“We’re in the new age of the beautiful book.” Look out for Riddell’s sure-to-be-beautiful illustrated version of Frances Hardinge’s Carnegie shortlisted The Lie Tree coming soon.Neil Gaiman has just added a fairytale retelling, The Sleeper and the Spindle, to his list of books for younger readers. So what does the future hold? “After the enabling tsunami of the Kindle, people say we can access everything but we want to curate our bookshelves,” Riddell said. I’ve felt the presence and support of them all through my laureateship so far, and when we talk as a collective all sorts of people listen”. Some 15 years after Chris first took home a Kate Greenaway Medal he shows no sign of slowing down – he remains a thrilling, prolific and prestigious talent.”Ĭhris Riddell is the first reigning children’s laureate to win either the Carnegie or Kate Greenaway medals, and is passionate about past laureates working together as a collective: “Past laureates are as relevant now as when they were laureates. His illustrations lift this re-told tale into high art, offering sumptuous pleasures on every page. Sioned Jacques, chair of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals judging panel for 2016, said: “We were blown away by Chris Riddell’s work in The Sleeper and the Spindle he is surely at the height of his powers.

I would love to be in the country where we led the world in this amazing thing called reading for pleasure.” We also need to take the conversation forward into the area of school libraries which are the fulcrum of literacy and promoting life long reading for pleasure. When I see a library under threat it breaks my heart.

We need to stop and consider whether we want to live in a society where libraries are being downgraded. But libraries are so important culturally, when you lose them, you lose part of our culture. What often happens is things get brought down to local scales, and then the argument is invidious - for example we are closing this library down because we want good health care. Not SATs tests, or attainment levels, or league tables but the joy of losing yourself in the pages of a good book.”Ĭhris Riddell is an outspoken critic of library cuts and told us: “We nationally need to think again. In his acceptance speech on Monday, Riddell praised librarians as “pretty amazing people… they love turning children into readers by teaching them one of the most important life skills you can acquire, which is reading for pleasure. Libraries have been a central theme of Chris Riddell’s laureateship. He is the first three time winner of either the Kate Greenaway or the Carnegie medal. Chris Riddell has won the Kate Greenaway medal twice before, in 2001 for Pirate Diary and 2004 for his adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver.

The sleeper and the spindle book