Editorial 275
The end of the year is approaching and with it comes good and bad news.
The good news first: the National Year of Reading is set to launch in the new year under the rallying cry, Go All In and with the proposition, ‘If you’re into it, read into it’ at its core. Whatever your interests, reading will be ‘positioned as the ultimate tool for diving deeper into the things that matter to you.’ A campaign focus on appeal, not duty, is a reassuring starting point and pivots reading away from being something to do because it is good for you, towards something to do because it’s enjoyable. Fingers crossed, this reading for pleasure idea could catch on. Get involved directly via the Go All In website.
News also broke in October, with considerable fanfare, that a Children’s Booker Prize will launch in 2026. The Children’s Booker Prize will celebrate the best contemporary fiction for children aged eight to 12 years old, written in or translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland with the winner receiving a prize of £50,000 and a likely huge boost to sales.
Just as he finishes his tenure as Waterstones Children’s Laureate, Frank Cottrell-Boyce will be the inaugural Chair of the judges and will be joined by two other adult judges to select a shortlist of eight books before three child judges are recruited to help decide the winner.
The Booker Prize Foundation will also be working with publishers and a range of partners to gift and deliver at least 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books each year ‘to children that need them the most.’
A new children’s book award is good news. With the winner’s announcement in February, it will follow the January announcement of the category winners of the Nero Book Awards, which recognise children’s books alongside fiction, new writing and non-fiction for adults, and before the announcement of the Nero Gold Prize in March (it could go to the children’s winner) and winners of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize; the announcement of the Children’s Book Award follows in April – run by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups and voted for entirely by children; with the winners of the Carnegie Medals for Writing and Illustration, now in their 90th and 71st year respectively, plus Shadowers’ Choice, revealed in June. New children’s poetry is celebrated by the CLiPPA in July, with The Week Junior Book Awards announced in September and the Information Book Awards in November, before the Lollies bring the year to a close in December. Children’s literature can be celebrated all year round.
And the bad news? Inclusive and award-winning children’s publisher Knights Of has this week gone into receivership, after eight years. Knights Of set out to address the lack of representation for diverse voices in children’s books and authors on the list include Sharna Jackson, Elle McNicholl, Jason Reynolds, Lizzie Huxley-Jones and Polly Ho-Yen. Their demise comes as research by charity Inclusive Books for Children reveals significant gaps in meaningful representation of marginalised groups in UK publishing, and shows just how difficult the market is, and how support for diverse voices is more important than ever. This issue went to press just before the release of CLPE’s Reflecting Realities report, which builds on a decade’s worth of study and might provide more positive news, while it is encouraging that one of the overarching recommendations in the new Curriculum and Assessment review is that GCSE subject content should include ‘stronger representation of the diversity that makes up our modern society, allowing more children to see themselves in the curriculum.’
Check back for a full report on the new Reflecting Realities survey.
Finally, everyone at Books for Keeps was saddened to hear of the death of Chris Holifield, former director of the Poetry Book Society and the T.S. Eliot Prize and seemingly indefatigable leader of the Children’s Poetry Summit, which has done so much since its inception in 2007 to bring together all in the children’s poetry world and to raise the profile of poetry for children. She is remembered by fellow drivers of the Children’s Poetry Summit Gaby Morgan, Liz Brownlee and Laura Mucha here.
