Carnegie Medal Shortlist 2012

DEBUTS SHINE ON YOUNGEST CARNEGIE SHORTLIST FOR YEARS

No less than four debut novels feature on the eight-strong shortlist for this year's CILIP Carnegie Medal; the UK's most prestigious children's book award which has a long track record of spotting new writing talent ahead of the game.

First children's novels by Lissa Evans, Ali Lewis, Annabel Pitcher and Ruta Sepetys go head to head with books by former CILIP Carnegie Medal winner, David Almond; Sonya Harnett; Andy Mulligan, and Patrick Ness, the 2011 CILIP Carnegie winner.

The eight books on this year's shortlist are variously suitable for readers of 12 years, or younger, bucking the trend of recent shortlists which have majored on teenage and young adult fiction. Against diverse settings ranging from contemporary England, outback Australia and wartime Siberia; to places imagined but with strong echoes of our turbulent world today; the shortlisted novels take young readers into the lives and minds of a diverse cast of characters as they contend with everything from bereavement; poverty, corruption and tyranny, to a recalcitrant young camel, and the difficulty of finding the right words.

CILIP Carnegie shortlist 2012

David Almond
MY NAME IS MINA
Hodder (9+)
ISBN: 9780340997253

Lissa Evans
SMALL CHANGE FOR STUART
>Doubleday (8+)
ISBN: 9780385618007

Sonya Hartnett
THE MIDNIGHT ZOO
Walker (9+)
ISBN: 9781406331493

Ali Lewis
EVERYBODY JAM
Andersen (12+)
ISBN: 9781849392488

Andy Mulligan
TRASH
David Fickling (12+)
ISBN: 9780385619011

Patrick Ness
A MONSTER CALLS
Walker (9+)
ISBN: 9781406311525

Annabel Pitcher
MY SISTER LIVES ON THE MANTELPIECE
Orion (10+)
ISBN: 9781444001839

Ruta Sepetys
BETWEEN SHADES OF GREY
Puffin (12+)
ISBN: 9780141335889