THE 2019 WICKED YOUNG WRITER AWARDS, presented in association with the National Literacy Trust, last Thursday (20 June 2019) announced its winners during a ceremony involving 120 shortlisted finalists and their families and teachers at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre, home of the award-winning musical WICKED. Amongst this year’s finalist entries were stories, poems and non-fiction […]

by Alison Tarrant The shortlist for the Information Book Award 2019 was released last month, with 10 books across three age categories – however, there are two opportunities for books to win overall, as there is a ‘Judges’ Overall Winner’ and a ‘Children’s Choice Overall Winner’. The Children’s Choice winners (there’s one for each age […]

a guest post by Ali Pye My children loved their picture books but there came a time when they wanted to try a wordier read but were not yet ready for middle grade, so we started to browse the young fiction shelves of bookshops rather than the picture book rails. Now I have my own […]

The School Librarian of the Year Award is the School Library Association’s prestigious honour to recognize the excellent work that is carried out in school libraries every day and highlight the best practice of those whose work is outstanding. Three exciting and innovative librarians have made it onto to the Honour List for the SLA […]

On  8th June authors, publishers, children, friends and members of the FCBG and our headline sponsor BookLife came to celebrate the Children’s Book Award ceremony 2019 at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London. It was an amazing turnout with all bar one of our shortlisted books represented by the author, illustrator or in some cases […]

Today, at a brilliant and well attended Awards Ceremony at the Copthorne Tara Hotel in London, the winners of the 2019 FCBG Children’s Book Award were announced. Arree Chung won the prize in the Books for Younger Children category with his book MIXED, a  wonderful picture book about tolerance, diversity and embracing difference. The prize […]

TO YOUR SCHOOL AND £250 WORTH OF BOOKS WITH LOVEREADING4KIDS’ NEW POETRY PRIZE LoveReading is thrilled to announce the launch of The LoveReading4Kids Poetry Prize in association with National Poetry Day. National Poetry Day is the biggest annual celebration of poetry in the UK, bringing people together to enjoy, discover and share words that matter. […]

I’m delighted to be taking part in EmpathyLab’s “Empathy Day” and to read about the great work they are doing. Some days it can feel really discouraging, witnessing how quick people are to leap to outrage and anger, on social media and beyond. Some days it feels like we have a lot of truly terrible […]

by Cathy Cassidy Where do ideas come from? Sometimes they come from what is happening in the world around us, from a desire to battle injustice and tell a story that might just change someone’s opinion, open someone’s eyes. We’re all looking for the truth, after all. Now and then a story lodges in your […]

by Dominique Valente The world of Starfell had existed for a number of years for me before the character of Willow Moss appeared around eight years ago. She emerged while I was driving home from work and thinking about the idea that so many fantasy stories feature ‘the chosen one’ – the lost princess who […]