploring Turkey, Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Iran, to name a few. It charts their adventures and misadventures. Being mistaken for terrorists, tramps, spies, and sometimes recognised as artists, meeting princesses, poor, soldiers, students, Hemming describes each step of the way as he and his friends find out more about Islam in the Middle East, and the artists who live and work there. Since the Second Iraq War started while they were out there, the book also contains some interesting political and cultural observations as well. Eye opening and informative.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

I finished another excellent book this morning. Matilda lives on an island which is under threat from Redskin soldiers and Rebels. She goes to a school run by the one white man on the island, Mr Watts, and which has one book - Great Expectations. Matilda and the other pupils get to know Pip very well, as Mr Watts rereads them the story over and over, interspersed with practical advice from their mothers and grandmothers. I did not see the twist in the story coming at all, so was quite taken aback. Highly recommended!

Best of the Booker

I was interested to read that the Man Booker Prize is going to award a Best of the Booker Award for the best Booker winner from the past forty years. It got me wondering how many of these books I have actually read ...

The list below was found at Times Online:

1969 P H Newby, Something to Answer For (Faber & Faber)
1970 Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member (Eyre & Spottiswoode)
1971 V S Naipaul, In a Free State (Deutsch)
1972 John Berger, G (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
1973 J G Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
1974 Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist (Cape) and Stanley Middleton, Holiday (Hutchinson)
1975 Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust (John Murray)
1976 David Storey, Saville (Cape)
1977 Paul Scott, Staying On (Heinemann)
1978 Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea (Chatto & Windus)
1979 Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore (Collins)
1980 William Golding, Rites of Passage (Faber & Faber)
1981 Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Cape)
1982 Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark (Hodder & Stoughton)
1983 J M Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K (Secker & Warburg)
1984 Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac (Cape)
1985 Keri Hulme, The Bone People (Hodder & Stoughton)
1986 Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils (Hutchinson)
1987 Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger (Deutsch)
1988 Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda (Faber & Faber)
1989 Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (Faber & Faber)
1990 A S Byatt, Possession (Chatto & Windus)
1991 Ben Okri, The Famished Road (Cape)
1992 Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient (Bloomsbury) and Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (Hamish Hamilton)
1993 Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Secker & Warburg)
1994 James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late (Secker & Warburg)
1995 Pat Barker, The Ghost Road (Viking)
1996 Graham Swift, Last Orders (Picador)
1997 Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (Flamingo)
1998 Ian McEwan, Amsterdam (Cape)
1999 J M Coetzee, Disgrace (Secker & Warburg)
2000 Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (Bloomsbury)
2001 Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang (Faber & Faber)
2002 Yann Martel, The Life of Pi (Canongate)
2003 DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little (Faber & Faber)
2004 Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty (Picador)
2005 John Banville, The Sea (Picador)
2006 Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Penguin)
2007 Anne Enright, The Gathering (Cape)

Okay, so not many ... four of them! Hmmm. Ten percent ... maybe not that bad! And out of those four? Well, not Disgrace, which was okay, but not that great. I enjoyed Rites of Passage very much - I studied it at uni, and found the twists fascinating - The God of Small Things, which I read some years ago, was excellent, and I have recently enjoyed The Gathering. So I think it could be a hard task!

Not Without My Sister by Kristina, Celeste and Juliana

This multiautobiography tells the intertwined tale of three sisters (one father, two mothers) who were brought up in the Children of God, now known as The Family International. An interesting insight into their lives, exposing the abuse they had to face in different ways as they were moved around the world as countries began to chase the Family out. As an RE teacher, it is interesting to see examples of many of the indicators of a cult being described - the charismatic leader, the almost Scriptural additional writings, the exclusion from the world, the bizarre and sometimes illegal practices. The one slight criticism is that the title is obviously meant to conjure up "Not Without My Daughter", but the girls were often separated, and in many ways had to leave the Family individually, so even though there are similarities, it does feel as if they are drawing on the fame of the first book! But it's a good read anyway.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

