Carnegie medal shortlist celebrates novels in free verse

Three of the eight shortlisted novels for the UK’s most prestigious children’s book award are coming-of-age stories in verse

Almost half of the novels shortlisted for the UK’s most prestigious children’s book award, the Carnegie medal, are written in free verse.

Founded in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who set up more than 2,800 libraries around the world, the CILIP Carnegie medal has been awarded to CS Lewis, Mary Norton, Philip Pullman and Arthur Ransome. This year, for the first time in the prize’s history, three of the eight novels in the running are written in verse: Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, Kwame Alexander’s Rebound and Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down.

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