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Shortlist for Carnegie Medal announced

The Carnegie Medal shortlist consists of seven books with seven boy. The books offer adventure, fantasy and embrace relationships with fathers, teenage suicide, knife crime, gang culture, first love, history and technology. The books and their product descriptions are listed below:

• Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce: Liam is too big for his boots, his football strip, and his school blazer. But being super-sized height-wise has its advantages: he’s the only eleven-year-old to ever ride the G-force defying Cosmic rollercoaster or be offered the chance to drive a Porsche. Long-legged Liam makes a giant leap for boy-kind by competing with a group of adults for the chance to go into space. Is Liam the best boy for the job? Sometimes being big isn’t all about being a grown-up.
• Airman by Eoin Colfer: One dark night on the island of Great Saltee, fourteen-year-old Conor is framed for a terrible crime he didn’t commit. Thrown into prison by the dastardly Hugo Bonvilain, Conor is trapped in a sea swept dungeon and branded a traitor. He must escape and clear his name; he wants his old life back – his family, his friends . . . and his princess. Conor knows there is only one way out. It’s an impossible task, which has never been done before. But Conor is determined to do it. He’ll have to fly. Swashbuckling new fiction from the amazing Eoin Colfer, ideal for readers aged 11+.
• Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray: Funny/sad Ostrich Boys (12 and above), in which a bunch of boys take the ashes of their friend to give him a proper send-off, handles big themes with a light touch.
• Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd: Digging for peat in the mountain with his Uncle Tally, Fergus finds the body of a child, and it looks like she’s been murdered. As Fergus tries to make sense of the mad world around him – his brother on hunger-strike in prison, his growing feelings for Cora, his parents arguing over the Troubles, and him in it up to the neck, blackmailed into acting as courier to God knows what, a little voice comes to him in his dreams, and the mystery of the bog child unfurls. "Bog Child" is an astonishing novel exploring the sacrifices made in the name of peace, and the unflinching strength of the human spirit.
• The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness: Imagine you’re the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think. Imagine you don’t fit in with their plans… Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run…
• Creature of the Night by Kate Thompson: I could hear Dennis talking to my ma. ‘She was little,’ he said. ‘Little like me. But old. Older than you. Those words gave me a cold shock. I could see Dennis imagining fairies, but old ones? When Bobby’s mother moves the family into a rented house in the country, a neighbour tells him that a child was once murdered there. Bobby doesn’t care. All he wants is to get back to Dublin and to resume his wild life there, stealing from the crowded shopping streets and racing stolen cars at night. But getting his old life back doesn’t turn out to be so easy, and the longer he spends in the old cottage, the more convinced he becomes that something very strange is going on there. Was there really a murder? And if so, was it the one he has been told about?
• Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks: Pete Boland was busy doing nothing that summer. Long, stiflingly hot, lazy days stretched ahead of him. Then she called. ‘Listen, Pete . . . you know that funfair, up at the recreation ground . . . I thought we could all meet up . . . You know, for old times’ sake.’ But, where there are old times, there are old tensions. And as secrets, bitterness and jealousies resurface, five old friends are plunged into the worst night of their lives . . . Teenage readers will find it impossible to tear themselves away from this dark, tense and gripping new novel from award-winning Kevin Brooks.

Fantasy Book Review would like to wish all seven authors good luck and may the best book win!

The Carnegie Medal was established in 1936 and is the UK’s oldest children’s literary honour. Past winners have included Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights and CS Lewis’s The Last Battle.

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Posted: April 25th, 2009
Author: Floresiensis
Categories: Awards, Eoin Colfer