Thanks to the young readers far and wide who have engaged with our shortlists and voted for their own deserving Shadowers’ Choice Medal recipients. Huge congratulations to all four of our Yoto Carnegie medal winners for this year, who demonstrate the best of children’s writing and illustration in its myriad of forms.”

The Nottinghill Carnival takes central stage in this story about families, memories and the power of dance and festivals. Author Yaba Badoe tells... Thanks for…” Gwion started, and took a few seconds to think about what he wanted to thank me for. “I thought everyone was gone. I didn’t think I’d ever hear another person’s voice.” Each year thousands of reading groups in schools and libraries in the UK and around the world get involved in the Awards, with children and young people ‘shadowing’ the judging process, debating and choosing their own winners. They have voted for their favourites from this year’s shortlist and have chosen I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetysfor the Yoto Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Medal for Writing, and The Comet by Joe Todd-Stanton for the Yoto Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Medal for Illustration. The Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration, established in 1955, is awarded annually to a children’s book illustrator whose artwork creates an outstanding reading experience. Prolific Welsh writer Manon Steffan Ros lives in Tywyn, North Wales. She has written over 23 books for adults and children and is four-times winner of the Tir na n’Og Wales Children’s Book Awards. The Blue Book of Nebo is Ros’ first YA novel to be published in English, and is published by British Book Awards Wales Small Press of the Year, Firefly Press. The judges admired the “appreciation of language, reading and literature” and described it as “heartbreaking”, “poignant” and “rich with Welsh heritage.” Following the success of The Blue Book of Nebo, Firefly have since acquired two middle-grade titles by Ros, Feather( Pluen), and Me and Aaron Ramsey( Fi ac Aaron Ramsey), to be published in English in 2024.With daily online content and weekly delivery to your doorstep, First News provides factual, impartial news, sports, science, and entertainment from the UK and around the world. For the first time in the awards almost 90-year history, the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing is awarded to a book in translation – The Blue Book of Nebo (Firefly Press), written and translated by Manon Steffan Ros. Told through the dual narrative of a mother and son in post-apocalyptic Nebo, this “compelling, conceivable” story explores Welsh identity and culture, and offers a beautiful appreciation of language. The original Welsh publication, Llyfr Glas Nebo, won multiple awards, including the 2019 Wales Book of the Year.

The Blue Book of Nebo is at once heart-warming and gut-wrenching. Taking the form of alternating diary entries by fourteen-year-old Dylan and his mam, Rowenna, it follows the story of a small family trying to survive in North West Wales post-apocalypse. The changing perspective between mother and son allows the reader to see this strange world through interchangeably curious and jaded eyes, the contrast regularly presenting moments of revelatory poignancy. Ros skilfully crafts these opposing viewpoints, their unique perspectives allowing her to weave in each character’s life experience. While an optimistic Dylan makes the most of the apocalyptic life he’s lived since childhood, he can’t help imagining the folkloric world which existed before “The End” with unsubstantiated nostalgia. Rowenna, on the other hand, is less sentimental about the old world. Hers was miserable, filled with absent fathers, tedium and money worries – in her new life she can, at least, solely focus on survival and her children. Dylan’s unwavering optimism in the face of relentless challenges is delicately handled and compelling to read. His perseverance hardly ever wavers, and it is only in moments of solitude that he allows his sadness to creep in, (one poignant example being the crush he develops on the photograph of a teenage girl, long-since gone, found in a deserted house). Ros also examines the isolation of motherhood through Rowenna’s melancholic narration, yet also represents her strength – her voice never veering towards a hyperbolic hopelessness. In fact, Dylan and Rowenna’s sincere love for each other provides the root of joy which runs throughout this novel. She got this book from a house we broke into in Nebo. It was in one of the small drawers of a little desk in the corner of someone’s living room. Usually, we only steal the really important stuff like matches or rat poison or books. But she held this notebook in her hands and turned it over a few times before putting it in her bag. The post-apocalyptic story that captured the heart of Wales gets to the heart of the mother-son relationship, the making of myth, and the humanity within us all. MSR: The honest answer is that I don’t overthink it—it’s a matter of doing what feels right at the time. But it’s an interesting point that all of us who have been raised in Welsh, who live in and through Welsh, have bilingual influences. There is no point denying that; it enriches us.

