Children's Booker prize

Awards and prizes, Booker prize, Books, Children's Booker prize, Culture, Sách & Tri thức

Booker prize launches £50,000 children’s award

Children will help judge the new prize along with children’s laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce

• ‘The Children’s Booker prize will tell kids that they matter’: Frank Cottrell-Boyce

The Booker prize foundation has launched a major new literary award, the Children’s Booker prize, offering £50,000 for the best fiction written for readers aged eight to 12.

The new award will launch in 2026, with the first winner announced in early 2027. It will be decided by a mixed panel of adult and child judges, a first for a Booker award. The inaugural chair of judges will be Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the children’s author and current children’s laureate. He will be joined by two other adult judges, who will help select a shortlist of eight books before three child judges are recruited to help decide the winner.

thanhtoong0
October 24, 2025

Awards and prizes, Booker prize, Books, Children and teenagers, Children's Booker prize, Children's books: 7 and under, Children's books: 8-12 years, Comics and graphic novels (children and teens), Culture, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Literacy, Sách & Tri thức, Teen books

The Children’s Booker prize will tell kids that they matter

As the number of children reading for pleasure hits a record low, the new award highlights its importance for wellbeing, and will give away thousands of books

Booker prize launches £50,000 children’s award

At the end of the movie Ratatouille, the food reviewer Anton Ego, voiced by Peter O’Toole, makes this beautiful defence of the art of the critic: “There are times when a critic truly risks something. That is in the discovery and defence of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.” The Booker prize has been a friend to the new – new voices, new names, new ways of telling a story – for 56 years. It has made household names of writers whose work might otherwise only have been enjoyed by a few. More importantly – especially since the launch of the International Booker in 2005 – it has helped broaden the horizons of readers.

Now there’s going to be a Booker prize for children’s books aimed at readers aged eight to 12, and I am going to be the first chair of judges. Despite my vast vocabulary, I can’t begin to tell you how hopeful this makes me. Because if the Children’s Booker brings the same energy and boldness to the world of children’s books, it’s going to make a real difference to the lives of thousands of children. It comes at a crucial moment. Everyone knows that children who read for pleasure do better educationally and emotionally. Yet – as we approach the government’s Year of Reading – we find ourselves in a situation where the number of children who read daily has dropped to a 20-year low. We risk losing a whole generation.

thanhtoong0
October 24, 2025