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Costa Children’s Book Award Judges Announced

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The 2016 CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD will be judged by:

Cressida Cowell
Author-Illustrator
Cressida Cowell has written and illustrated twelve books in the popular How to Train Your Dragon series which has sold over 7 million copies worldwide, and is published in 38 languages. How to Train Your Dragon is also an awardwinning DreamWorks film series, and a TV series shown on CBBC and Netflix. Also the author of picture books, Cressida has won the NestleChildren’s Book Prize and has been shortlisted for many others. Last year she won Philosophy Now Magazine’s Award for Contributions in the Fight Against Stupidity. She has been an Ambassador for the National Literacy Trust for ten years.

Anna James
Writer and Journalist
Anna James started her career as a secondary school librarian, working with 11-18 year olds in the Midlands. In 2014 she moved to London to take up a role as Book News Editor at The Bookseller, the trade publishing magazine. At the end of 2015 she left to pursue a freelance career; working as the Literary Editor for ELLE UK, contributing to several other outlets including The Pool and chairing literary events at bookshops and festivals. She is also a children’s and YA literary scout for Sylvie Zannier and makes YouTube videos about books at A Case For Books. She was a judge for the Blue Peter Children’s Book Award in 2015.

Steven Pryse
Director, Pickled Pepper Books
Steven studied Cultural Studies in Birmingham before becoming a bookseller at Waterstones. Following extensive travel and work around the world, he embarked on an eight-year career as a youth worker and managed membership and a youth forum for the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services. In 2012 Steven and his partner Urmi opened Pickled Pepper Books, a specialist children’s bookstore in Crouch End, North London. Steven is a member of the BA Children’s Booksellers Group and has previously been a judge for Independent Booksellers Week.

Gillian Anderson joins Oscar’s First Book judges

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Actress Gillian Anderson will be on the judging panel for this year’s Oscar’s First Book Prize, which awards the best first book for children aged five or under published in 2014.

The £5,000 prize was set up by the Evening Standard last year in memory of Oscar Ashton, the son of the paper’s executive editor and columnist James Ashton, who died in 2012 at the age of three-and-a-half from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It is sponsored by Waitrose.

Anderson joins Dame Marjorie Scardino, former c.e.o. of Pearson, Rupert Thomas, marketing director of Waitrose, and Oscar’s parents, James Ashton and Viveka Alvestrand, on this year’s panel of judges.

via Gillian Anderson joins Oscar’s First Book judges | The Bookseller.

Daily Telegraph Report – Booktrust Best Book Awards 2014

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Martin Chilton’s report in the Telegraph from yesterday’s inaugural Booktrust Best Book Awards (“proudly supported by Kindle”) – my own summary to follow.

I hovered in the vicinity of the Telegraph’s ‘Culture Editor online’ once or twice hoping to get a chat to him and give him a thumbs-up, pat-on-the-back, hi-5 or whatever for the coverage he gives to children’s and young adult books. But, being one of the judges himself, and (as this report reveals) one of the small group who will decide the winner of the first Lifetime Achievement Award (for children’s literature) he was much in demand.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/children_sbookreviews/10937861/Booktrust-Best-Book-Awards-2014-winners-announced.html

Booktrust Best Book Awards with Amazon Kindle Judges Announced

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Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, Bake Off host Mel Giedroyc and Made in Chelsea’s Andy Jordan are amongst the judges for the inaugural Booktrust Best Book Awards with Amazon Kindle

BookTrust has announced the judging panel for the inaugural Booktrust Best Book Awards with Amazon Kindle.

The panel includes the current Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, Apprentice star Tom Pellereau and Made in Chelsea’s Andy Jordan.

Tom Pellereau will be judging the 0-5 years category,  assited by literary scout John McLay and author and illustrator Lauren Child in while TV presenters Cerrie Burnell and Andy Akinwolere will judge the 6-8 group, alongside the Guardian’s children’s books editor Julia Eccleshare. 

Mel Giedroyc will be the award ceremony host and will also be judging the 9-11 category alongside Blue Peter’s Helen Skelton, DJ and radio presenter Nemone Metaxas, and  Assistant Headteacher and school librarian Andy Lancaster.

