Liz Hyder wins 2024 Nero Book Award for Children’s Fiction
The Nero Book Awards has announced its four winners of the 2024 Awards, celebrating the best books and outstanding writing from the UK and Ireland. Liz Hyder is the winner of the children’s category for her supernatural Pembrokeshire-set novel, The Twelve (Pushkin Press).
The judges – authors Patrice Lawrence and Sarah Webb and bookseller Leanne Fridd – praise the book, ‘Beautiful characterisation, compelling storytelling, this is a book for now and all time – an immersive time-travel adventure that will keep readers hooked.’
In an exclusive interview for Books for Keeps, Liz Hyder describes The Twelve as ‘the story I wanted to tell and the way I wanted to tell it.’ Read the rest of the interview.
Liz Hyder’s debut novel, Bearmouth, won the Branford Boase Award, the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and was chosen as the Children’s Book of the Year in 2019 by The Times.
Each category winner receives £5,000 and is now in the running for the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year 
2024, which will be announced at a ceremony in London on 5th March 2025. A final judging panel, chaired by journalist and author Bill Bryson, will select the overall winner, who will receive an additional £30,000 prize.
Gerry Ford, Founder and Group CEO of Caffè Nero commented, ‘The standard of entries this year was very high and with such incredible shortlists, our judges had a difficult job of picking just one winner in each category. They have chosen four impressive books which display an outstanding level of writing and captivating story telling.’
The 2024 Nero Book Award Children’s Books category shortlist in full:
Bird Boy by Catherine Bruton (Nosy Crow)
Read our interview with Catherine Bruton
How to Survive a Horror Movie by Scarlett Dunmore (Little Tiger)
Read our interview with Scarlett Dunmore
The Twelve by Liz Hyder, illustrated by Tom De Freston (Pushkin Children’s Books)
Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Tim Miller (Walker Books)
Read our interview with Patrick Ness
