She got this book from a house we broke into in Nebo. It was in one of the small drawers of a little desk in the corner of someone’s living room. Usually, we only steal the really important stuff like matches or rat poison or books. But she held this notebook in her hands and turned it over a few times before putting it in her bag. MSR: The honest answer is that I don’t overthink it—it’s a matter of doing what feels right at the time. But it’s an interesting point that all of us who have been raised in Welsh, who live in and through Welsh, have bilingual influences. There is no point denying that; it enriches us. MSR: It’s bound to be a factor. At the very beginning of the pandemic someone tweeted saying, “This feels familiar, very Llyfr Glas Nebo.” I did find myself mirroring some behaviors of Rowenna’s and thinking: “Where does this lead us now?” I felt quite uncomfortable with that, in a way; I didn’t like the pressure of it. I haven’t returned to the novel during the pandemic—I’d completed the translation before it all began—but I do think that if I was writing it now, it would be different. Gwion shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t decide what to believe, nor what to hope for. Does humanity just start again now? Or are we waiting to be saved?”

Improving news literacy is at the heart of First News, whether through our acclaimed news service or our award-winning news-based learning tools and resources for schools and educators. I regretted asking about her ideal gift then, because Mam goes quiet when we’ve talked about the olden days, and it’s not the kind of quiet you get when you work but it’s a kind of quiet when there aren’t any words that fit. She was awarded a CBE for Services to Literature in 2020; and was the 10 th Waterstones’ Children’s Laureate from 2017-2019. Winner of three categories at the 2019 Wales Book of the Year Awards: the Aberystwyth University Fiction Award, the Golwg360 Barn y Bobl (People’s Choice Award), and the Welsh-language Overall Winner Yoto is an interactive audio platform for kids. Yoto offer acatalogue of stories, songs, activities and more to inspire creativeplay andlearning without a screen. The carefully connected audio players, Yoto Player(3rd generation)and Yoto Mini, put kids safely in control. Nocameras. No microphones. No ads.

About Manon Steffan Ros

MSR: It was all new to me when I translated Blasu, and I struggled a little then. It’s so strange; even if you translate something word for word it’s never the same. The thing that emerges—it might be as good, better than the original even, but it’s never the same thing. Blasu in Welsh is a very dark novel, difficult to read, but in English it felt much lighter, and I couldn’t work out why. I was more confident when I came to Llyfr Glas Nebo. Having been invited by the Wales Literature Exchange to translate the opening chapter initially, I just kept going because I was enjoying it so much! I knew early on that I’d have to introduce new themes to it; for the same premise to work—Rowenna and Dylan, mother and son, writing their respective stories in a found notebook—I had to find a way to justify why they would be doing so in English rather than Welsh. The characters did change for me precisely because they were writing their stories in English.

I had longed for these kinds of conversations, without even knowing it. Of course, Dylan was good company, and could speak to me as an adult now, almost. But he barely remembered life before The End. None of it was real to him. Wednesday 21 June 2023: The winners of the UK’s longest-running and best-loved book awards for children and young people, the Yoto Carnegies, were announced today in a live-streamed ceremony at The Barbican.You know, I’ve never traveled—never even lived outside Gwynedd—and I don’t have international experience to draw on, but the response to the Polish translation of the book showed me that each translation is a new and different work by default, proof that the reader finishes the author’s work. That book was translated directly from the Welsh, and yet the themes are somehow changed, the response so different to what it was in Wales. In Poland it was read as a feminist novel, and a lot was made of Rowenna’s experience as a single mother. I’d never considered the book from that perspective! Thinking about it, most of the books I write feature a single parent, but I’m not trying to make a point with it. It’s fascinating to see how broader political conversations and concerns—in this case women’s rights in Poland—feed into the story of the book. “I’ve never had an ambition to reach an audience outside of Wales.”

The Yoto Carnegies celebrate outstanding achievement in children’s writing and illustration and are unique in being judged by an expert panel of children’s and youth librarians, including 12 librarians from CILIP, the library and information association’s Youth Libraries Group. The Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration, established in 1955, is awarded annually to a children’s book illustrator whose artwork creates an outstanding reading experience. A month past its sell-by date, I think—I’m not exactly sure what date it its.” He handed it to me. “For your boy.” I’ll go hunting tonight. Try to get hold of a rabbit or a wild cat so that Mam can have some meat on her birthday. There are traps down on the potato field already. She’ll have a good birthday this year. The Yoto Carnegie Medal for Writing is awarded annually to a children’s book author whose writing creates an outstanding reading experience. It was established in 1936 in memory of the Scottish-born philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919).From an incredibly strong shortlist, our panel of librarian judges have debated long and hard to choose our two worthy winners of the Yoto Carnegie Medals 2023. I hadn’t thought about the cloud for a while, though I’d always known that Dylan and I would not have survived if it wasn’t for the water I’d forced down our throats when we were ill. I wouldn’t have had the energy to reach the stream when I was at my weakest. We would have died of dehydration.