The oldest age group, the 12-14s, will be judged by children’s book reviewer Amanda Craig, author Louise Rennison, and Made in Chelsea star Andy Jordan.

To reflect how reading has embraced the digital era, there will also be a technology award that will celebrate the best innovations in online literature. Tech journalist Stuart Dredge will assist Amanda Craig and Cerrie Burnell in deciding this award.

The panel will now go into bookworm mode, reading their assigned categories’ long list, to create a shortlist that will be announced on 27 March. Children across the country will then be invited to vote for the overall winners of each specific category. Sign up your school, library or  setting to take part.

Current and former Children’s Laureates – Malorie Blackman and Booktrust President Michael Morpurgo – will be deciding the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, alongside the Daily Telegraph’s culture editor Martin Chilton and Booktrust’s CEO Viv Bird.

via Judges announced for the Booktrust Best Book Awards with Amazon Kindle | Booktrust.

One More Judge Than Usual For Man Booker 2014

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There will be one more judge than usual for the Man Booker Prize 2014.

A C Grayling will be the chair, and he will be joined by

  • Sarah Churchwell (Professor of American Literature at the University of East Anglia)
  • Erica Wagner (American journalist, previously literary editor for The Times)
  • Jonathan Bate (Oxford Professor of English Literature and biographer)
  • Dr Daniel Glaser (neuroscientist and cultural commentator)
  • Dr Alastair Niven (former Director of Literature at the British Council and at the Arts Council)

A C Grayling has been named as chairman of judges for next year’s Man Booker Prize, as the panel gains a new member to cope with the increased workload as a result of controversial new rules.
The Man Booker Prize will now be open to authors across the globe writing in English, meaning American writers will be in contention for the first time.
The inaugural judging panel, which could be responsible for the first prize winner from the US, has now been announced, with A C Grayling at its helm.
Grayling, who has previously worked on the 2003 panel, will be joined by five other judges; one more than usual in recognition of the increased challenge.

via Man Booker Prize 2014: AC Grayling to lead panel, with an extra judge to cope with new rules – Telegraph.

There is a problem with boys and books – and all-female prize panels aren’t helping

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The principle point/beef in this post – “the gatekeepers in the world of picture books are overwhelmingly female” – is difficult to gainsay and the fact that there will not be a single male perspective involved in the selection of the winning Greenaway title is only one small part of the situation which Emmett is trying to put out into the open.
Jake Hope, who takes issue with Emmett in the comments section beneath the blog post, is a tireless advocate of children’s books and loyal to his librarian background, but it would be interesting to hear from other male illustrators and picture book authors to see if they also feel their natural style is being cramped by a prevailing feminine sensibility within children’s book publishing that means “picture books with boy-friendly themes tend to be cuter and tamer than similarly themed TV shows, films or video games.”

All thirteen judges on this year’s Greenaway and Carnegie Medal panel are women. Last year there was only one man. Although there are plenty of men writing and illustrating picture books, the gatekeepers in the world of picture books are overwhelmingly female. If the full range of boys’ tastes aren’t represented, how can we expect them to take an interest?

via There is a problem with boys and books – and all-female prize panels aren't helping.

A.M. Homes wins 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction – Women’s Prize for Fiction

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American author A.M. Homes has won the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her sixth novel May We Be Forgiven (Granta).

2013 marks the eighteenth year of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, known from 1996 to 2012 as the Orange Prize for Fiction, which celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.

At an awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London – hosted by Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction board, Kate Mosse – the 2013 Chair of Judges, Miranda Richardson, presented the author with the £30,000 prize and the ‘Bessie’, a limited edition bronze figurine.  Both are anonymously endowed.

Miranda Richardson, Chair of Judges, said: “Our 2013 shortlist was exceptionally strong and our judges’ meeting was long and passionately argued, but in the end we agreed that May we be Forgiven is a dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy – a subversion of the American dream. This is a book we want to read again and give to our friends.”

via A.M. Homes wins 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction – Women’s Prize for Fiction.