'Let's bombard children with words!'

So says Geraldine McCaughrean, who was yesterday announced as the winner of the Carnegie Medal, the UK's oldest and most prestigious children's book award. 'Where the World Ends' is a story inspired by an 18th-century record of the fate of a group of men and boys stranded on rocks after a rescue attempt fails. This is the second time McCaughrean has won the Medal - the first time was more than 30 years ago.

McCaughrean used her acceptance speech to stress the importance of exposing children to a wide vocabulary; "It’s been said often in recent years that ‘literary’ fiction for young people has had its day....In my opinion, young readers should be bombarded with words like gamma rays, steeped in words like pot plants stood in water, pelted with them like confetti, fed on them like Alphabetti Spaghetti, given Hamlet’s last resort: 'Words. Words. Words'."