Spring has arrived with prize lists, new pledges, and many book-scene professionals and educators trying to make reading feel like it’s an obvious and logical lifestyle choice for children and teens.
The Carnegies announced their 2026 shortlists at the London Book Fair on Tuesday, 10 March. CILIP said themes of identity, belonging, relationships, and home run through both Medals, with innovation in form and a wide range of illustration styles.
Sixteen books made the cut, eight for the Carnegie Medal for Writing and eight for the Carnegie Medal for Illustration. The shortlists were selected from 37 longlisted titles by a judging panel of 14 children’s and youth librarians from CILIP’s Youth Libraries Group.
The writing shortlist includes Ghostlines by Katya Balen, Not Going to Plan by Tia Fisher, Popcorn by Rob Harrell, The Boy I Love by William Hussey, Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Tim Miller, Wolf Siren by Beth O’Brien, Twenty-Four Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds, and Birdie by J. P. Rose.
The illustration shortlist includes The Playdate by Clara Dackenberg, written by Uje Brandelius and translated by Nichola Smalley, The Endless Sea by Linh Dao, written by Chi Thai, Lord of the Flies: The Graphic Novel illustrated and adapted by Aimée de Jongh, written by William Golding, The Sleeper Train by Baljinder Kaur, written by Mick Jackson, Wildful by Kengo Kurimoto, Freedom Braids by Oboh Moses, written by Monique Duncan, The Paper Bridge by Seng Soun Ratanavanh, written by Joelle Veyrenc and translated by Katy Lockwood-Holmes, and Wiggling Words by Kate Rolfe.
CILIP highlighted two graphic novels on the illustration shortlist, including de Jongh’s adaptation of Lord of the Flies. It also noted the classic has recently been adapted for the BBC by screenwriter Jack Thorne, giving teachers another route into a text that still turns up in secondary classrooms.
The judges’ commentary on the shortlists ranges across mental health, grief, social class, racism and consent. CILIP also pointed to experimentation with verse and chronology in the writing list, and to techniques such as typography and kirigami in the illustration list.
The Carnegies will announce winners on Tuesday, 23 June at a live and streamed ceremony at the Cambridge Theatre. Catherine Rayner will host, and CILIP said the winners will each receive a medal and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize, with separate Shadowers’ Choice Medals voted for by young people.
For schools that want to take part, CILIP said Scholastic will donate shortlist packs to 10 schools in disadvantaged areas so they can shadow the awards. Applications are due to open from 23 to 30 March, with packs sent out immediately afterwards.
The Federation of Children’s Book Groups, meanwhile, has named Jonathan Stroud as its inaugural patron. The FCBG – a voluntary, self-funded national organisation aiming to promote enjoyment and interest in children’s books and reading – encourages the availability of books for children of all ages.
Stroud will begin the patron role with a keynote at the FCBG annual conference in Reading in April, and an author and patron event at the first Wantage Children’s Book Festival in May. The press release also lists his series, including the Bartimaeus books, Lockwood & Co., and Scarlett and Browne.
FCBG has also unveiled the Top Ten shortlist for the 2026 Children’s Book Award, now in its 46th year. It described the prize as the only national children’s book award voted for entirely by young readers, with children across the UK invited to vote.
For younger children, the list includes Creepy Pair of Underwear! by Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown, Gozzle by Julia Donaldson and Sara Ogilvie, The Tortosaurus by Katie Cottle, and There’s a Shark in My Pants! by Michelle Harrison and David Tazzyman. For younger readers, it includes Murray and Bun! Murray the Pirate by Adam Stower, Pablo and Splash: Roman Holiday by Sheena Dempsey, and Supa Nova by Chanté Timothy.
For older readers, the list includes Fear Files: Hide and Seek by Christopher Edge and Mathias Ball, My Name is Samim by Fidan Meikle, and The Last Dragon on Mars by Scott Reintgen. FCBG said online voting will open on Monday, 23 March, with the deadline at 12 noon on Friday, 8 May, and winners announced on Saturday, 13 June at a ceremony that will be live-streamed.
A new Disability Inclusion and Accessibility hub was launched at The London Book Fair, putting disability and access work centre stage. Alex Strick and Beth Cox hosted a new Disability Inclusion and Accessibility hub at the fair, which ran from 10 to 12 March at Olympia London.
The hub, at stand 2D110, was set up as a base for organisations and charities focused on inclusion and access, including RNIB, ClearVision, Living Paintings, My Kind of Book, Inclusive Minds and Empathy Lab. The programme also included a Pop Up Book Clinic, offering 20-minute in-person consultations for children’s publishing staff and published authors or illustrators who want advice on inclusion and accessibility for a published or forthcoming title.
Another London Book Fair first came from authors Mel Taylor-Bessent, Emily Hamilton and Ian Eagleton, who introduced a SEND-Inclusive Publishing Pledge. The authors said they created a checklist of 12 ideas, and planned to challenge publishers to commit to at least three changes before the end of the National Year of Reading.
The pledge has support from the National Literacy Trust and the Fair Education Alliance, among others. Every Cherry is listed as an official collaborator offering training, support and the chance to work with publishers to create SEND versions of books.
Awards news has moved just as quickly. Lucy Strange won the Peters Children’s Book of the Year for 2026 with The Boy at the Window, published by Barrington Stoke, and the overall prize includes £1,000 worth of books from Peters to donate to a school or public library.
