Past winners and new voices on the shortlist for the 2024 Children’s Book Award
The shortlist for the Children’s Book Award 2024 has been announced. The Children’s Book Award is the only national award for children’s books that is voted for entirely by children and authors in the running this year include Rob Biddulph, Michael Rosen, Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve and Alex Falase-Koya.
Children nationwide are now invited to vote for their favourite of the ten shortlisted books. Online voting will open on 25th March and the deadline is 12 noon on 18th May. The category winners and the overall winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in central London on Saturday 8th June. The proceedings will be live-streamed.
The Children’s Book Award is owned and coordinated by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups. Past winners include J.K. Rowling, Patrick Ness, Andy Stanton, Malorie Blackman, Anthony Horowitz and Michael Morpurgo, who has won a record four times. The award has often been the first to recognise the future stars of children’s fiction and can turn popular authors into bestsellers.
The full shortlist for the Children’s Book Award 2024 is as follows:
Books for Younger Children
Gigantic, written and illustrated by Rob Biddulph (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
The Big Dreaming, written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Daniel Egneus (Bloomsbury Children’s Books)
The Fastest Tortoise in Town, written by Howard Calvert and illustrated by Karen Obuhanych (Walker Books)
The Princess and The (Greedy) Pea, written and illustrated by Leigh Hodgkinson (Walker Books)
Books for Younger Readers
Adventure Mice: Otter Chaos, written by Philip Reeve and illustrated by Sarah McIntyre (David Fickling Books)
Marv and The Killer Plants, written by Alex Falase-Koya and illustrated by Paula Bowles (Oxford Children’s Books)
Press Start! Game On, Super Rabbit Boy!, written and illustrated by Thomas Flintham ( Nosy Crow)
Books for Older Readers
Code Name Kingfisher, written by Liz Kesser (Simon and Schuster)
Deadlock, written by Simon Fox (Nosy Crow)
The Final Year, written by Matt Goodfellow and illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton ( Otter-Barry Books)
Sarah Stuffins, Children’s Book Award Coordinator says ‘The Children’s Book Award is back and it’s always a pleasure to see what brilliant stories have been chosen. Children are a very demanding and exacting audience – books need to hook them into a story rightaway, and keep them turning the pages, right to the end! And it’s a testament to these wonderful books that they’ve all not just delighted their readers, but inspired them to vote.’
