The Blue Book of Nebo WINNER OF THE YOTO CARNEGIE 2023 MEDAL FOR WRITING

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Curtains with tiny pink flowers on them, and the neatly made bed, the covers pulled tight and smooth. A wardrobe painted white, and little white tables on each side of the bed, books piled high but tidily on them. I can’t remember what we said after that, but I do remember that before Siôn and I left, she said, “You’ve been very good to me.” And I didn’t understand, because she’d always been the one who’d looked after me, just by being in the same place and being the same way every single day I’d known her. Each year thousands of reading groups in schools and libraries in the UK and around the world get involved in the Awards, with children and young people ‘shadowing’ the judging process, debating and choosing their own winners. They have voted for their favourites from this year’s shortlist and have chosen I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetysfor the Yoto Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Medal for Writing, and The Comet by Joe Todd-Stanton for the Yoto Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Medal for Illustration. For 100 years, Scholastic Corporation has been encouraging the personal and intellectual growth of all children, beginning with literacy. Having earned a reputation as a trusted partner to educators and families, Scholastic is the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, a leading provider of literacy curriculum, professional services, and classroom magazines, and a producer of educational and entertaining children’s media. The Company creates and distributes bestselling books and e-books, print and technology-based learning programs for pre-K to grade 12, and other products and services that support children’s learning and literacy, both in school and at home. With 15 international operations and exports to 165 countries, Scholastic makes quality, affordable books available to all children around the world through school-based book clubs and book fairs, classroom libraries, school and public libraries, retail, and online.

I don’t know why I lied to him about my name when we first met. Maybe everything felt too personal in this new world, and my name felt like the only thing that belonged exclusively to me. Dylan called me Mam. No one said Rowenna anymore.

CILIP is the leading voice for the information, knowledge management and library profession. Our goal is to put information and library skills and professional values at the heart of a democratic, equal and prosperous society. I have to write down who her father was, and I’m not sure why. Maybe because that will make her more real, this little girl whose existence was never registered, the girl who never went to a park or a school. My daughter, whose face was never captured on an iPhone camera. Mona Greta, my little baby girl. I don’t remember Mam’s birthdays before. Well, I remember the most recent ones, of course, but not the ones before The End. But I remember my own birthdays. The cakes and the candles and the shiny wrapping paper on the presents. And I remember the other children’s names, though I can’t remember their voices or the way they moved or laughed.

Each year thousands of reading groups in schools and libraries in the UK and overseas get involved in the Awards, with children and young people ‘shadowing’ the judging process. They read, discuss and review the books on the shortlists, get involved in reading related activities in groups, and vote for their favourite books to win The Yoto Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Medals for Writing and Illustration. Prolific Welsh writer Manon Steffan Ros lives in Tywyn, North Wales. She has written over 23 books for adults and children and is four-times winner of the Tir na n’Og Wales Children’s Book Awards. The Blue Book of Nebo is Ros’ first YA novel to be published in English, and is published by British Book Awards Wales Small Press of the Year, Firefly Press. The judges admired the “appreciation of language, reading and literature” and described it as “heartbreaking”, “poignant” and “rich with Welsh heritage.” Following the success of The Blue Book of Nebo, Firefly have since acquired two middle-grade titles by Ros, Feather( Pluen), and Me and Aaron Ramsey( Fi ac Aaron Ramsey), to be published in English in 2024. Dylan was only 6 when the world as he knew it stopped. The electricity went off, everyone left - and just him and his Mum were left to survive on a remote Welsh mountainside above the village of Nebo - with no services. Now 14, Dylan has learned new survival skills and is as wise as any adult. On a scavenging raid into Nebo, they find a blank notebook with a blue cover and decide to use it to record their thoughts and actions – neither reading the others writings. No traffic had been on this road for years. Everyone else in the world was dead. So I stepped out onto the A487 that, years ago, had been a constant hum of cars and lorries. By now, moss and grass and weeds had grown over the tar.The End came when Dylan was six, after a nuclear disaster in a nearby city – most of the population died or fled, but Dylan and his Mum stayed put, adapting to life outside of a society. They grow their own food, learn to survive without electricity or running water, and borrow the things they need left behind by the town – for Dylan, this means reading every book he can get his hands on.

The post-apocalyptic story that captured the heart of Wales gets to the heart of the mother-son relationship, the making of myth, and the humanity within us all. I know it’s a horrible thing to say. Mam hates it when I call people ugly, even people in stories, and I can’t understand that. As long as they don’t hear it, what’s the harm? But Mam says that the people who see others as ugly on the outside are themselves ugly on the inside. I must be hideous inside because sometimes I think that Mam is really very ugly. The Blue Book of Nebo is at once heart-warming and gut-wrenching. Taking the form of alternating diary entries by fourteen-year-old Dylan and his mam, Rowenna, it follows the story of a small family trying to survive in North West Wales post-apocalypse. The changing perspective between mother and son allows the reader to see this strange world through interchangeably curious and jaded eyes, the contrast regularly presenting moments of revelatory poignancy. Ros skilfully crafts these opposing viewpoints, their unique perspectives allowing her to weave in each character’s life experience. While an optimistic Dylan makes the most of the apocalyptic life he’s lived since childhood, he can’t help imagining the folkloric world which existed before “The End” with unsubstantiated nostalgia. Rowenna, on the other hand, is less sentimental about the old world. Hers was miserable, filled with absent fathers, tedium and money worries – in her new life she can, at least, solely focus on survival and her children. Dylan’s unwavering optimism in the face of relentless challenges is delicately handled and compelling to read. His perseverance hardly ever wavers, and it is only in moments of solitude that he allows his sadness to creep in, (one poignant example being the crush he develops on the photograph of a teenage girl, long-since gone, found in a deserted house). Ros also examines the isolation of motherhood through Rowenna’s melancholic narration, yet also represents her strength – her voice never veering towards a hyperbolic hopelessness. In fact, Dylan and Rowenna’s sincere love for each other provides the root of joy which runs throughout this novel. Set in North Wales following a nuclear explosion, The Blue Book of Nebo is surprisingly different from most post-apocalytpic novels. It’s entrancing and beguiling and full of life. Together Dylan and his mother Rowenna tell a wonderful and gripping story.” —Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy

Saving Sorya: Chang and the Sun Bear is the incredible true story of the promise a young schoolgirl made to a brown moon bear in a small town in Vietnam. Follow Chang through tropical Asian rainforests and unpredictable jungles as she fights to become a conservationist. But these dangerous landscapes are only part of her troubles, disproving critics who say that a young girl can’t be a conservationist proves to be an even bigger challenge. Told as a graphic novel with breathtaking art from Jeet Zdung and STEM facts galore, Chang’s daring story is an accessible and fearless adventure that will inspire any animal-loving, intrepid explorer. This tale about friendship and the strength and resilience of one young girl teaches us that letting go is never easy, and sometimes the biggest challenges in life are the most special. The medal for illustration went to Jeet Zdung for Saving Sorya: Chang and the Sun Bear, by Vietnamese wildlife conservationist Trang Nguyen. The book, which features manga-inspired illustrations and watercolour scenes, is based on a true story about a young woman working on her own to save a bear. It is the second year in a row that a graphic novel has won the illustration prize, formerly known as the Kate Greenaway medal.