The long-term sustainability of the UK’s longest running and best-loved children’s book awards has been secured with new headline sponsor Yoto.

This year’s awards will be re-named the Yoto Carnegie Greenaway Awards 2022 with immediate effect, ahead of the longlist announcement on 16th February.

The independent nomination and judging process for the medals, which is uniquely carried out by librarians across the UK, remains the same. CILIP will continue working in partnership with the awards’ existing sponsors including Peters, the official book supplier, and ALCS.

Nicholas Poole, chief executive of CILIP, said: “We are hugely excited by our new relationship with Yoto, an innovative partner which shares our mission of inspiring and empowering a new generation of readers. Its support, along with that of our existing valued partners, ensures the long-term viability of the awards and will enable us to increase their profile and visibility. Thanks to its involvement, the Yoto Carnegie Greenaway Awards – and the brilliant partners, librarians, publishers, authors, illustrators and retailers that we work with – will be able to engage and include more young people in reading the best books for pleasure.”

He continued: “Yoto’s aim of putting kids in control chimes perfectly with the ambitions we have to further develop our Awards shadowing scheme and provide more opportunities for all children and young people to choose and access their favourite books from those selected by our librarian judges each year.”

Ben Drury, co-founder and CEO of Yoto, added: “Yoto is dedicated to inspiring creativity and imagination in children. We are passionate about bringing the very best in children’s books to the widest audience through audio. We are hugely excited to be embarking on this new long-term partnership with CILIP where, through the Yoto Carnegie Greenaway Awards, we can celebrate the greatest children’s authors and illustrators being published each year. Yoto is thrilled to be associated with the most prestigious children’s books awards in the UK, and we look forward to helping ensure even more children can reap the benefits of the best books available.”

As part of the partnership, Yoto will work with publishers to access audio rights of the selected shortlist titles to create audio content for promotion through POS for retail, libraries and schools. The company says such a move means the best children’s books can reach an even broader audience to inspire and instil a love of reading across the UK.