The winners of the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medals, the UK’s oldest book awards for children and young people, were announced on June 16.

CILIP is the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The medalists were selected by an expert volunteer team of 15 librarians from across the UK. These titles reflect the very best in children’s writing and illustration published in the UK.

The winners each receive £500 worth of books to donate to their local library, a specially commissioned golden medal and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize.

The CILIP Carnegie Medal winner, Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds, is a work of genre interest.

2021 CILIP Carnegie Medal 

• Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds (Knights Of)

2021 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal 

• Small In The City illustrated and written by Sydney Smith (Walker Books)

Look Both Ways author Jason Reynolds said:

In Look Both Ways I wanted to explore who it is that children are when the watchful eye of adults aren’t around. So often, children’s literature takes place either at school or at home but there’s an in-between that is the journey home. And even though they all sit in the classroom together, when that bell rings they go separate ways and go through separate things, as we all go through separate journeys in life, that influence and impact who it is that we are when we show up the following day. But the miracle of life is the idea that if we were to trust this process, believe in the power of humanity and speak to one another, no matter who you are or where you are from, all over the world there is a good chance that if we speak to each other long enough, we will probably have someone in common and that’s important, because it’s really difficult to hate someone when the two of you love the same person.

That’s what this book is really about. It’s an examination of autonomy, it’s this idea that every child has a different journey and it’s all about the fact that despite those journeys we are all interconnected. One people. One race. Having similar experiences and yet different experience altogether.