Carnegie medal longlist highlights trend for gritty children's books

Twenty books in contention for this year’s £5,000 award encompass stories of bereavement, isolation and marginalisation

From a girl’s exploration of her Taiwanese heritage following her mother’s suicide to the story of two young carers whose mother is terminally ill, the 2019 longlist for the Carnegie medal rides a wave of children’s books about marginalisation and isolation, poverty and bereavement.

First won by Arthur Ransome for one of his Swallows and Amazons adventure novels in 1936, the UK’s most prestigious award for children’s books this year encompasses a range topics including depression, assisted dying and gun violence. Novels in the running include The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily XR Pan and Brian Conaghan’s The Weight of a Thousand Feathers, which both deal with the death of a mother; Onjali Q Raúf’s The Boy at the Back of the Class, about a Syrian refugee living in the UK; Emily Thomas’s Mud, about a girl living on a Thames sailing barge with an alcoholic father; and Candy Gourlay’s Bone Talk, which follows a Filipino boy whose tribe is at risk from a US invasion in 1899.

Related: Jason Reynolds and JD Salinger's posthumous return – books podcast

Continue reading...