Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) has announced that the following experts will form the judging panel for their 2026 awards: Pragya Agarwal, writer and academic; Scott Evans, primary school teacher and creator of The Reader Teacher website; Mei Matsuoka, children’s illustrator and author; Phyllis Ramage, librarian and children’s literature academic; and Nina Tame, disability consultant […]
Congratulations to Julie Broadbent of Northampton International Academy, winner of the 2025 Secondary School Librarian of the Year Award. Julie has won for her work creating a culture of positivity at Northampton International Academy, where reading is celebrated. Open every day, including during social times, Julie has developed the school library into a welcoming safe space, […]
Submissions open today for the Klaus Flugge Prize 2026. Publishers have until 14 January 2026 to submit for the £5,000 prize which is awarded to the most promising and exciting newcomer to children’s picture book illustration. The 2026 judges are 2025 Klaus Flugge Prize winner Emma Farrarons; award-winning and hugely popular illustrator Rob Biddulph; Shelley […]
Nominations have been announced for the 2026 Carnegies, the UK’s longest-running children’s book awards. This year sees 125 nominations in total. 62 books are in contention for the Carnegie Medal for Writing, which is awarded to a book written in English for children and young people that sparks an outstanding reading experience, and 65 books […]
The IBBY UK committee has revealed the books chosen as the UK Honour Books for the 2026 list. The IBBY Honour List is a biennialselection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries For the first time, IBBY UK is nominating books in Welsh alongside books in English. Writing […]
The Booker Prize Foundation has announced that a Children’s Booker Prize will launch in 2026, with the first winner announced in February 2027. The Children’s Booker Prize will be supported by AKO Foundation and is the first major new prize from the Foundation in two decades, since the launch of the International Booker Prize in […]
The National Literacy Trust, in partnership with the Department for Education, has announced ‘Go All In‘ as the message for the National Year of Reading 2026, its campaign to ‘reignite a nationwide passion for reading’. The campaign is built on the belief that the decline in reading and reading enjoyment is largely due to loss […]
The winners of The HarperCollins Reading for Pleasure Awards 2025, in association with the Open University and the UK Literacy Association (UKLA), have been announced. Now in their ninth year, the awards recognise and celebrate teachers and educators who are putting Reading for Pleasure at the heart of their practice in creative and innovative ways, […]
New research by Oxford University Press (OUP) into AI in our classrooms reveals the extent to which young people are using Artificial Intelligence in their schoolwork. The report also examines their attitudes to it. For Teaching the AI-Native Generation, OUP surveyed 2,000 students aged 13–18 across the UK. It finds that 8 in 10 young […]
Charity Inclusive Books for Children has published its second annual Excluded Voices report analysing Own Voice and main-character representation of marginalised groups in UK children’s books for readers aged 1 to 9. The 2025 report concentrates on recent publishing trends from 2022 to 2024 and IBC examined children’s books published traditionally in the period in […]
The judges for the 2026 Branford Boase Award, which recognises the author and, uniquely, the editor of the year’s outstanding debut novel for children, have been announced. They include the winning author of the 2025 Branford Boase Award Margaret McDonald. McDonald won with Glasgow Boys (Faber). She will be joined by children’s book experts, Katherine […]
The 2026 Phoenix Fest will take place in Oxford over the weekend of 25-26 April 2026 with over 6,000 in-person and digital tickets on offer for families. Organisers the Phoenix Comic and David Fickling Books promise a weekend of interactive fun and community with live comic artist shows, draw-a-longs and meet the artist sessions. It will be […]
The 2026 Poetry By Heart competition opens today, National Poetry Day, 2 October with a special preview of the new documentary feature film which showcases the competition’s impact. Poetry By Heart: The Movie is an uplifting film and celebration of the power of choosing, learning and sharing poetry. Since late-2024 Poetry By Heart has been […]
Congratulations to Sarah Hagger-Holt who has won the 2025 Little Rebels Award for Radical Children’s Fiction for The Fights That Make Us (Usborne). This is the second Little Rebels win for Hagger-Holt, who also took the award in 2022 with Proud of You (Usborne). No other author has achieved this honour. Empathetic, positive, empowering and […]
The 2025 Nero Book Awards are underway with the judges for the different categories announced. The judges for the Children’s Fiction Award are: author Sharna Jackson, Emily Bearn, Children’s Literary Critic and author, The Telegraph, and Nick Campbell, Children’s Campaign Manager, Waterstones. Now in its third year, the Nero Book Awards recognise and celebrate outstanding […]
The winners of The Week Junior Book Awards have been announced at a ceremony held at London’s County Hall. Hosted by Bex Lindsay of Fun Kids, 14 awards were presented across categories including poetry, audiobook, cover of the year and breakthrough book. Judges included author Sophie Dahl, CBeebies’ George Webster, presenter and actor Rhys Stephenson, […]
At this year’s Labour Party Conference, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a government funding commitment to ensure that every state primary school in England will have a library by the end of this parliament (2029). The announcement is a significant success in the Libraries for Primaries campaign, launched by the National Literacy Trust and Penguin Books […]
The longlists for this year’s UKLA Book Awards include books in translation, past winners, exciting debuts and ‘a huge range of genres, topics and themes’, say the organisers, and showcase ‘high-quality children’s books that can reflect all identities and promote diversity’. The longlists are selected by panels made up of experienced past teacher judges, ex-teachers, […]
Launched in 1980, we’ve reviewed hundreds of new children’s books each year and published articles on every aspect of writing for children.
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