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Scottish Book Trust makes changes to children’s prizes
Scottish Book Trust is replacing its annual Children’s Book Awards with two new prizes; the Bookbug Picture Book Prize and the Scottish Teenage Book Prize.
The Bookbug Picture Book Prize will be for children in nursery and Primary 1, 2 and 3 and will feature three picture books by Scottish authors on the shortlist. Pupils in Scotland will be sent the three books, then will vote on the shortlist.
The prize will launch on 31st August this year and the winners will be announced 12th January 2017.
The Scottish Teenage Book Prize will also shortlist Scottish novels, this time for teenagers. Secondary schools will vote for the winner, which will be announced 1st March 2017 (it opens for entries on the same date as the picture book prize).
The news comes after the Scottish government launched a reading initiative for primary school children in March, which will be run in conjunction with Scottish Book Trust. The First Minister’s Reading Challenge will set reading goals for all children in the upper primary age group (years four, five, six and seven).
The charity will therefore no longer run a book award for fiction for children aged 8-11.
In March this year Simon Puttock, Ross MacKenzie and Danny Weston were revealed as the winners of the 2016 Scottish Children’s Book Awards.
Puttock won the Bookbug Reader’s category (for readers aged three-seven) for his picture book Mouse’s First Night at Moonlight School, illustrated by Ali Pye (Nosy Crow), whilst MacKenzie was given the younger readers (eight-11) prize for his novel The Nowhere Emporium (Floris Books). Weston picked up the older readers category prize (12-16) for The Piper (Andersen Press).