Praise for the book

There’s a hell of a view from the lean-to. Down toward Caernarfon, where you can see the castle towers jutting out like gnarling teeth, and then the sea and Anglesey beyond it. I can’t ever remember going to Anglesey, but Mam says I went loads of times when I was a little boy. There were nice places to go for walks, Mam says, with nice beaches all around, because Anglesey is an island. I was thinking about that yesterday when I was sitting on the roof of the lean-to, looking out. Seeing the sea and the island, which looks too big to be an island from here. There are trees and fields and places I don’t know between here and the sea. Yesterday was a cold day—cold enough to make my mouth steam, like snow in a saucepan. I sat there thinking about all those people in the olden days, poor things, going to beaches in their cars and sitting there all day with nothing to do. Standing with their feet in the water, then splashing about a bit and then having a picnic. I try not to think about those people too much. I hadn’t thought about the cloud for a while, though I’d always known that Dylan and I would not have survived if it wasn’t for the water I’d forced down our throats when we were ill. I wouldn’t have had the energy to reach the stream when I was at my weakest. We would have died of dehydration. CILIP is a registered charity, no. 313014. The Youth Libraries Group (YLG) is a special interest group of CILIP who work to preserve and influence the provision of quality literature and library services for children and young people, both in public libraries and school library services.

It’s got nothing to do with us,” said Mam firmly. I knew then that I had to shut up. Mam isn’t a woman who argues—she just closes herself, like a door or a book. She thinks that breaking into Sunningdale is different to breaking into the other houses in Nebo, and I can’t see why. Many comments on the book refer to its hopeful tone, and certainly the development of the central characters is very positive both in their survival strategies and their growth into who they should be. Without revealing the ending, I could say that the wider future which is hinted at appears more threat than promise. Yeah, but I think something needs to be written about The End. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. And I don’t know enough about it.’” Winner of the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing 2023 | Shortlisted for the UKLA Book Awards 2023: 11 - 14First News is the UK’s number one children’s newspaper, with a readership of over 2.6 million, including 7,500 subscribing schools. In this prize-winning and best-selling new novel, Manon Steffan Ros not only explores the human capacity to find new strengths when faced with the need to survive, but also the structures and norms of the contemporary world . Biographical Note Jeet Zdung has won the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration for Saving Sorya: Chang and the Sun Bear , (Kingfisher, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Books). This is the second consecutive year that a graphic novel has clinched the prize. Written and inspired by the real life of Vietnamese wildlife conservationist Dr Trang Nguyen, the “beautiful” manga-inspired illustrations – including scenic watercolours and detailed, pencil sketched journal entries – work together to offer “something new to discover on each re-reading” and inspire and educate young wildlife activists. CD: For anyone new to writing from Wales, if you could choose to translate any Welsh book into English—other than your own works!—what would it be? CD: It was a revealing experience reading Llyfr Glas Nebo before the pandemic and The Blue Book of Nebo afterward, in a changed world. Do you wonder how all this might inform new readers’ responses?

I can’t remember what we said after that, but I do remember thMSR: It’s bound to be a factor. At the very beginning of the pandemic someone tweeted saying, “This feels familiar, very Llyfr Glas Nebo.” I did find myself mirroring some behaviors of Rowenna’s and thinking: “Where does this lead us now?” I felt quite uncomfortable with that, in a way; I didn’t like the pressure of it. I haven’t returned to the novel during the pandemic—I’d completed the translation before it all began—but I do think that if I was writing it now, it would be different. The Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is a not-for-profit organisation started by writers for the benefit of all types of writers. Despite their close understanding, the relationship between mother and son changes subtly as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities. And they each have their own secrets, which emerge as, in turn, they jot down their thoughts and memories in a found notebook - the Blue Book of Nebo. You’re still here! Brilliant!” said Gwion with a wide smile. “You’re surviving! It’s amazing, Greta!”