The Graveyard Book, evocatively illustrated by Chris Riddell, was also shortlisted for the CILIP Kate Greenaway medal for outstanding illustration, but narrowly missed out to Australian illustrator Freya Blackwood for Harry & Hopper, in which little boy Harry comes to terms with the death of his dog Hopper. Every award that has come in has come as a shock.' But I never expected the awards – and that's said without being disingenuous. I was aware that this one, for me, was huge and important. I think I needed to know that on a deep gut level to put it into the book,' he said. What I maybe felt subconsciously was that I knew what it was like at that point to have a two-year-old, and to have been a kid, but not what it was like to be a father to a seven, 12, 15-year-old, and for want of a better word the glorious tragedy of parenting – that if you do your job right you wind up with a person, a wonderful person who you love, and now because you've done your job right they are going to leave, and it hurts. 'I think that probably wasn't true – one thing I've learned as a writer is that you don't write better stories, you just write different ones. Gaiman said that he first dreamed up the germs of The Graveyard Book 25 years ago, but at the time he thought he wasn't good enough to write it.

We approve of populist writing but we are looking for very beautiful, outstanding literature for that age group. If people haven't read them they think they're about political turmoil and the like, they don't realise these books are fantastic, great reads. 'I think the Carnegie often gets a bad rep for being about issues books. From the beginning it was one of the standout titles and it kept coming back to us,' said librarian Julia Hale. 'The Graveyard Book is one of those books which is so pleasurable but it also stayed with us as judges for some time. The author beat a shortlist including his former collaborator Terry Pratchett with Nation, Philip Reeve's Fever Crumb and Patrick Ness's The Ask and the Answer to take the prize, which is judged by 12 children's librarians. When I won the Hugo my 14-year-old self exulted, but if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well – it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven.' They are the first literary awards of any kind I was ever aware of and I've got both of them - it's amazing. 'It was a couple of years later that I bought A Wrinkle in Time and became aware of the Newbery.

I had read a couple before, but I got the box set, and I got to The Last Battle and it said winner of the Carnegie medal. When I was seven I got the Narnia books for my birthday. 'It's particularly fantastic for me because it was the first literary prize I was ever aware of as a kid.

The graveyard book