Olivia Lomenech Gill, June 2025
“It is an enormous honour to be here today to accept the Carnegie Medal. I’d heard of it long before accidentally illustrating my first book after a chance encounter with Michael Morpurgo. That first commission, Where My Wellies Take Me, was shortlisted ten years ago, when Jon Klassen won with his Book This Is Not My Hat. On the announcement day I was having a caesarean section and won the Borders General Hospital tombola, and the prize, my son is sitting here today, ten yr old Arthos, to whom Clever Crow is dedicated!
There are more stories stitched into this dress (I’m wearing my favourite dress today which is a Palestinian dress) than I could ever tell or illustrate. If I could, I would be Max Porter and recite his poem ‘Wild West’, which I think is probably one of the most important literary works of this century, if you have not heard it, look it up!
Thank you, to the judges, to librarians everywhere, to all the young readers here today and those watching from further away who have been shadowing the awards.
Thanks also to my mother who I lost when I was 18 but who played a large part in me becoming an artist I think, to my father, who read bedtime stories, including the whole of the Lord of the Rings, and taught me gardening and a love of birds and trees. My art teacher, Sue Mac Dougall, who, in the absence of art school, gave me the same gift that librarians give daily – curiousity, passion, and a desire to learn. Lastly, I am indebted to my agent, Alison, for her unwavering support and patience.
But I know that I am standing here largely because of my privilege, and an element of chance. So I cannot ‘just’ talk about the importance of books, art and illustration without talking about Gaza and Palestine. Despite 20 yrs of blockade by the Israeli occupation and apartheid, Gaza has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. But since October 2023, over 100,000 schoolchildren and students have lost their lives and all had schools and libraries have been destroyed. This is scholasticide—the deliberate erasure of a people’s future through the destruction of their education.
In 2007 IBBY began supporting two libraries in Gaza. Both were destroyed in 2023 at the same time as the Central Gaza Library was blown up, along with that at least 13 libarries across the whole Gaza Strip. The destruction of libraries is a war crime under the Hague Convention of 1954. UNESCO states that “attacks on cultural heritage are attacks on identity, memory and human dignity” – strong themes, and rightly so, in the shortlisted works in this year.
When the Gaza library was blown up, I swore that I would travel there with books, to help restock the library when it was rebuilt. A stupid thing to promise since the intervening months have seen Gaza reduced to rubble and Trump promising to turn it into some grotesque version of hell.
“Once weapons were manufactured to fight wars, now wars are manufactured to sell weapons,” says Arundhati Roy.
Since childhood, I’ve carried an explicable sense of loss and of unbelonging. Perhaps as a consequence, my work has often reflected themes of exile, migration and refuge often inspired by texts, such as Caroline Morehead’s Human Cargo or Chris McGrail’s article ‘The Day the Tanks Came to Rafah’ for The Guardian in 2004, describing the destruction of the small children’s zoo in Rafah by Israeli tanks. 20 years later, the zoo has again been destroyed along with a whole of Gaza.
Having always questioned the validity of what I do, I have recently been struggling to work at all. I do not understand how anyone can carry on business as usual, but this is also why this award means so much. It is a reminder and a responsibility and rekindling of hope. As Tony Morrison said: “This is precisely the time artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.” Artists make images, ideas that show us ourselves but also make spaces for empathy, radical active empathy.
So it’s is with these words that I renew my promise to deliver books to Palestine – a free Palestine with a national library, housing stories of love, struggle and resistance, and a little section with some of the most beautiful picture books in the English language. I need your help with that. I hope that IBBY, who have renewed the pledge to continue supporting libraries in the devastated Gazza strip, and IFLA, might be interested in participating, and as many libraries and publishers as possible with their help – with your help. I would like to use this award to plan a journey by land visiting as many libraries as possible on the way to the West Bank and in partnership with local communities to create a book to celebrate the land of Palestine, its indigenous wildlife and, perhaps, even a few fantastic beasts. In this way, I hope to honour the award you have bestowed on me and use whatever skills I possess to join the millions of people, all of us who believe in peace, making the world a better place and a free Palestine. Thank you.”