The Children’s Booker Prize will be a boon to young readers everywhere

The announcement has sparked great excitement in the realm of children’s literature, with the prize sure to shine a light on some of the best stories available for young and eager readers, writes Deirdre McArdle

Ireland’s Laureate Na nÓg Patricia Forde said the launch of the Children’s Booker Prize is ‘hugely exciting news’.

The Booker Prize is widely regarded as one of the most important literary prizes in the world. It is prestigious, yes, but uniquely, it is also influential in driving book sales.

When the prize announced on October 24 that it was launching a Children’s Booker Prize, the news electrified the world of children’s books, not least because the news was unexpected.

Patricia Forde, Ireland’s Laureate Na nÓg, says: “It’s hugely exciting news. The Booker Prize is already a big event in every literary calendar, it’s one of the literary world’s most prestigious awards.

“So, first of all, it was shocking, because nobody was expecting it. And secondly, it’s very exciting that they’re going to be supporting children’s fiction.

“For a long time, children’s fiction has been the Cinderella of the literature world. Very often it’s hard for children’s literature to get seen.

“It’s hard to get space on bookshelves. It’s hard to get media attention.

“Anything that can get [children’s fiction] more media attention, get parents seeing it more and being more aware of it will be fantastic. And I think the Booker will do that. 

“And can you imagine if an Irish book was shortlisted in the Children’s Booker Prize?”

That would generate a load of attention about children’s books in general in the country.

For Sheila M Averbuch, author of Friend Me from Scholastic Press, and Pitch Your Book, the news is “the best thing to happen to middle grade children’s book writers in a long time”.

“Sadly, in the UK and Ireland in particular, awards for children’s fiction have fallen away over the last few years,” she says. 

“We lost the Costa prize, we lost the Blue Peter prize, and the Blue Peter was a particular loss, because children were involved in deciding the winner of that.

“That’s one reason why children’s authors who I know are really cheering the Children’s Booker Prize, because children are going to be involved in deciding it.”

The Children’s Booker Prize will launch in 2026 and be awarded annually from 2027. 

It will celebrate the best contemporary fiction for children aged eight to 12 years old, written in or translated into English and published in Britain and/or Ireland.

Leading the judging panel will be Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the UK’s Children’s Laureate. This news was warmly welcomed by those in the world of children’s books.

The UK’s Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce will be leading the judging panel. Picture: Joe Maher/Bafta/Getty 

Forde says: “[Frank] has got a lot of fans over here. I interviewed him recently at the Children’s Books Ireland conference in September. He’s a great guy with a great attitude and he’s a big advocate for kids.”

The CEO of Little Island Books, Matthew Parkinson-Bennett, says the involvement of Cottrell-Boyce “gives me hope it will be run in the right way”.

“He’s interested in books for the right reasons,” he says. 

“He would be someone who’s a champion of literary quality in a book, and also in really wanting to reward the sort of books that kids will enjoy, rather than sort of books that those gatekeepers might approve of.”

To further ensure that children’s voices are heard and listened to, there will be two children on the judging panel. 

Averbuch says this move is a “positive step towards engaging children in books”.

She says: “Having children as judges is important because it makes them feel part of the process, helps them connect with the books, and ensures that quality children’s literature is recognised.”

Parkinson-Bennett agrees: “I think it’s great that they are involving kids and giving those kids a voice.

“It will be wonderful for the kids themselves to be involved with; nothing really compares to it. So I think that’s a terrific dimension to it. 

“It should also help ensure that this is child centered, and that it is rewarding books that children love to read, as opposed to adult notions of what adults would like to see published, which are not necessarily always the same thing.”

CEO of Little Island Books Matthew Parkinson-Bennett says that the involvement of Cottrell-Boyce ‘gives me hope it will be run in the right way’.

Calling the Children’s Booker Prize “the most ambitious endeavour we’ve embarked on in 20 years”, Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, explains the prize “aims to be several things at once: An award that will champion future classics written for children; a social intervention designed to inspire more young people to read; and a seed from which we hope future generations of lifelong readers will grow”.

We’re at a time where the number of children reading for pleasure is in decline. A 2024 Children’s Books Ireland report showed that a quarter of children aged 13-18 do not read for pleasure.

“We’ve come to a time where the current crop of children are less likely to read for pleasure than ever before,” Wood says. 

“And if we allow that thread to be broken, we will have done them a huge disservice.”

Forde says that if a love of reading is instilled in children at an early age “they become readers”.

“It’s like riding a bike. They know what it is, so they will come back to it,” she says. 

“But if they miss that window, and they’ve become teenagers without learning that books are pleasurable, it’s much harder for them.”

This prize is an acknowledgement that children’s literature is world class and that’s hugely important because we need people to write for children.

Averbuch, who writes what’s called ‘middle-grade’ fiction, the genre being celebrated in the Children’s Booker Prize, says the genre is full of “excellent literature”.

“What do we mean by excellent literature? We’re talking beautiful at the sentence level,” she says. 

“We’re talking creative, you know, comparisons and descriptions. We’re talking about characters who are absolutely human. You don’t think that they’re fictional characters. The settings are vivid.

“So this is what we mean by literary excellence. The best thing I ever did for my writer’s craft was read hundreds of contemporary middle grade novels, and the standard is absolutely phenomenal.”

Of course, Irish authors have long been recognised in international literary prizes and the Booker Prize in particular. 

Irish Booker Prize winners

Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, and John Banville have all won, and recently Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song won in 2023 — that same year, another Irish author Paul Murray was shortlisted with The Bee Sting.

This talent doesn’t stop at adult fiction though, according to Parkinson-Bennett, who says there is “terrific talent working in children’s books in Ireland”.

Irish publishers have a “really strong record of winning prizes and getting on major shortlists in the UK and the US”. 

This, he says, demonstrates that Irish children’s books compete well internationally and are “punching way above our weight”.

“I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised to see one or more Irish books on the Children’s Booker shortlist over the first few years of the prize,” he says.