National Theatre book wins SLA award

A children’s book about the National Theatre has been announced as the overall winner of the School Library Association (SLA)’s Information Book Award 2016.

The National Theatre, written by Marina McIntyre and published by Walker Books, was given the overall award after winning the prize in the over-12 category earlier in the evening.

The winner of the 0-7 prize was Fabulous Frogs by Margin Jenkins and Tim Hopgood, also published by Walker, whilst If… by David J Smith and Steve Adams (Wayland) won the 7-12 prize. If… also won the ‘Children’s Choice' gong, which is voted for by young readers.

The SLA awards, sponsored by Hachette, are given every year to the best non-fiction titles for children.

Chris Brown, chair of the judges, said: “Among the books submitted for the awards we found an abundance of superb books, covering a broad range of subjects. As judges we found this to be a really difficult year in arriving at a reasonable number of titles for our shortlists, and an even greater challenge in making final decisions. It is so gratifying to see so many publishers producing high-quality information-based books for young readers.”