Carnegies Open 90th Year With 125 Nominations for the 2027 Medals

The Carnegies are in their 90th year, and the 2027 race is on: CILIP announced 125 nominations on Monday, November 2. The library and information association runs what it calls the UK's longest-running book awards for children and young people.

Sixty-two of them are up for the Carnegie Medal for Writing, and sixty-three for the Carnegie Medal for Illustration. Four books made both lists.

Medals get handed out on Tuesday, June 22, 2027, at the Cambridge Theatre in London, home of the RSC's Matilda The Musical, and it'll be streamed live. Hosting is Patrice Lawrence, who holds the Waterstones Children's Laureate title right now.

Who picks the books

Librarians nominate and librarians judge. CILIP took nominations from its own members and from nine outside bodies. Each nominated book goes to all 13 judges on the 2027 panel, who are volunteer librarians from CILIP's Youth Libraries Group, led by Chair of Judges Alison King.

So what are judges looking for? CILIP calls it "an outstanding reading experience." On the Writing side it has to be a book in English for children and young people. On the Illustration side, the pictures carry it.

Next come the longlists on February 23, 2027, and the shortlists on March 17.

The host

Lawrence's debut YA novel, Orangeboy, won the Waterstones Prize for Older Children's Fiction and was shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award. She has been longlisted and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Writing before, including a shortlisting for Needle (Barrington Stoke), which also won the 2023 Little Rebels Award. Her latest book, People Like Stars (Scholastic), was shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards. She was made an MBE for services to literature in 2021 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023. Her term as laureate runs from 2026 to 2028.

Shadowing, sponsors and the 90 years

Children get a vote of their own through the Carnegie Shadowing Scheme. Groups in schools and libraries in the UK and abroad read the books, talk about them and pick their favourites, and those choices are announced at the June ceremony. Registration for 2027 is open now. Longlist shadowing, added in 2026, continues alongside the shortlist programme.

Scholastic opened pre-orders for discounted longlist and shortlist book packs on the same day. The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society, the Sora reading app and Scholastic sponsor the awards.

It goes back a long way. The Writing medal dates from 1936 and honours Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born philanthropist. Illustration came in 1955, back when everyone called it the Kate Greenaway Medal.

The full nomination lists are on the Carnegies website.

Photo: Patrice Lawrence in a 2022 British Library video. Photo by The British Library, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.