The 2020 winners of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, the UK’s oldest book awards for children and young people, were revealed June 17. CILIP is the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

CILIP Carnegie Medal for writing

• Lark by Anthony McGowan (Barrington Stoke)

Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration

• Tales from the Inner City written and illustrated by Shaun Tan (Walker Books)

This is the first time both McGowan and Tan have won a Medal in either category.

The winning books were chosen by 14 volunteer Youth Librarians, from a total of 162 nominations this year, as the very best in children’s writing and illustration published in the UK. The winners will each receive £500 worth of books to donate to a library of their choice, a specially commissioned golden medal and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize.

Shaun Tan, AussieCon Four’s Artist GoH in 2010, previously won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2011), and an Oscar in the Best Short Film (Animation) category for The Lost Thing (2011), based on his book.  Tan said:

“I am surprised, delighted and then deeply honoured – what a wonderful thing to be! I am especially thrilled to receive the Kate Greenaway Medal in the fine company of so many brilliant artists and authors, many of whom inspired my own love of illustrated stories as a young West Australian scribbler.”

“Tales from the Inner City is a strange book for strange times, suggesting that human frailty might well find expression in dreams of tigers, bears, frogs and lungfish reclaiming our cities. To know that I am not alone in enjoying such speculation – maybe even a bit too much – is no small thing. It is profoundly consoling, to feel part of a larger conversation about our relationship to this planet, particularly with younger readers, in whose imagination the future is already taking shape.”