Children’s Book Award Resources
Voting
To help children decide how to vote, we suggest you talk about reading preferences with them in general, the criteria you might use when choosing a favourite book and how to decide on ‘the best book’ from a shortlist. The differences between ‘favourite’ and ‘best’ are subtle, and how you talk about this will depend on the age group of your child or the children in your group or class.
Elements to discuss could include: the subject matter, the genre, the plot, the characters, the use of language, and the illustrations. Older children could be encouraged to make comparisons with other books by the same author or about the same theme. Other questions might be about how the book made the reader feel or whether it changed the way they think? Book talk like this provides a great opportunity to promote reading for pleasure and encourage wider reading.
Online voting will open via the website on Monday 25th March and close at noon on Friday 17th May.
Vote for the Young Children’s Category
Vote for the Younger Readers’ Category
Vote for the Older Readers’ Category
Pick of the Year
As well as the shortlist, every year we produce a list of Picks of the Year – books which have also proved popular with our young readers during the testing process. You can view the full list here soon.
Pick of the Year 2024
Read, Review and Respond
We hope you have fun reading and talking about the books on this year’s Children’s Book Award shortlists.
The notes for each book are designed to help you to engage your child or children with the books in a variety of ways, to encourage them to write reviews and to get them responding creatively.
The Princess and the (Greedy) Pea
Press Start Game On Super Rabbit Boy!
Although there are many local children’s book awards around the country, the Federation of Children’s Book Groups’ Children’s Book Award is the only national award that is voted for entirely by children at all stages.
Downloadable Resources
Portfolios
As well as deciding which book to vote for in their age-relevant category, we would like children to respond to their favourite books on paper. The children’s votes submitted via our local book groups and online will decide on the three category winners, as well as the overall winner. In addition to the prizes awarded by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups, each author and illustrator will be presented with a professionally bound portfolio of children’s work, which the book creators always love to receive. Responses can take a variety of forms including pictures of characters or favourite scenes, reviews, letters to the author or illustrator, ideas about what might happen next, alternative endings or book covers, images of displays or artefacts inspired by the books, story maps, graphic story boards, poetry or fan fiction.
Responses can be submitted by email here or contact us to find out how to submit paper responses by post. Contributions should be submitted to arrive by Friday 18th May at the latest.