Congratulations to Levi Pinfold for winning this prestigious honour at the CILIP Carnegie and Greenaway Awards 2018 for the wonderful book written by A F Harrold published by Bloomsbury.
The Song From Somewhere Else Paperback cover artwork
Levi says…“While working on the pictures for The song From Somewhere Else I was routinely struck by how important kindness is for a person who can only see shadows and a world in black and white. Amnesty International’s amazing work encourages us to work hard towards caring for each other and I feel truly honoured that our book has been recognised by such a vital and life-preserving organisation.”
All titles shortlisted for the prestigious CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals are now eligible for an extra commendation: the Amnesty CILIP Honour, for books that best illuminate, uphold or celebrate human rights.
‘Stories are central to Amnesty’s work and we have a long and proud history of promoting children’s literature to help shape a better world. Good books have a unique ability to inspire empathy, raise awareness, broaden horizons and empower young readers to stand up for themselves and others. We hope this Honour and our human rights explorer resources will make it easier to find books that help children find out about core values such as truth, freedom and justice.’
— Nicky Parker, Amnesty International UK’s Head of Publishing
In each category, Carnegie and Kate Greenaway, the panel look for books that:
Celebrate the values of freedom, truth, justice and fairness
Contribute to a better understanding of any one or more of our human rights,
as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
at and the Convention on the Rights of the Child
Levi Pinfold was awarded CILIP Amnesty Honour at The British Library on 18th June.
“I’m just going to say a few thank yous if that’s ok, because this kind of thing doesn’t happen on it’s own. First of all, I’m going to say thank you to my friend and all round excellent fellow, A F Harrold, who has been unfailingly open and generous throughout the whole process of making the book. He’s the kind of guy who’ll change a sentence to suit a mistake in an illustration. Huge admiration from me.I owe you a hot chocolate.
Thank you to CILIP, for putting the weird and the wonderful into the hands of kids. If I hadn’t had access to some of the more out-there books as a boy, I wouldn’t have had a reason to pick up a paintbrush to make sense of it.
Thank you to all the young, intelligent readers of fiction. Keep reading the things you like,the cool books, the weird books, the funny books, the spooky books, and the illustrated books. If you keep reading because you like it, the world will open up to you and your imagination will take us into a golden Age of Enlightenment, peace and tolerance.Leastways that’s what I think. Plus, if you keep asking for cool stuff, we get to make it and read it too.
To my fellow illustrators in the room… Thanks for being so inspiring. It can be a lonely profession, but seeing amazing work always stokes the fire and keeps it burning. Thanks to all the people working like crazy behind the scenes at Bloomsbury, and to my wonderful agents doing the same at Arena.
And finally thank you to Amnesty, the incredible work you do makes me think we all might just have a chance. I think learning about the depth and complexity of another person’s world should start pretty young, so thank you for articulating how important books are for all of us, this makes me want to do more and do better.”
AF Harrold’s book The Song from Somewhere Else features in Empathy Lab’s
You can read A.F.Harrold’s guest blogpost HERE he says,
“You can never know what is happening inside another person’s head, or heart. But the characters in books, in your favourite books – they open up and share themselves with you. You can hear their thoughts and know them, a little. And perhaps, by knowing them, a little window will be opened into the lives of your friends and family, into the strangers and people you see in the news. Just knowing that window exists is one beginning of empathy.”
Levi Pinfold
