worthy historical novels like Mollie Hunter’s The Stronghold and amiable fantasies
like Penelope Lively’s The Ghost of Thomas Kempe hardly reflect the present state of
children’s literature? Barbara Willard’s Mantlemass books— surely the finest
historical novels for the young in recent years—did not even feature on the Honours
list for the Carnegie Medal. Such outstanding and challenging novels as Jane
Gardam’s The Summer after the Funeral and William Mayne’s The Jersey Shore have
been ignored too.
Salway 1976:888However, is the rearranging of award winning books just an interesting party game?
After all, the books Salway cites as unjustly neglected have hardly become timeless
classics. Perhaps John Rowe Townsend is right when he says that
No sensible commentator would expect to find a list that fitted his own prescription
exactly; everyone would agree that, with benefit of hindsight, it would be pleasant
(though clearly impracticable) to reshape the list, remove the weaker titles, and
bring in books that now seem to have been mistakenly passed over. No two people
would agree on what should be discarded or introduced.
Townsend 1975:152So what is the value of awards to the children’s book world? They often create
controversy, they are a catalyst for discussion of what children read or what they should
be reading. But if the awards were all to be dissolved, would children really suffer
inordinately? As I have stated elsewhere in the context of just one award:
it seems to me to be dangerous to attach too much importance to the presenting of
any prize. The administering body of any award, from the Nobel Prize to a local
flower show, is treading a dangerous path, for it is saying that one article is
superior to another when one may be intrinsically different with a subtly unusual
set of qualities. To dispense judgement from on high and class one better than
another smacks of the ridiculous. Where children’s book awards are vital is in
bringing children and books together as often as possible: the goal for which we
should all be working. If a child’s life has been in some way altered by that child
reading Tom’s Midnight Garden, or even an ‘unpopular’ book like The God Beneath
the Sea, then the...years of the Carnegie Medal, with all its tribulations, turmoils
and arguments, will definitely have been worthwhile.
Barker 1986:43ReferencesBarker, K. (1986) In the Realms of Gold: The Story of the Carnegie Medal, London: MacRae.
Bonfield, G. and Hopkins, J. (1981) ‘Carnegie criteria’, Library Association Record 83, 9: 441.
Bradman, T. and Triggs, P. (1983) ‘The awards business’, Books for Keeps 20:4–5.
Crampton, P. (1984) ‘The Hans Christian Andersen Award’, Books for Keeps 25:16.
510 PRIZES AND PRIZEWINNERS