Winners of The Week Junior Book Awards 2026 Announced
The winners of The Week Junior Book Awards 2026 have been announced at a ceremony held at the BFI Southbank and hosted by Fun Kids presenter Bex Lindsay.
Authors and illustrators across 14 categories were celebrated with awards for graphic novels, poetry collections, picture books and more.
Judges included Joe Wicks, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Rhys Stephenson and Dr Emily MacDonagh along with industry experts drawn from the worlds of publishing, education, libraries, literacy charities, bookshops and media.
Jack Mackay’s debut novel, Gloam (Rock the Boat) was a double winner, taking home both the Breakthrough and Audiobook awards. The Poetry category was awarded to This Is Not a Small Voice (Nosy Crow) an anthology of poems selected by Traci N.Todd and illustrated by Jade Orlando.
Readers of The Week Junior awarded the Children’s Choice category to Jamie Smart’s Bunny vs Monkey: Intergalactic Monkey Business – it took over a third of the votes – and they gave the Children’s Book Cover of the Year 2026 to Paola Escobar’s beautifully illustrated cover for Zohra Nabi’s Deep Dark.
The full list of winners for The Week Junior 2026 Book Awards are:
STEM
The Wizard’s Guide to Magical Experiments
A.J. Wood, illustrated by Jo Rioux (Magic Cat)
Poetry
This is Not a Small Voice
Edited by Traci N. Todd, illustrated by Jade Orlando (Nosy Crow)
Audiobook
Gloam
Jack Mackay, narrated by Indira Varma (Rock the Boat)
Younger fiction
The Misadventures of Mina Mahmood: School Trip
Farhana Islam, illustrated by Simran Diamond Singh (Farshore)
HIGHLY COMMENDED – Ivy and Bearlock Holmes written and illustrated by Kristyna Litten (Magic Cat )
Picture book
Don’t Trust Fish!
Neil Sharpson, illustrated by Dan Santat (Andersen Press)
Animals and nature
A Tree is a Time Machine
Rob Sears and Tom Sears (LKP Children’s Books)
Factual
10 Children Who Changed the World
Paterson Joseph, illustrated by Rumbidzai Savanhu (Wren & Rook)
Breakthrough
Gloam
Jack Mackay, illustrator Ben Joel Price (Rock the Boat)
Hobbies and interests
World Kitchen: Celebrations
Abigail Wheatley, illustrator Chaaya Prabhat, (Usborne)
Older fiction
The Boy with Big Decisions
Helen Rutter (Scholastic)
HIGHLY COMMENDED – The First Year by Matt Goodfellow illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton (Otter-Barry Books)
Wellbeing
How To Be Disabled and Proud
Cathy Reay (Puffin)
Graphic novel
Boss of the Underworld: Shirley vs the Green Menace
Tor Freeman (Hodder Children’s Books)
HIGHLY COMMENDED – Supa Nova by Chanté Timothy (publisher: Nosy Crow)
Children’s Choice
Bunny vs Monkey: Intergalactic Monkey Business
Jamie Smart, (David Fickling Books)
Cover of the Year
Deep Dark: A Cassia Thorne Mystery
Zohra Nabi, illustrator: Paola Escobar, (Simon & Schuster Children’s Books)
Editorial director of The Week Junior, Anna Bassi said, ‘These books represent the very best in children’s literature – in all its forms. They are smart, funny, eye-opening and mind-expanding. They are authentic, empowering and innovative and – most importantly – they are books that kids will want to read, look at and listen to – again and again and again. Congratulations to everyone involved in creating them and thank you to our judges for giving them the opportunity to be discovered, and devoured, by even more young readers.’
The awards are supported by founding partner The Bookseller alongside category sponsor VoxBlock and partners Fun Kids, Inkling Illustration, LoveReading4Kids, Place2Be, The Week Junior Science+Nature and World Book Day.
