Sheffield Children's Book Award

The Sheffield Children’s Book Award began in 1988. The project was first started to encourage children and young people to read and also to highlight the very best children’s books published each year. 

 

In the first year just 6 local schools took part and this number has grown every year to a total of 192 school groups in 2008. To involve so many children we rely on the kind support of the publishing houses involved and also our sponsors.

 

Each school chooses a book category for the class and they are given a start up pack of ideas along with a collection of books to read and review. Each child is asked to vote for their favourite book and these votes are then collated over the summer. Results are kept a closely guarded secret until the Award Ceremony in November.

Children involved in the project are invited to the Award Ceremony along with all Shortlisted Authors, Illustrators and representatives from the Publishing Houses.

 

Prizes are presented to category winners with the Overall Winner receiving a special trophy to keep for that year.

 

This year children and young people were able to get involved by borrowing the books from their local library and either filling in a voting form in the library or by voting on line. 

 

The Event has grown each year and is now recognised as a major Children’s Book Award in the Literary world.

 

The results of the 2008 project were announced at a special Award Ceremony to mark the 20th anniversary of the project at Sheffield City Hall on the 24th November 2008. All schools involved were invited to attend together with many of the shortlist authors, illustrators and publishers. The guests speaker at this event was Children's Laureate Michael Rosen.

 

For more information take a look at these pages: