Shadowing
Join the Journey with the 2025 Carnegie Medals
Register your group for the 2025 awards.
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What is shadowing?
Engaging, inspiring and free to join!
Every spring, CILIP invites reading groups from schools, libraries, and homes to join the exciting process of shadowing the Carnegie Medals. This experience gives young readers the chance to follow along with the official judging process as ‘shadowers.’
From mid-March, shadowers read, discuss, and review books from two separate shortlists—one for writing and one for illustration. Each shortlist features up to 8 books, and groups can choose to shadow one or both shortlists.
Shadowers share their thoughts online and vote for their favorites in the Shadowers’ Choice Awards. The winners of both the judges’ and shadowers’ medals are revealed in a livestreamed ceremony in mid-June.
With thousands of groups participating in the UK and around the world, shadowing engages tens of thousands of young readers, sparking a love for literature and critical thinking.
How does shadowing work?
The shadowing process begins in mid-March, following the shortlist announcement.
The shortlisted books can be easily ordered from our official book supplier Scholastic. Pre-orders of the 2025 shortlists will open in January.
Participating groups receive free access to:
- Posters, bookmarks, and stickers to enhance the experience*.
- Exclusive video interviews with the shortlisted authors and illustrators.
- High-quality resources for each shortlisted book, with discussion prompts, activities and more.
- Interactive book pages on our website where shadowers can:
- Write reviews of the shortlisted books.
- Upload artwork inspired by the stories and characters.
- Vote in the Shadowers Choice Awards from May.
- Livestreamed awards ceremony in mid-June.
*Free materials can be ordered when registering for shadowing before February 2025.
Hear from 2024 shadowing groups:
“It’s the highlight of our calendar!”
Hilary
2024 Shadowing Group leader“We have had the best experience – the children and teachers involved loved it. Each week we gathered and after discussing the books, used the author videos and challenges to delve deeper. We streamed the ceremony at the end in a special ‘lunch’ event for our shadowers. We received nothing but positive feedback from the children and they are eager to do it again next year.”
Clare
2024 Shadowing Group leader“In honesty, I am a new librarian at a school where my initial budget was limited, so I was sceptical. But seeing the buzz around the scheme makes it a staple in our library calendar for future years.”
Sumer
2024 Shadowing Group leader“We shadowed both awards and both were rewarding for the students in different ways. the written award had some fantastic discussions/debates about the books and the illustrated awards was a great way to introduce the not- so- confident readers to be able to participate in this prestigious award”
Alexis
2024 Shadowing Group leader“The range of books shortlisted opened the Book Squad’s eyes to a more diverse range of genres, including verse novels. Being provided with the opportunity to review encouraged out young readers to take pride in their role as reviewers – they saw their reviews published publicly and were encouraged to share their views about books more informally with their peers in conversations in classroom and the library. The streaming ceremony was a great end to a term of great reading, and we even had audible whoops when Boy Lost in a Maze received the award and Crossing the Line as these were favourites!”
Shelley
2024 Shadowing Group leader
