Dawson, Lawrence and Shah shortlisted for Little Rebels Award

Children’s books by Juno Dawson and Laura Hughes, Patrice Lawrence and Varsha Shah have been shortlisted for the Little Rebels Award 2023.

The £2,000 prize, which celebrates children’s fiction that highlights social justice issues, is run by Housmans Bookshop and Letterbox Library and is awarded by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers.

Seven titles have been shortlisted for the award, including the picture book You Need to Chill! (Farshore) by Dawson and Hughes and Ajay and the Mumbai Sun (Chicken House Books) by Shah.

The 2021 winner, A M Dassu, joins them on the shortlist – which was chosen from 140 submitted titles – with Fight Back (Scholastic). Annemarie Anang and Natelle Quek are nominated for the first time with their book I Am Nefertiti (Five Quills). Also featured on the shortlisted are: Lisette Auton with The Secret of Haven Point (Puffin), Lawrence with Needle (Barrington Stoke) and Elys Dolan, who was shortlisted for the award in 2018, with Mayor Bunny’s Chocolate Town (Oxford University Press).

Last year’s winner, with Proud of Me (Usborne), Sarah Hagger Holt said: “Sometimes I feel powerless and alone. The distance I see between the world around me and the world I would like to see seems vast. Yet every single, wonderful book that is put forward for the Little Rebels Award seeks to bridge this distance. Winning the Little Rebels Award last year – for a story about a bunch of queer kids and allies finding each other, defending what matters to them and learning to value themselves, their families and each other – encouraged me to keep on writing stories and to keep on speaking out. We are not powerless. We are not alone.”

Dassu said: “If there was one award I wanted to win it was this one, not just because I am a rebel at heart but also because it raises the profile of books that are different. And I want to write books that challenge the status quo, make us think and question the state of society and our place in it.”

This year’s judges are: Gays The Word manager Jim MacSweeney; author-illustrator Emily Haworth-Booth; reading development and children’s book consultant Jake Hope and research and development director at the Centre for Literature in Primary Education Farrah Serroukh.

The 2023 Little Rebels Award winner will be announced at an evening ceremony in July.