The Carnegie Winner, my thoughts.

So if you've been reading the blog for a while you'll know that during my time working at a boarding school I was helping to run a book club. We were shadowing the books on the shortlist to win the Carnegie Medal, an award some would call the highest honour achievable for children's authors. Here's a link to a post I did about Carnegie Shadowing, if your unsure of how it works. The shortlisted books were as follows.

 

All the truth that's in me by Julie Berry 3\5
The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks 1\5
Blood Family by Anne Fine 4\5
The Child's Elephant by Rachel Campbell-Johnston
Ghost Hawk by Susan Cooper (here's a link to my review)
Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead 3.5\5
Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell 2\5
The Wall by William Sutcliffe 4\5

 

I managed to read them all, except The Child's Elephant. It wasn't because I didn't want too, I simply ran out of time. The students that read it weren't that excited about it anyway, so maybe I wasn't missing much. The ratings next to the books were my personal thoughts about each one. The students seems to think the best out of the lot, were Rooftoppers, The Bunker Diary and Liar and Spy. Ghost Hawk and Blood Family were also the favourites of one or two members.

So after months of reading and a penultimate session in which each chose the book they would want to win, and the one they thought would win (and why there is a difference between the two), we had our last session and the winner was announced. Which was it?

 

The Bunker Diary. Of course it was.

 

Even the cover is depressing. 

 

You'll notice I gave the Bunker Diary a measly 1\5. This wasn't because of the subject matter. The book got a lot of publicity, because of its grim content and the fact that it dredged up that age old conundrum of what literature is appropriate for children. But first, a plot summary.

 

In short the book is about a sixteen year old boy who is kidnapped by an unnamed man and held captive in a, presumably underground, bunker. More people appear in the bunker via a lift (that seems to be the only way in/out of the place), a nine year old girl, a drug addicted man, an elderly man with a terminal illness and a few more. Its written in a series of diary entries penned by Linus, the teenage boy. The kidnapper communicates with his victims via notes attached to things that come up and down in the lift. He punishes them, drugs them, toys with them. He sends down a rabid dog at one point. It doesn't have a happy ending. Everyone dies one by one and the diary entries become more and more garbled. And then it just ends. He isn't saved, we don't really know what happens, but we can assume he's died. Cannibalism, sex, drugs and other fun topics are introduced. Why didn't I like it? I'm not a prude, I don't think that these topics aren't suitable for children. So why?

 

For a start, See The Guardian review here, and The Times here (if you fancy paying to view the whole article). I usually agree with the guardian more than other papers, however I seem to think they're following the stance that children see much worse in real life, so it's okay to write about it. I'll do another post on what I think suitable literature for children is later, but although I do agree that largely you should let children explore fiction at their own pace I think there are better ways to present them in children's literature. Sutcliffe's The Wall did a fantastic job of introducing hard hitting topics, such as the Israel/Palestine conflict (although place names are never mentioned - see a great article about this here) and family breakdown, in a well written and thoughtful way that I thought would make good reading for children. Similarly Blood Family did a good job of presenting abuse at home and the difficulties of fostering and adopting in a fantastic novel that all of my students who read thought was eye opening and sad but brilliant at the same time.

 

My main bug bear? I thought The Bunker Diary was lazy. I think that CILIP chose it because it would present a talking point. (They did the same in 1996 when Junk by Melvin Burgess won the award, however, I did actually enjoy that book - click for my review). And it does, its a great book for reading groups because everyone will have a different, very strong view. But that doesn't make it automatically the winner of a children's book award. The ending was lazy. I hate books that trail off. And I know Brooks did it on purpose to put across his idea that not all children's books that talk about difficult subjects should have a happy ending. I'm not saying they should either. But they should end. I didn't feel like it ended at all. It just stopped. It was an easy read, because it wasn't challenging. It wasn't a difficult read at all, and because of that it bored me a little too.

 

I don't know, maybe I'm not qualified to tell a famous author how to do it. But my winner from that list would have either been Ghost Hawk or Liar and Spy. Another problem we had at our school was that three of the books on the shortlist were recommended for 14+ age group. The students I worked with were all 11\12. I wouldn't have minded perhaps two of the nominated books being for older readers, but three was a bit much considering only one was a 9+ (the rest were 11+). Again this brings up the issue of where to draw the line between YA and children's fiction. And you can't, because each child progresses at their own pace, but I didn't think The Bunker Diary should have been a children's book. It would have been better as an adult book. It felt like Room, by Emma Donoghue. Passing it off as a teen read, I think, was simply to get the extra publicity.

 

Rant over. Sorry Kevin Brooks, but The Bunker Diary wasn't for me. Though apparently very qualified librarians and thousands of teens disagree.

 

Over and out.