OLCSS Library News

Tamar by Mal Peet has won the Carnegie Medal, and Wolves by Emily Gravett has won the Kate Greenway Medal. The author and illustrator each win a coveted golden medal and £500 worth of books to donate to a library of their choice. They join the ranks of past winners: writers including C.S. Lewis, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Gillian Cross, Philip Pullman; and illustrators including Anthony Browne, Janet Ahlberg, Quentin Blake, Shirley Hughes, and Jan Pienkowski.

The student shadowers who attended the Abingdon Carnegie Forum were of the same opinion as the judges, voting overwhelmingly for this book as their favourite, but this book can be read with equal enjoyment by adults, as my reading group agreed last Friday.

Tamar is a fictionalised exploration of history and its impact on the present which focuses on the untold story of the resistance movement in Holland towards the end of World War Two. Peet is highly skilled in weaving a complex structure into an accessible and pacy novel combining a young contemporary voice with the history of tragic events sixty years ago. Left a box of clues by her grandfather when he dies, Tamar the teenage heroine of the title begins to piece together what really happened in Holland under German occupation at the end of the War. She uncovers the story of her grandfather and his young friend as they are dropped into Holland with the SOE to help unify the resistance movement. But as she pieces together the codes and clues in the box she unravels some darker family secrets that have a major impact on her life.

"Tamar was a story I particularly wanted to tell," says Peet. "I believe it's so important for young people to grasp the connections between their own lives and the past. Our understanding of history is in danger of becoming hopelessly partial and fragmented; the sense of continuity, cause and effect, is in danger of getting lost. If young people don't make those connections, what hope is there for us to learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them!"

Press release 7 July www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk

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