In its second year, the award once again is looking to ‘celebrate excellence’ in children’s writing, with all Channel Island children in years five, six and seven invited to nominate their favourite book published in 2019.
To cast your vote, go to this website.
The Award was set up to help children develop a love of reading for pleasure. Any book in any genre can be nominated, so long as it was published in English this year, is a standalone novel or the first in a series, and was written by an author from the UK, Ireland or Channel Islands.
Nominations are open until the end of the year. After that, all eligible books will be whittled down by a panel of judges into a final shortlist. Schools will discuss and review the shortlisted titles, and children will pick their favourite book and vote for it on the website.
The winner will be announced at a special ceremony at the Guille-Allès Library in September 2020.
Adam Bayfield, Head of Marketing at the Guille-Allès Library: “There are so many book awards out there, but we hope this one holds a special appeal for Channel Island children because they can have a say in the outcome. Fourteen books were nominated last year – it would be great to beat that this time around!”
Juliet Bousfield, Marketing & Public Relations at Ravenscroft: “Ravenscroft is delighted to continue its support of the Channel Island Children’s Book Award. We hope the process of nominating and voting will encourage young people to read more extensively, and to discover authors and genres new to them.”
The Award is a joint initiative between Guernsey’s Guille-Allès Library and the Jersey Public Library. It ran for the first time in 2019, with Katherine Rundell’s book ‘The Explorer’ – about a group of children who crash-land in the Amazon jungle – announced as the winner in June.
Pictured top: The Guilles-Alles Library.