UKLA was delighted to welcome teacher judges from Cardiff and Gloucestershire to their awards ceremony on July 6th. It was their 10th birthday, and over 500 teachers from across the UK have now had the opportunity to be judges in the ONLY national award for books for children and young people chosen by teachers.
The judges this year chose:
3-6 years: 'Colin and Lee, Carrot and Pea' by debut author Morag Hood, finding it 'very simple; very funny yet with pathos; cleverly written to develop empathy and show the key values of friendship.'
12-16+ years: 'We Come Apart' by Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan. Judges were impressed by the 'free verse which allowed the characters to come alive and enabled the dialogue to read convincingly.'
For the first time ever, teacher judges chose a fiction winner and information text winner for 7-11 years: 'Welcome to Nowhere' by Elizabeth Laird and 'Lesser Spotted Animals' by Martin Brown.