We’re so pleased to announce that Jenny Valentine’s Us in the Before and After has been longlisted for a 2025 Carnegie Medal for Writing.

The UK’s longest-running and best-loved children’s book awards, The Carnegies are organised by CILIP, the UK’s library and information association, and are uniquely judged by librarians. The Carnegie Medal for Writing is awarded to a book written in English for children and young people that sparks an outstanding reading experience.

The shortlist will be announced on 11th March 2025 and the ceremony to award the winners will take place on 19th June. See the full longlist here.

Australian debut author Sophie Clark has become an instant bestseller with the first in her romantasy duology, Cruel is the Light. The FairyLoot YA subscription box pick for January 2025, it moved 13,303 physical copies in its first half-week according to Nielsen, coming top of the Children’s & YA chart and second overall, topped only by Rebecca Yarros’s Onyx Storm.

An early draft of the novel was originally selected for a mentorship position with #PitchWars on Twitter. A bold and sweeping romantasy set in a demon-infested alternate Europe, elite soldier and exorcist Selene Alleva finds herself joining forces with foot soldier Jules Lacroix to unearth a terrible secret at the heart of the holy Vatican City.

Sophie Clark is represented by Josh Adams at Adams Literary, and Christabel McKinley  in the UK and Australia. Please contact Adams Literary for film/TV rights queries.

Helen Comerford, a graduate of DHA’s Open Day initiative for writers from under-represented backgrounds, is in the running for two major children’s book awards for her debut YA novel, The Love Interest.

Published last July by Bloomsbury, The Love Interest is a witty take on the superhero trope that immediately casts female characters as a mere supporting role. When danger comes to Nine Trees, Jenna doesn’t want to wait for the new superhero, Blaze, to save everyone – it’s her hometown, and she’s going to do it herself. She’s not going to listen to the male, stale and pale Heroics Power Authority, or the carnivorous media zealots, OR her disapproving family – and she’s not going to get distracted by Blaze. Even with those dimples…

We are incredibly proud to see The Love Interest recently nominated for the Carnegie Medal and longlisted for the Branford Boase Award. We look forward to what comes next, including the release of the sequel The Hero Complex this coming July.

Simon & Schuster Children’s Books has secured a new deal with award-winning author Jenny Valentine, for a new series of middle grade diaries, as well as a young adult novel.

Managing director Rachel Denwood acquired world rights in all languages from Veronique Baxter. The books will be illustrated by Hannah McCaffery.

The first book in the series, The Unfamous Diaries of Daisy Brewster: The Frenemies, will publish in paperback on 3 July this year, followed by two more instalments in 2026. Valentine’s previous books with Simon & Schuster, the Joy series and Us in the Before and After, have been widely acclaimed and sold in 11 languages.

Daisy Brewster is a girl with resolutions. She is determined to be her best self and get a good part in the school play. Everyone knows Daisy is a talented actor. But not everyone knows about her super celebrity cousin, who is already breaking hearts and winning contracts on the world stage.

Maxxy Bloom is a child star in Hollywood, with A-List friends, a million followers and a glamorous, lavish lifestyle. Things are about to change in all sorts of ways when she comes to stay at Daisy’s house.

Daisy fears the worst, for her routine, her personal space, her popularity and her own dramatic ambitions. But the real Maxxy Bloom turns out to be a big surprise, and Daisy’s very unfamous life has an unexpected effect on her guest.

Told through Daisy’s private diary, this is a story about family, ambition and how nice it is NOT to be famous.

Valentine said: “It has been a total joy to write Daisy’s diaries. From day one, she leaped off the page with her dry sense of humour and keen eye for life’s little details. She is smart and ambitious, kind and observant, funny and honest. I can’t wait for readers to meet her.”

Beloved children’s book author Martin Waddell has been announced as the recipient of the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards ‘Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award’.

Martin is the first children’s writer to receive the award, and is one of the most popular and beloved authors in the genre. With more than one hundred books to his credit and 25 million books sold worldwide, he is one of the most prolific and successful children’s writers. He is best known for Owl Babies, illustrated by Patrick Benson, and the Little Bear books, illustrated by Barbara Firth.

As the 2024 Lifetime Achievement honouree, Martin Waddell will join a host of other distinguished recipients including Sebastian Barry, Colm Tóibín, Maeve Binchy, Edna O’Brien, Anne Enright and Professor Roy Foster. The award was presented on 27th November at the 2024 awards ceremony in The Convention Centre, Dublin.

