Soaring to new reading heights
This year’s Carnegies welcomed a new supporter, with OverDrive’s Sora reading platform joining as Digital sponsor. Here Ros Harding, Account Manager at Sora, explains how Sora is helping school libraries deliver digital reading experiences to young people, and why the partnership with Carnegies is so important.
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ILIP’s Carnegies are the UK’s oldest and most loved children’s book awards, recognising the best talent in writing
and illustration each year. The awards have been run by CILIP (and its predecessor, The Library Association) for almost 90 years, with the first medal for writing awarded to Arthur Ransome for Pigeon Post in 1936. Illustrators were included for the first time in 1955, and the awards have continued to spotlight the best children’s books published in the UK.
Ros says that the Carnegies ethos and values matches those of Sora, helping to promote literacy and a love of reading. She said: “The vision of Sora’s parent company (OverDrive) is ‘A world enlightened by reading’, and we work closely with libraries and librarians to work towards this. This is in such close alignment with the Carnegies mission statement; To champion librarians to inspire and empower the next generation to create a better world through books and reading, that it seemed an obvious fit. We are committed to
working with schools and libraries to increase access to a wide range of books, and it has been wonderful to work with the Carnegies on providing wider access to such fantastic titles on both shortlists in 2025.”
The Sora platform offers a specially designed experience for children, young people and those working in the school sector. Ros says: “Sora is the reading platform from OverDrive that is designed specifically for schools. It is available as an app or on a browser and provides an intuitive user-friendly experience, along with fantastic features. Schools can provide access to e-books, audiobooks and digital magazines to their students and staff through Sora.
“The most popular way of accessing Sora for schools in the UK is to subscribe to one of our shared collections, Primary or Secondary E-books Now. These are ready-made collections of thousands of e-books and audiobooks along with hundreds of magazines. These allow schools to introduce an extensive digital library in a very cost-effective and simple way.”
It’s clear that books and reading are the connecting factors for Sora and
Ros Harding, is a former School Librarian and The Carnegies Chair of Judges 2025.
Carnegies, and Ros points out that the partnership plays to the strengths of both Sora and the awards. As part of that partnership Sora worked with Carnegies and shortlisted publishers to create a free reading list for schools.
Ros said: “We were so pleased that we were able to offer free access to most of the shortlisted titles across both awards. We have heard from schools where they have said that this allowed them to take part in
Autumn-Winter 2025
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