Sarah Crossan champions poetry as verse novel wins Carnegie Medal

Author Sarah Crossan made a rallying cry for poetry as she won this year’s Carnegie Medal for children’s fiction.

Her winning novel One, which tells the story of conjoined twins, is written in free verse.

Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell won the Kate Greenaway Medal for a third time for his illustrations of Neil Gaiman’s The Sleeper and the Spindle.

Both prizes, judged solely by librarians, are each awarded annually to a book for young people.

Accepting her prize at a ceremony at the British Library on Monday, teacher-turned-novelist Crossan said children inherently “trust poetry” as it is read to them from such a young age.

“And then we kill it for them by around Year Eight, with testing leaving no space for joy or performance,” she added.

She said poetry was more powerful when performed. “No poet writes words so that they remain cold on the page to be scanned from left to right in black and white and then examined for GCSE.

“Poetry belongs to everyone, it doesn’t necessarily belong in the classroom or university nor in the bookshop ghetto next to 18th century literary criticism.”

Dublin-born Crossan, who was previously shortlisted for the Carnegie in 2013 for The Weight of Water and 2015 for Apple and Rain, also pledged support for the British library system, whose closures she said “infuriated” her.

Her winning novel features 16-year-old Grace and Tippi whose upper bodies are separate but are joined at the hip and share one pair of legs.

One, published by Bloomsbury, also recently won The Bookseller’s 2016 prize for young adult fiction.