City of Gold (book)

City of Gold and other stories from the Old Testament retold by Peter Dickinson is a collection of stories for children based on Old Testament narratives. The illustrations, both in colour and black-and-white, are by Michael Foreman. Published in 1980, City of Gold was the winner of the Carnegie Medal for that year.^[1]

Reception

On the Carnegie website, the book is described as offering "a radical and fascinating approach to thirty-three Old Testament Bible stories".^[2] There was some criticism of the choice in the pages of the Literary Association Record by librarians who wondered why the Carnegie committee so often chose books that no "ordinary" child would read; committee member Vivian Griffiths responded that popularity with children was not a criterion: the emphasis was on literary merit.^[3]

Footnotes