The Carnegie Medal is an annual book prize awarded to the writer of an "outstanding book for children"; eligible works must be written in English and published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. It should not be confused with the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children's Video, which is a quite different thing altogether.

The award was first established by the Library Association in 1936, with the innagrual winner being Arthur Ransome, for his Pigeon Post, and named in honour of Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was a Scottish-born industrialist, who made his fortune in the US Steel industry and later used his wealth to endow a number of free libraries across the English speaking world.

The award is now administered by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) which came into being on the 1st April 2002 as a result of a merger between the Institute of Information Scientists and the Library Association. The winner currently receives a golden medal and £500 worth of books which they are obliged to donate to a library of their choice.

For the 70th Anniversary of the Carnegie Medal in 2007 the Institute decided to launch its own Carnegie of Carnegies. A panel of experts selected a shortlist of the ten best winners over the first seventy years of the award, and individuals were invited to cast their vote on the Carnegie website for their favourite work. In the end a total of some 5,000 votes were received from across the world, and the winner announced on the 21st June 2007 was Northern Lights by Philip Pullman which attracted 40% of the vote against 16% share for the runner up Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.

The Winners of the Carnegie Medal


REFERENCES

The Carnegie Medal at
http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/carnegie/carn.html
http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/readers/awards/juv/carnegie.htm

Pullman children's book voted best in 70 years - The Guardian Friday June 22, 2007 http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2108818,00.html