I finished this earlier in the week. I also enjoyed this, although I think I would agree with giving the Booker Prize to The Gathering instead - I think it has the slight edge. However, I did enjoy reading this novella; the first three chapters at least. The build up to the consummation of the marriage, the intrepidation, nervousness and fear, I thought was very well presented, interspersed with memories of the courting leading to the marriage. However, I was a bit disappointed with the anticlimax, which seemed a bit of a cop out. I would have been interested to see how McEwan handled the fall out if things had turned out slightly differently.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

A colleague lent me this short and thoughtful book, warning me to be prepared to cry. Well, I was a bit disappointed that I didn't, although perhaps the tube is not the best place to be emotional. I did enjoy this little book, the idea being that when you die you meet five people whose life touched yours in some way when you were alive, who teach you a lesson, to help you understand the purpose of your life; I would be interested in reading Albom's other book. But I am disappointed I didn't find it more of a weepy!

The Gathering by Anne Enright

I finally finished this Man Booker Prize winner yesterday. It's taken a long time - although it's my second book of the year, I have been reading it since I finished Chicken with Plums! However, this is not because it has been a drag, but instead because the writing has been so good I've been reading it little by little and enjoying it very much.

I can understand why Enright won the prize (although I have not read any of the others yet, although I do have Ian McEwan's Chesil Beach by my bedside). It's a bittersweet tale, full of memory, re-readings of recollections, everyday observations, descriptions of mundane family routines. Some beautiful lines.

Inside the church they passed the paschal flame from candle to candle until it looked like the whole place was on fire: then they switched on the fluorescent lights.

How true, how true!

The Gathering refers to the funeral of one of the narrator's brothers, but most of the book, although it keeps touching back on that event, covers many years and many events. I was given this book as a gift from a book person ... it's been a great read, and I recommend it.

My Booky Wook by Russell Brand

What a change from my last completed book of 2007 and my first completed book of 2008! Russell Brand's life so far couldn't really be further from John Pridmore's! Unless of course you include the fact that they were both involved with drugs at one stage in their life.

My Booky Wook is a very well written and interesting book - I read it very quickly, and enjoyed it. Had a long discussion about it with H on the way south yesterday. It definitely starts off well, and Brand's voice is very clearly heard, but the language seems to become flatter towards the end, although that could simply be because we are used to the style by then. One thing I noticed was that there seems to be very little introspection of his circumstances, although they are well described, and the reader can see the connections between different events in his life without the need for much reflection on Brand's part. I suppose writing the book in itself is the reflection.

One of the good things about the book was that it clearly was not one of those ghost written autobiographies, which can be very interesting and informative, but can be quite flat in tone. This seemed to be very obviously Brand's book.

Brand's actual life has been drug and sex filled, so it's not exactly a book to read if you want to be inspired in an uplifting type of way, but it is a good read and I would recommend it.

From Ganglands to Promised Land by John Pridmore

I read this autobiography in preparation for meeting the man himself in a week's time when he will come to speak to our pupils. I read it really quickly because I wanted to find out what happened. John Pridmore was an East End bouncer, involved in gangs and criminal activity round about the time of the Krays. After almost killing a man, he found God and became heavily involved in Catholic youth work. An inspirational story, and unusual for me because although I've read lots of similar stories of conversion to evangelical Christianity, I've never read one which has such an emphasis on the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Adoration of the Eucharist before. Very enjoyable, and I'm really looking forward to meeting the man himself!

Chicken with Plums by Marjane Sarpati

This book was a real treat. It's a poignant story of an Iranian tar player who dies, and is unusual because it's a graphic novel. Definitely following in the footstops of Where the Wind Blows rather than Superman. The story covers the week or so leading up to the narrator's death ... Very beautiful, very moving. Five stars. Go and buy it now! (Or at least borrow it from a library or something!)