Carnegie Medal in Literature

The Carnegie Medal is a British literary award that annually recognises one outstanding new book for children or young adults. It is conferred upon the author by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). CILIP calls it "the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing" and says that writers call it "the one they want to win" (quotation marks original).

The Medal is named after the Scottish-born American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), who founded more than 2800 libraries in the English-speaking world, including at least one in more than half of British library authorities. It was established in 1935 by the British Library Association (LA or LAUK) partly to celebrate the centennial of Carnegie's birth and inaugurated in 1937 by the award to Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post (Jonathan Cape, 1936) and the identification of two Commended books. (There are, or have been, highly recommended, commended and honour books at least so recently as 2002.) That first Medal was dated 1936; only since 2007 it is dated by its presentation, which is now one or two years after publication.

Since 1956, the Carnegie Medal has been a companion to the Kate Greenaway Medal, which recognises "distinguished illustration in a book for children". Both awards were established by the Library Association (1877–2002) and administered by the LA until it was succeeded by CILIP.

Nominated books must be written in English and first published in the UK during the preceding school year (September to August). Until 1969 the award was limited to books by British authors first published in England. The first non-British medalist was Ivan Southall of Australia in 1972, for Josh. The original rules also prohibited winning authors from future consideration. The first author to win a second Carnegie Medal was Peter Dickinson in 1981, who won consecutively for Tulku and City of Gold. There were six repeat winners to 1992 and Patrick Ness became the seventh by winning in 2011 and 2012.

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