The Carnegie Medal for Writing, established in 1936 as the Carnegie Medal, is an annual British literary award for English-language books for children or young adults. It is conferred upon the author by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), who in 2016 called it "the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing".
The Völsunga saga is a legendary saga, a late 13th-century prose rendition in Old Norse of the origin and decline of the Völsung clan. It is one of the most famous legendary sagas and an example of a "heroic saga" that deals with Germanic heroic legend.
The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author of the book by The Guardian newspaper, which established it in 1965 and inaugurated it in 1967. It was a lifetime award in that previous winners were not eligible. At least from 2000 the prize was £1,500. The prize was apparently discontinued after 2016, though no formal announcement appears to have been made.
The Nestlé Children's Book Prize, and Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for a time, was a set of annual awards for British children's books that ran from 1985 to 2007. It was administered by BookTrust, an independent charity that promotes books and reading in the United Kingdom, and sponsored by Nestlé, the manufacturer of Smarties chocolate. It was one of the most respected and prestigious prizes for children's literature.
Signy or Signe is the name of two heroines in two connected legends from Norse mythology which were very popular in medieval Scandinavia. Both appear in the Völsunga saga, which was adapted into other works such as Wagner's 'Ring' cycle, including its famous opera Die Walküre. Signy is also the name of two characters in several other sagas.
Sinfjötli or Fitela in Norse mythology was born out of the incestuous relationship between Sigmund and his sister Signy. He had the half-brothers Sigurd, Helgi Hundingsbane and Hamund.
Gillian Claire Cross is a British author of children's books. She won the 1990 Carnegie Medal for Wolf and the 1992 Whitbread Children's Book Award for The Great Elephant Chase. She also wrote The Demon Headmaster book series, which was later turned into a television series by the BBC in January 1996; a sequel series was produced in 2019.
Charlotte Sally Potter is an English film director and screenwriter. She directed Orlando (1992), which won the audience prize for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.
Melvin Burgess is a British writer of children's fiction. He became famous in 1996 with the publication of Junk, about heroin-addicted teenagers on the streets of Bristol. In Britain, Junk became one of the best-known young adult books of the decade. Burgess won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British author. For the 10th anniversary in 2007 it was named one of the top ten Medal-winning works, selected by a panel to compose the ballot for a public election of the all-time favourite.
Setting Free the Bears is the first novel by American author John Irving, published in 1968 by Random House.
The Sheep-Pig, or Babe, the Gallant Pig in the United States, is a 1983 children's novel by British author Dick King-Smith, first published by Gollancz with illustrations by Mary Rayner. Set in rural England, where King-Smith spent twenty years as a farmer, it features a lone pig on a sheep farm. King-Smith won the 1984 Guardian Children's Fiction Award, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.
Fugitive Pieces is a novel by the Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels. The story is divided into two sections. The first centers around Jakob Beer, a Polish Holocaust survivor, while the second involves a man named Ben, the son of two Holocaust survivors. It was first published in Canada in 1996 and was published in the United Kingdom the following year. The novel has won awards such as Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, Orange Prize for Fiction, Guardian Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize. It was on Canada's bestseller list for more than two years and has been translated into over 20 different languages.
Giles Andreae is a British writer and illustrator. He is the creator of the stickman poet Purple Ronnie and the humorous artist/philosopher Edward Monkton, and is the author of Giraffes Can't Dance and many other books for children.
Byrne is the last novel by the English author Anthony Burgess, published posthumously in 1995.
Marcus Romer is a British actor, director and screenwriter.
Beneath The Bleeding (2007) is a crime novel by Scottish author Val McDermid, the fifth featuring her recurring protagonist, Dr. Tony Hill and his police partner Carol Jordan. The books were successfully adapted into the television series Wire in the Blood., starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris.
Anthony John McGowan is an English author of books for children, teenagers and adults. He is the winner of the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal for Lark.
Morfydd Clark is a Welsh actress. Her appearances include Love & Friendship (2016), Interlude in Prague (2017), and The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019). Also on television, she played Mina Harker in Dracula (2020) and Sister Clara in His Dark Materials (2019).
Helena Janeczek is an Italian novelist of Polish Jewish origin.
Melanie Challenger is a writer, researcher and broadcaster on environmental history and philosophy of science, Deputy Co-Chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and a Vice President of the RSPCA, UK. She wrote How to Be Animal: What it Means to Be Human (2021).
