{"id":327631,"date":"2025-10-23T23:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T23:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/327631\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T23:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T23:06:11","slug":"the-childrens-booker-prize-will-tell-kids-that-they-matter-booker-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/327631\/","title":{"rendered":"The Children\u2019s Booker prize will tell kids that they matter | Booker prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of the movie Ratatouille, the food reviewer Anton Ego, voiced by Peter O\u2019Toole, makes this beautiful defence of the art of the critic: \u201cThere are times when a critic truly risks something. That is in the discovery and defence of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.\u201d The Booker prize<\/a> has been a friend to the new \u2013 new voices, new names, new ways of telling a story \u2013 for 56 years. It has made household names of writers whose work might otherwise only have been enjoyed by a few. More importantly \u2013 especially since the launch of the International Booker in 2005 \u2013 it has helped broaden the horizons of readers.<\/p>\n

Jamie Smart\u2019s Bunny vs Monkey. Illustration: David Fickling Books<\/p>\n

Now there\u2019s going to be a Booker prize for children\u2019s books aimed at readers aged eight to 12, and I am going to be the first chair of judges. Despite my vast vocabulary, I can\u2019t begin to tell you how hopeful this makes me. Because if the Children\u2019s Booker brings the same energy and boldness to the world of children\u2019s books, it\u2019s going to make a real difference to the lives of thousands of children. It comes at a crucial moment. Everyone knows that children who read for pleasure do better educationally and emotionally. Yet \u2013 as we approach the government\u2019s Year of Reading \u2013 we find ourselves in a situation where the number of children who read daily has dropped to a 20-year low<\/a>. We risk losing a whole generation.<\/p>\n

Every child deserves the chance to grow up to be a reader. For that to happen, every child has to have the opportunity to find and choose the book that speaks to them. Current children\u2019s fiction is a wild party of invention \u2013 from Jamie Smart\u2019s Bunny vs Monkeys to Katherine Rundell\u2019s arcane Impossible Creatures and Christopher Edge\u2019s terrifying Escape Rooms. There is something here for everyone. But you need to be invited. By bringing coverage, controversy and above all conversation to the party, the Children\u2019s Booker prize will throw open the doors and shout: come on in! Most of all because of this brilliant notion: children on the judging committee.<\/p>\n

Obviously for me \u2013 as chair of the judges \u2013 this is a terrifying prospect. Will I get a nickname? Will they test me on the six-seven meme<\/a>? But for children, this is a thrilling call to get involved. Above all I\u2019m delighted that the programme is going to involve gifting books to thousands of children who would not otherwise have access to them.<\/p>\n

Katherine Rundell\u2019s Impossible Creatures. Photograph: Bloomsbury<\/p>\n

We have no idea what kind of world we are sending our children into. We don\u2019t know what work will look like, what communication will look like, even what relationships will look like. But we do know that they will need to know how to be happy. Reading \u2013 especially shared reading \u2013 really helps build the apparatus of happiness inside a child.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re reading this, I\u2019m willing to bet that as a child you looked for Narnia in the back of every wardrobe, or squinted down each side road hoping for a glimpse of Diagon Alley. By and large it\u2019s in books that we first hear that call from life that says wonder and pain and love and adventure are out there waiting for us. There are solid neurological reasons why books are best at this. We control the speed of input. We are exploring possibilities.<\/p>\n

I became a children\u2019s writer after an encounter with the Swiss author and activist Mariella Mehr. She had been brought up in care, in a series of brutal and brutalising institutions. But from the youngest age she had kicked against them. I asked her why. How did she know there might be more to life \u2013 that she deserved better? I\u2019ve never forgotten her reply: \u201cI read Heidi.\u201d In my travels I meet children who are imprisoned like her \u2013 not by walls but by ideas about class, race, gender. I never stop believing that there are stories out there that can dynamite those walls. If the Children\u2019s Booker prize gets that kind of dynamite into a few more children\u2019s hands, then I don\u2019t care how many bad names my fellow judges call me.<\/p>\n

Our children have borne the brunt of a series of crises including austerity and the pandemic. Perhaps the most important thing about the Children\u2019s Booker is the signal that it sends to children. The signal that says: you matter. We owe them this.<\/p>\n

Frank Cottrell-Boyce<\/a> is the Waterstones Children\u2019s Laureate 2024-2026 and Chair of judges for the Children\u2019s Booker prize 2027. Details on how children can apply to be judges will be announced in spring 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the end of the movie Ratatouille, the food reviewer Anton Ego, voiced by Peter O\u2019Toole, makes this…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":327632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-327631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115425993382613763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}