Booker launches children's award

The Booker Prize Foundation has launched a major new literary award, the Children's Booker prize, offering £50,000 for the best fiction written for readers aged eight to 12.

- Emma Loffhagen

The new award will launch in 2026, with the first winner announced in early 2027. The prize will be awarded by a panel of adult and child judges, a first for a Booker award. The inaugural chair will be Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the children's author and current children's laureate.

He will be joined by two other adult judges, who will help select a shortlist of eight books before three child judges are recruited to help decide the winner.

The Booker Prize Foundation will also gift 30,000 copies of shortlisted and winning books to children each year, working with partners including the National Literacy Trust, The Reading Agency, Bookbanks and the Children’s Book Project.

The initiative comes amid reports that children's reading for pleasure has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years.

Cottrell-Boyce said the award would make it easier for children to discover books they enjoyed. "Every child deserves the chance to experience the happiness that diving into a great book can bring," he said. "By inviting them to the judging table and by gifting copies of the nominated books, it will bring thousands more children into the wonderful world of reading. It's going to be - as they say absolute scenes in there," he added.