The Greenaway Medal is a very prestigious annual award for children's picture books, which specifically awards excellent illustration. It has been going since 1955 and is named after the popular 19th century illustrator Kate Greenaway:
The prize is not just kudos either: as well as their medal, the winner gets £500 worth of books donated to the library of their choice, plus the £5000 Colin Mears Award: a bequest left by the Worthing based accountant and children's book collector. Not bad eh?
This year's winner is Freya Blackwood for Harry & Hopper. It is an extremely poignant and sad story about loss, written by Margaret Wild.I particularly like the way Freya manages to retain the vigour and purity of her original sketches in the final artwork.
This is a constant battle for illustrators, one that most of us lose, at least a little. No matter how well the final image works, there is invariable some freshness lost from the first drawings. It's generally not apparent unless you see the two versions alongside, so most people don't notice, but the artist knows.
Every year, schools and libraries all over the UK 'shadow' the Greenaway, asking children to read the shortlisted books and vote for themselves - it's interesting to see if the winner comes out the same!
The librarian at Lady Manners School in Derbyshire asked me to be part of a shadowing on Thursday. I met the 5 invited primary schools and gave talks to the children about my work.
The day was a huge success and very interesting. Each child had been asked to design a mask, based on their personal favourite, and I awarded prizes to the best 6. There were group discussions and then children slipped their votes into a ballot box.
We ha
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