Carnegie Award season has arrived. Some of the shortlisted novels target a 13+ readership, so make you own assessment of their difficulty / suitability of theme and content. Here are a few less contentious highlights from the 2024 shortlist:
Easier Reads
Choose Love - Nicola Davies
This is a cycle of poems about the realities people face as they are forced to leave everything they know behind to seek safety and asylum in other countries. The essence of the stories come from true accounts of refugees and the aid workers who help them on their perilous journeys. Readers can expect to be emotionally kidnapped for the duration of the book. Split across three parts: departure, arrival and healing, the poems within each section correspond to the thoughts and emotions surrounding each section of a refugee’s journey.
Safiyyah's War - Hiba Noor Khan
When war arrives in Paris and the Nazi occupation begins, the lives of Saffiyah and her family and friends change forever. Safiyyah lives at the Grand Central Mosque in Paris with her family. This book shines a light on the role the Great Mosque in Paris played in helping the Jewish community, offering an insight into a less known part of World War Two. Drawn into danger, will Safiyyah be able to summon the courage to enter the catacombs beneath Paris and lead the Jews to safety in this daring, exciting and genuinely tense read?
The Song Walker - Zillah Bethel
Tarni encounters a city girl alone in the Australian outback as she undertakes a mysterious voyage to find her sister. Who is she and where has she come from? There is a clever musical thread as Tarni uses ancient songs to guide them and uses the survival skills she has learnt. The pair embark on an epic journey through the landscape of the outback and also through memory and culture. The mystery of one girl’s identity unravels slowly as the story of friendship, dreamtime and spirituality unfolds.
Aimed at readers 11+
Steady for This - Nathaniel Lessore
Wannabe rapper Shaun, aka MC Growls, takes part in a live-stream performance intended to platform him and his friends during an MC Battle. He is left humiliated after it goes viral for all the wrong reasons.
The Door of No Return - Kwame Alexander
Kofi Offin and his family live in West Africa in the 18th century. The first half of the book is simply told and there’s an everyday quality to the story with childhood rivalries, friendship, practising for swimming contests and love. It details the lives, loves and daily experiences of Upper and Lower Kwanta in West Africa. Kofi’s abduction signals a slow journey away from the familiar which makes it all the more shocking and empathic. Themes of war and peace, hate and love, hope and despair are at the heart of this affecting story.
Some other recommendations
Here are some more challenging classics to try:
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
'Great Expectations' follows the childhood and young adult years of Pip, a blacksmith's apprentice in a country village. He suddenly comes into a large fortune (his great expectations) from a mysterious benefactor and moves to London. He thinks he knows where the money has come from...
Malgudi Days - R.K. Narayan
A collection of short stories in which Narayan describes how, in India, “the writer has only to look out of the window to pick up a character and thereby a story”. Malgudi Days is made up of 19 stories full of colour, vitality and the essence of India, each chronicling the life of a resident of the fictional South Indian town of Malgudi.
Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
'Little Women' tells the story of four sisters who are growing up during the American Civil War, detailing their struggles with poverty and hardship while their father is away fighting.
The Elephant - Slawomir Mrozek
The Elephant (1957) is Slawomir Mrozek's award-winning collection of hilarious and unnerving short stories, satirising life in Poland under a totalitarian regime. The family of a wealthy lawyer keep a 'tamed progressive' as a pet; a zoo saves money for the workers by fashioning their elephant from rubber; a swan is dismissed from the municipal park for public drunkenness; and under the Writers' Association, literary critics are banished to the salt mines. In these tales of bureaucrats, officials and artists, Mrozek conjures perfectly a life of imagined crimes and absurd authority.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
It's an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and his best friend has just announced that he's an alien. At this moment, they're hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed, in large friendly letters, with the words: DON'T PANIC.
The weekend has only just begun . . .
Speedy Death - Gladys Mitchell
Alastair Bing's guests gather around his dining table at Chaynings, a charming country manor. But one seat, belonging to the legendary explorer Everard Mountjoy, remains empty. When the other guests search the house, a body is discovered in a bath, drowned. The body is that of a woman, but could the corpse in fact be Mountjoy? A peculiar and sinister sequence of events has only just begun...