Jamie Smart wins Illustrator of the Year at the The Lollies Awards 2024

Jamie Smart, author of the Bunny vs Monkey series has won Best Laugh Out Loud Illustrator of the Year at the The Lollies Awards 2024.

Scholastic UK, which runs the awards, announced the winners across multiple categories at a ceremony at the Southbank Centre in London. 

The awards were hosted by author, actor and presenter Stephen Mangan to an audience of excited children, authors, illustrators and many from the world of publishing.

The Lollies celebrates the UK’s funniest books and is one of the few awards where the winners are voted for by children.

Other guest stars from children’s books and television including Lollies’ ambassador Michael Rosen, Martin Brown, Anita Mangan, Ella McLeod, Shini Muthukrishnan, Axel Scheffler, George Webster and CBeebies’ Dodge the Dog (puppeteer Warrick Brownlow-Pike).

Scholastic ran a competition for schools to attend the event which supports reading for pleasure, More than 170 children filled the theatre. As well as being named Illustrator of the Year, Smart’s Bunny vs Monkey: Machine Mayhem! (David Fickling Books) was also named Best Laugh Out Loud Book, Ages 6-8. 

Winning authors and illustrators will have the opportunity to appear in a public Lollies show at Imagine Festival in February 2025.

Michael Rosen said: “This is the moment when you can boost children’s love of reading: a brand new tranche of funny books, hitting the button, triggering giggles and laughs.”

Catherine Bell, m.d. of Scholastic UK, said: “We are delighted to see another outpouring of love and admiration for funny books. We know from our own research that 63% of children would self-select a funny book as a read for pleasure title and, in a world where we are experiencing a reading crisis, celebrating the books that children really want to read can only be a good thing. Long live the Lollies and long live the amazing authors and illustrators delivering these books."