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Lizzie Huxley-Jones and Lex Croucher longlisted for Branford Boase award
The Branford Boase Award has announced the longlist for its 25th year including fantasy adventures, detective stories and YA romances with various indies recognised alongside the bigger publishing houses.
Authors such as Lizzie Huxley-Jones, Ayaan Mohamud and Lex Croucher are nominated as are editors including Puffin’s Ruth Knowles and Ali Dougal of Simon & Schuster UK.
The prize is delivered in partnership with the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society and supported by Walker Books, celebrating the most promising book for seven-year-olds and upwards.
It recognises a first-time children’s novelist and also highlights the importance of the editor in the development of new authors. The shortlisted authors may have published other books in another genre – for example, poetry or a picture book – but eligibility for the prize requires that this is their first children’s novel.
For the fourth consecutive year, over 60 books were submitted, more than three times the number in 2000, and from 30 different publishing houses.
Reflecting current trends in writing for children and young people, the longlist of 25 features three verse novels, detective stories, YA romances and original new fantasy adventures while organisers said “issues of identity and modern life are also explored in contemporary dramas”.
Chair of the judges and co-founder of the Branford Boase Award Julia Eccleshare said: “We are delighted to be celebrating 25 years of the Branford Boase Award as it continues to highlight the most talented new writers for children and the editors who support them.
“We’re excited that this year’s longlist features a particularly wide variety of voices and stories, all freshly told. It demonstrates the vibrancy of current children’s literature and is an inspiring memorial to the work of Henrietta Branford and Wendy Boase, in whose names the award was established 20 years ago.”
This year’s judges are Christine Pillainayagam, author and winner of the 2023 Branford Boase Award, Emily Drabble, head of children’s books promotion and prizes at BookTrust, former School Librarian of the Year Lucas Maxwell and Amy McKay, also a past UK School Librarian of the Year. The judging panel will be chaired by Eccleshare.
The shortlist will be announced on 25th April and the winner will be announced on 11th July at an awards ceremony at Centre for Literacy in Primary Education in London.
The Branford Boase Award was set up in 2000 in memory of the outstanding and prize-winning author Henrietta Branford and Wendy Boase, editorial director and one of the founders of Walker Books.
Running alongside the Branford Boase Award, the Henrietta Branford Writing Competition encourages writing talent in under 18s. It will open on 6th February.
The 2024 Branford Boase Award longlist in full:
- Montgomery Bonbon: Murder at the Museum by Alasdair Beckett-King, illusrated by Claire Powell, edited by Gráinne Clear (Walker Books)
- Glow Up, Lara Bloom by Dee Benson, edited by Ruth Bennett (Hot Key Books)
- Gwen and Art are NOT in Love by Lex Croucher, edited by Hannah Sandford (Bloomsbury)
- Finding Phoebe by Gavin Extence, edited by Chloe Sackur (Andersen Press)
- Digging for Victory by Cathy Faulkner, edited by Leonie Lock (Firefly Press)
- Crossing the Line by Tia Fisher, edited by Emma Matthewson supported by Tia Albert (Hot Key Books)
- The Final Year by Matt Goodfellow, illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton, edited by Charlotte Hacking (Otter-Barry Books)
- How Far We’ve Come by Joyce Efia Harmer, edited by Lucy Pearse (Simon & Schuster UK)
- Vivi Conway and the Sword of Legend by Lizzie Huxley-Jones, edited by Eishar Brar (Knights Of)
- The First Move by Jenny Ireland, edited by Ruth Knowles with Sara Jafari (Penguin Books)
- The Detention Detectives by Lis Jardine, edited by Katie Sinfield and Millie Lean (Puffin)
- Safiyyah’s War by Hiba Noor Khan, edited by Eloise Wilson (Andersen Press)
- Steady for This by Nathanael Lessore, edited by Ella Whiddett and Ruth Bennett (Hot Key Books)
- The Swifts by Beth Lincoln, illustrated Claire Powell, edited by Ben Horslen and Julie Strauss-Gabel (Puffin)
- You Think You Know Me by Ayaan Mohamud, edited by Sarah Stewart (Usborne)
- The Kingdom Over the Sea by Zohra Nabi, edited by Ali Dougal (Simon & Schuster UK)
- Last Girl In by Cheryl Diane Parkinson, edited by Sonya McGilchrist (Dinosaur Books)
- City of Stolen Magic by Nazneen Ahmed Pathak, edited by Natalie Doherty and India Chambers (Puffin)
- The Destiny of Minou Moonshine by Gita Ralleigh, edited by Lauren Atherton (Zephyr)
- The Witchstone Ghosts by Emily Randall-Jones, edited by Rachel Leyshon (Chicken House)
- Influential by Amara Sage, edited by Alice Swan (Faber)
- Yomi and the Fury of Ninki Nanka by Davina Tijani, illustrated by Adam Douglas-Bagley, edited by Mattie Whitehead and Karelle Tobias (Little Tiger)
- Greenwild by Pari Thomson, illustrated by Elisa Paganelli, edited by Emma Jones (Macmillan)
- The Sleeping Stones by Beatrice Wallbank, edited by Janet Thomas and Rebecca F John (Firefly Press)
- Never Trust a Gemini by Freja Nicole Woolf, edited by Non Pratt (Walker Books)
