LONDON: Sydney Smith, the illustrator of Joanne Schwartz’s picture book “Town Is By The Sea” has won this year’s Kate Greenaway Medal, the UK’s oldest award for illustration.
“Town Is By The Sea”, which depicts a day in the life of a boy growing up in a coal mining town in the 1950s, contrasts a child’s life of play with that of the adult world of work, with the bright world above ground juxtaposed with the perilous subterranean world of a mining pit.
Smith, who hails from Canada, visited a miner’s museum in Cape Breton’s Glace Bay, where the story is set, and took inspiration for his expressive brush work from Impressionist artists such as J M W Turner.
British writer Geraldine McCaughrean won the CILIP Carnegie Medal for the second time with her middle-grade novel “Where the World Ends”.
Smith and McCaughrean each received 500 pounds worth of books to donate to a library of their choice, a specifically commissioned golden medal and a 5,000 pounds cash prize. PTI
