Carnegie Medal longlist gives classics a fresh spin

From a modern Moby-Dick to a stepsister’s take on Cinderella, the UK’s top children’s book prize highlights stories of ‘hope, discovery and understanding’

From a feminist retelling of Moby-Dick to a fresh look at Cinderella from the perspective of her stepsister, the longlist for the UK’s top children’s book prize, the Carnegie Medal, is packed with reimaginings of classic stories.

Established in 1936, the Carnegie has been won by some of the UK’s best-loved children’s authors, including Noel Streatfeild and CS Lewis. The 20 books in the running this year range from Kit de Waal’s first young adult novel, Becoming Dinah – a reimagining of Moby-Dick in which a teenage girl sets off on a trip in a camper van with a grumpy one-legged man – to Jennifer Donnelly’s take on Cinderella, Stepsister, and Sharon Dogar’s Monsters, about the creation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

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