We are thrilled to see DHA so strongly represented by our children’s writers at The Week Junior Book Awards 2024. Jonathan Emmett was awarded Children’s Animals and Nature Book of the Year for The Tyrannosaur’s Feathers, illustrated by Stieven Van der Poorten (UCLan) and duo Laura Mucha and Ed Smith were awarded Book of the Year in the Non-Fiction category for Welcome to Our Table: A Celebration of What Children Eat Everywhere, illustrated by Harriet Lynas (Nosy Crow).

Among the shortlists were Catherine Rayner for her illustrations on The Bowerbird, text by Julia Donaldson (Macmillan) and Nikita Gill, whose work Animal Tales from India: Ten Stories from the Panchatantra with illustrations from Chaaya Prabhat (Nosy Crow) was shortlisted for both Children’s Audiobook for the Year and Children’s Book Cover of the Year, with the cover design by Manda Scott.

On the prize, Editorial director of The Week Junior, Anna Bassi said: “We’re delighted to honour these incredible books and their power to bring pleasure to children through words, pictures, ideas and imagination. The line-up boasts extraordinary stories, compelling characters, fascinating facts, incredible illustrations and useful advice. With awards for both fiction and non-fiction and subjects spanning everything from dinosaurs to the digestive system, there is something here for every young reader – even those who say they don’t like reading.”

We are so pleased to announce that Skrimsli by Nicola Davies, Move Like Water by Hannah Stowe, and The Panda’s Child by Jackie Morris and Cathy Fisher are on the Wainwright Prize longlists.

The Wainwright Prize was created in Alfred Wainwright’s name to showcase the growing genre of nature-writing in publishing and to celebrate and encourage exploration of the outdoors to all readers. With this year’s longlist, The Wainwright Prize hopes to provide a platform to bring many of the issues covered in the longlist to the forefront of political discourse.

The Panda’s Child and Skrimsli have been longlisted for the Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation Prize, while Move Like Water has been longlisted for the Writing on Conservation Prize.

On this year’s longlist, the Prize Director Alastair Giles, said: “As we enter The Wainwright Prize’s second decade, the necessity to showcase and celebrate the very best of Nature and Conservation Writing has only strengthened. Although the plight of nature has never been more troubling, we have also witnessed a wave of enthusiasm from readers over the past few years, and we hope that The Wainwright Prize can fulfil its role to motivate people to reconnect with the environment, both physically and intellectually. We can’t wait to find out which books from our 2024 longlists will be shortlisted later this summer before we choose our eventual winners.’

The Prize’s shortlists will be announced on 15th August, and the winners will be announced on Wednesday 11th September at the Camley Street Natural Park.

Nicola Davies and Catherine Rayner have both been shortlisted for YOTO Carnegie Medals for their respective books Choose Love and The Bowerbird. 

Shortlisted for the medal in writing, Choose Love is a moving sequence of poems highlighting the experience of those forced to become refugees.  With superb illustrations by Petr Horáček, the collection provides insight into the real-life experiences of refugees forced to leave their homes.

The Bowerbird is the irresistible tale of Bert – a small bird with a very big heart and has been shortlisted for the medal in illustration. Written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Catherine Rayner, the book is a wonderful rhyming tale perfect for children.

The ceremony to announce the winners will take place on 20 June 2024. See the full shortlists here.

We’re delighted to see Laura Mucha and Michael Morpurgo on the The Ruth Rendell 2024 shortlist.

The Ruth Rendell Award was launched by ALCS and The National Literacy Trust and recognises an writer or author who has had the most significant influence on literacy in the UK over the past year. Previous winners include Andy McNab and Cressida Cowell, and the winner will be announced at a reception at Goldsmiths’ Centre in London on 22 February 2024.

On Laura Mucha’s work, the judges said: ‘Laura’s sensitivity is extraordinary and she is deeply committed to what she is doing. Thinking about the vulnerability of young people’s mental health at the moment, her work is so important.’

On Michael Morpurgo, judges said: ‘Michael is a fantastic ambassador for literacy. He is so passionate about libraries and he really puts the work in with trying to enact change.’

Congratulations to Nikita Gill on being longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023 in the Children’s and YA category for her empowering, feminist YA poetry collection These Are the Words, out now with Macmillan Children’s Books.

First awarded in March 2017, the Jhalak Prize and its new sister award Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize founded in 2020, seek to celebrate books by British/British resident BAME writers.