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

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CD: For me, there’s an emotional resonance in the biblical language and references that are central to The Blue Book of Nebo. Even as someone who’s moved away from that tradition, it feels so emotionally Welsh! It’ll be interesting to see how that resonates with US readers.

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 Must Betray You tells the story of Cristian, a 17-year-old who has lived his entire life in a country governed by fear. Ruled by a despotic dictator, Cristian and his fellow citizens live every day with ever-present suspicion, hardship and repression. One day he is faced with the toughest choice of all; will he betray his family or will he risk everything – even the lives of people he loves – to resist? Gripping, intoxicating and uniquely involving, Cristian’s story will have readers asking themselves just what they would have done under the constant watchful eyes of the secret police, what they would have sacrificed to be free. Set in a knife-edge moment of modern history, the courage, hope, and violence of the Romanian Revolution powerfully frame this evocative thriller. Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and Calibre Audio are producing the Yoto Carnegie shortlisted books in accessible formats (compatibility permitting), including braille, giant print and audio books. 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.MSR: It’s made me realize that other people share the same fears, and it’s forced me to confront them head on. We began working on a stage adaptation of the book about six months after its original publication, and I found aspects of that process very difficult. At the time I didn’t really want to think: “Why did I write this?” or “Why did I create these characters?” Walking into that greenroom was a big part of the journey of Llyfr Glas Nebo for me, having to meet the characters I’d created. My instinct was to run away, but it was beneficial in the long run. It’s a complex therapy—and a very public one!

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. Gwion was a thief, going from empty house to empty house looking for food and clothes and plants for the garden of his stolen house. He’d been into hundreds of homes, he said, but I was the first person that he saw.I had longed for these kinds of conversations, without even knowing it. Of course, Dylan was good company, and could speak to me as an adult now, almost. But he barely remembered life before The End. None of it was real to him. In this prize-winning and best-selling new novel, Manon Steffan Ros not only explores the human capacity to find new strengths when faced with the need to survive, but also the structures and norms of the contemporary world . Biographical Note She smiled, a tight little smile I’d never seen before. “Good God, Rowenna, don’t overreact. We’ll be fine!”She was brushing the floor, a horizon of gray hairs stretching over the lino. Many comments on the book refer to its hopeful tone, and certainly the development of the central characters is very positive both in their survival strategies and their growth into who they should be. Without revealing the ending, I could say that the wider future which is hinted at appears more threat than promise. Gwion stared at me, and was still for a while before he said, “I’m not going to hurt you. You shouldn’t lose faith in people like that.”

CD: It was a revealing experience reading Llyfr Glas Nebo before the pandemic and The Blue Book of Nebo afterward, in a changed world. Do you wonder how all this might inform new readers’ responses? CD: For anyone new to writing from Wales, if you could choose to translate any Welsh book into English—other than your own works!—what would it be? 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. Of course, it’s something that Rowenna is very uncomfortable with in the novel, as Dylan increasingly draws on the influences of the Bible he has amonghis salvaged books. That inner division must be in me too, in a way. An early review of the book that appeared in a papur bro [a Welsh-language local community newsletter] argued that it was a Christian novel. But anything creative is a mirror really, isn’t it? You see in it what you need to see. There’s a hell of a view from the lean-to. Down toward Caernarfon, where you can see the castle towers jutting out like gnarling teeth, and then the sea and Anglesey beyond it. I can’t ever remember going to Anglesey, but Mam says I went loads of times when I was a little boy. There were nice places to go for walks, Mam says, with nice beaches all around, because Anglesey is an island. I was thinking about that yesterday when I was sitting on the roof of the lean-to, looking out. Seeing the sea and the island, which looks too big to be an island from here. There are trees and fields and places I don’t know between here and the sea. Yesterday was a cold day—cold enough to make my mouth steam, like snow in a saucepan. I sat there thinking about all those people in the olden days, poor things, going to beaches in their cars and sitting there all day with nothing to do. Standing with their feet in the water, then splashing about a bit and then having a picnic. I try not to think about those people too much.Unusually for a post-apocalyptic novel, the crisis is not set in the future – we know that a world-wide nuclear disaster did not happen in 2018 – but it asks questions about survival and isolation suddenly brought home to us all during the coronavirus pandemic. Perhaps most importantly it asks what post-disaster world we really want, or need. Bestselling author Alexandra Christo, author of TikTok sensation To Kill a Kingdom, introduces her new book, The Night Hunt (Hot Key Books), a dark...