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Carnegie's best children's books

20.04.07

Ten children's book have been put forward as the most important children's novels of the past 70 years. Philip Pullman's Northern Lights was chosen alongside classics such as Mary Norton's The Borrowers and Alan Garner's The Owl Service by judges of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children's literature, as a kind of "Carnegie of Carnegies" to celebrate its 70th anniversary, reports the Independent.

The list includes Melvin Burgess's Junk, about young heroin users who run away to live in a squat, which won the Carnegie Medal in 1996. The judges defended the omission of past winners such as Anne Fine, a former children's laureate who has won the award twice, as well as CS Lewis, who won in 1956 for The Last Battle.

Meanwhile, the shortlist for this year's Carnegie Medal, also announced today, included two first-time novelists, Siobhan Dowd, for A Swift Pure Cry, and Ally Kennen's Beast, as well as Anne Fine's The Road of Bones; Meg Rosoff's Just in Case; Marcus Sedgwick's My Swordhand is Singing, and Kevin Brooks' The Road of the Dead.

 Carnegie of Carnegies shortlist

* SKELLIG David Almond (won in 1998)
A tale of a creature beneath the garage

* JUNK Melvin Burgess (1996)
The lives of young heroin users

* STORM Kevin Crossley-Holland (1985)
Girl discovers the secrets of a marsh

* A GATHERING LIGHT Jennifer Donnelly (2003)
Novel about a real murder

* THE OWL SERVICE Alan Garner (1967)
A terrifying legend re-emerges

* THE FAMILY FROM ONE END STREET Eve Garnett (1937)
Portrait of a working-class family

* THE BORROWERS Mary Norton (1952)
Tiny people live beneath the floor

* TOM'S MIDNIGHT GARDEN Philippa Pearce (1958)
Adventures in a magical garden

* NORTHERN LIGHTS Philip Pullman (1995)
First of the trilogy His Dark Materials

* THE MACHINE-GUNNERS Robert Westall (1981)
Second World War novel

Independent

Prizes children's carnegie

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