Neil Gaiman Wins 2010 Carnegie Medal for The Graveyard Book

Posted on June 24, 2010

Neil Gaiman won the 2010 CLIP Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK for The Graveyard Book. The Graveyard Book also won the 2009 Newbery Medal. Neil Gaiman is the first author to complete the 'double' being awarded both children's fiction prizes for the same book .

Neil Gaiman explained what winning the CILIP Carnegie Medal meant to him in a statement. His discovery of the award goes back to his childhood. He he was given a boxed set of CS Lewis's Narnia books as a gift on his seventh birthday. He says the final book, The Last Battle, had the words "Winner of the Carnegie Medal" on the cover. Gaiman says, "I did not know what the Carnegie Medal was, but I knew it was something important."

Gaiman also says, "It was the first literary award I had ever heard of. And if the Narnia books had won it, then it had to be the most important literary award there ever was. Somewhere deep inside me, but not too deep, a seven-year old version of me is amazed and delighted that he's written a book that was given the most important literary award there ever was. And nothing you can say about Bookers or Nobels or Pulitzers will convince him otherwise."

Gaiman reads Chapter 1 from The Graveyard Book in this clip from Harper Kids. It is available for purchase on Amazon.com.

The shortlist included books by Terry Pratchett, Philip Reeve, Helen Grant, Laurie Halse Anderson, Julie Hearn, Patrick Ness and Marcus Sedgwick.