The search has begun for young readers to judge the inaugural Children’s Booker Prize.
Three children will select the winning book with the adult judging panel of Lolly Adefope, Sanchita Basu De Sarkar and Frank Cottrell-Boyce – also announced on Tuesday.
Entries are invited on the Booker Prizes website from parents, carers and teachers on behalf of their children, pupils and young people.
The new annual prize will celebrate the best contemporary fiction for children aged eight to 12 years old, written in or translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.
The first winner will be announced in February 2027.
Children’s author and screenwriter Cottrell-Boyce is the current children’s laureate and the inaugural chair of judges for the prize.
He is joined on the judging panel by Ghosts actress and writer Adefope and award-winning children’s bookseller and owner of the Children’s Bookshop in north London’s Muswell Hill, Basu De Sarkar.
The trio will select a shortlist of eight books to be announced on November 24, and three child judges aged between eight to 12 years old and living in the UK will join the adults in choosing the winning book.
Youngsters will be asked to share why they would like to be a Children’s Booker Prize judge and answer questions about books and reading.
Entries for the first round close on June 2 and the three child judges will be announced alongside the shortlist on November 24.
Cottrell-Boyce said: “I’ve been asked to find three book-loving kids to join me in judging the first ever Children’s Booker Prize.
“Whether you’ve read one book this year or 100; whether you love comic books or big thick chapter books; books with loads of pictures, books with no pictures; it doesn’t matter, you could be exactly the judge that we’re looking for.”
The Children’s Booker Prize is the first major new prize from the Booker Prize Foundation in two decades, and is being launched at a time when children’s reading for pleasure is reportedly at its lowest in 20 years.
The foundation will also gift 30,000 copies of the shortlisted and winning books with the aim of engaging and growing a “new generation of readers by championing the best children’s fiction from writers around the world”.
As with the Booker Prize and International Booker Prize, the shortlisted authors will each receive £2,500 and the winning author £50,000.
Adefope said she was a “voracious reader” as a child.
“Much like film and television, the opportunity to be lost within and consumed by a new world is one that should be encouraged for children everywhere. I can’t wait to get started,” she added.
Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, said: “This new prize is underpinned by a social mission: to create future generations of lifelong readers.
“We feel confident that we can enthuse children if we are armed with the very best.
“By ‘best’, we mean books that readers will love, books that can be read over and over again or enjoyed just once.
“Books that contain great characters, emotion, wit, action, adventure, imagination, magic. Books that take readers to other places – in the world, in their minds or in their hearts.
“Now we have three phenomenal adult judges at the ready: the trailblazing children’s book author, screenwriter and champion of children’s rights Frank Cottrell-Boyce; the brilliant actor and comedian Lolly Adefope, adored for her performance as Kitty in Ghosts; and Sanchita Basu De Sarkar, esteemed owner of the nation’s oldest children’s bookshop and rarely out of a primary school assembly.
“Perhaps most exciting of all: we’re ready to invite children to enter our nationwide competition to become one of three child judges.”
