This year's winner of the prestigious Carnegie medal, for the second year running, was Patrick Ness for his haunting novel A monster calls, in which a young boy must come to terms with his mother's terminal illness and is ultimately taught how to do so by the 'monster' of the title, a strange yew tree that comes to life and tells him stories.
Patrick Ness worked on the original idea for A monster calls conceived by the late children's writer Siobhan Dowd whose book Bog Child posthumously won the Carnegie medal in 2009. Together with the bleak but powerful illustrations by Jim Kay who incidentally won the Greenaway medal for the same title, the text is deservedly acclaimed.
Ness won the medal in 2011 for Monsters of Men, the third book in the Chaos Walking trilogy.
Ellie Wallwork is 12 and registered blind. She took part in the Cilip Carnegie Award shadowing scheme last year and featured in a moving video which was shown at last year's award ceremony.
This year she was invited to come in person to the awards ceremony at the Barbican in London to give a speech. Here she is being introduced by news reader Kate Silverton and afterwards having a quick chat with Read On producer Kim Normanton: Ellie Wallwork's speech at the Carengie Awards