The Peters category winners included Neil Sharpson and Dan Santat for Don’t Trust Fish as picture book winner. Teen fiction went to Tamsin Winter for I Dare You, and non-fiction to Kate Winter for The Cave Explorer, a retelling of the discovery of the Lascaux cave paintings in 1940s France.
ALCS has now announced its annual award winners, with two honours tied to children’s books and literacy work. The ALCS Educational Writers’ Award went to This Book Will Make You an Artist by Ruth Millington, illustrated by Ellen Surrey and published by Nosy Crow.
ALCS said the award is for educational writing that inspires creativity, encourages students to read widely, and builds understanding beyond exam specifications. It said this year’s award focused on books for children aged 5 to 11.
The Ruth Rendell Award for Services to Literacy went to MC Grammar, the writer Jacob Mitchell. ALCS said the Ruth Rendell Award recognises the writer or author who has had the most significant influence on literacy in the UK over the past year, and it also lists shortlisted names, including Rob Biddulph, Maisie Chan, Maz Evans, Nicola Garrard, Laura Henry-Allain, Nathanael Lessore and Piers Torday.
Inclusive Books for Children has announced the winners of the 2026 Inclusive Books for Children Awards, which cover UK-published inclusive books for ages 1 to 9. The organisation said this is the second time since the awards launched in 2023 that the winners’ list is entirely female, and the authors and illustrators share a £30,000 prize fund.
The category winners were Let’s Play by Alex Strick, Annie Kubler and Sarah Dellow, The Beautiful Layers of Me by Sophia Payne and Ruchi Mhasane, and Supa Nova by Chanté Timothy. Inclusive Books for Children also ran a Children’s Choice Awards pilot, with winners including Won’t Go! by Sumana Seeboruth and Fotini Tikkou, and Cloud Boy by Greg Stobbs, and said the scheme will be rolled out more widely next year.
Illustration prizes are also in the news, with the 2026 Klaus Flugge Prize longlist announced for debut picture book illustrators. The £5,000 award, set up in 2016, is for a published picture book by a first-time illustrator, and this year’s longlist includes 18 books.
The longlist includes author-illustrator entries such as The Great Bear by Annie Booker, Milo and the Mountain by Jamie Carroll, Unity Street School Saves the Planet by Sheena Davies, and Seven Babies by Forest Xiao. Another longlisted title is 100 Goats and Granny, illustrated by Lauren Hinds and written by Atinuke.
Emma Farrarons, Rob Biddulph, Shelley Jackson and Vanessa Lewis are among the judges, with Julia Eccleshare as chair. The shortlist is due on 14 May 2026, and the winner will be announced on 9 September 2026 at the Art Workers’ Guild in London.
London’s live events calendar has also moved forward. Barnes Children’s Literature Festival is relaunching as the London Children’s Literature Festival for the weekend of Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 June, and it will again provide more than 20,000 free places for children in state primary schools across the capital.
The 2026 programme adds new venues, the Hackney Empire, Richmond Theatre and the Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon. Jamie Smart has designed the branding for 2026, and the public programme highlights include Michael Rosen with MC Grammar, Liz Pichon, Greg Jenner, Axel Scheffler, Lauren Child and Rob Biddulph, with the full programme due before tickets go on sale at 8 am on Saturday 18 April.
National book donation schemes have landed too, with Jamie Oliver and his early-years publisher Magic Cat planning to donate 1,000 copies of each Jamie’s Little Food Library title to the Children’s Book Project. The set includes four interactive board books: Let’s Make Cookies, Let’s Make Pasta, Let’s Make Pizza and Let’s Make Pancakes, acquired last spring by Magic Cat co-founder Jenny Broom and launched in October, with more titles due this year.
The Children’s Book Project, set up in 2019, says it redistributes new and gently used books through institutions including schools and prisons. It says it has gifted 2.2 million books to date.
Industry leaders have also used the London Book Fair stage to warn that the reading crisis matters more to publishing than the latest wave of tools. Pan Macmillan chief executive Joanna Prior said the reading crisis in the UK threatens the business itself, and argued the industry needs to meet readers where they are, using formats such as audio and comics, and not punishing children for following curiosity.
Prior also said she remains committed to protecting authors and illustrators and to lobbying for copyright protections. She framed literacy as a safeguard for children in a world of deepfakes and AI-generated material, and argued the National Year of Reading should be a starting point, not a one-off.
YA readers also saw a big moment at the London Book Fair, where Alice Oseman received a YA Book Prize Special Achievement Award for Heartstopper. The award notes the series began as a free webcomic, moved into crowdfunding for a print edition in 2018, and was later signed by Hachette Children’s Group.
The award announcement says five graphic novels have been published so far, with the sixth and final volume scheduled for 2 July 2026. It also states that the books have sold nearly 1.5 million units in the UK, with 1.3 million attributed to the graphic novels.
New books from familiar names have also been in the news. Julia Donaldson has spoken about The Magic Feather, illustrated by Catherine Rayner and released on Thursday, saying she researched birds and worked on the story in Sussex, finishing it in 2024.
Donaldson said the story follows a girl who finds a magic feather that lets her speak to birds, and that it is loosely based on a traditional Scottish tale with the same premise. She and Rayner previously teamed up on The Go-Away Bird in 2019, and the article notes The Gruffalo has sold over 13.5 million copies as of early 2026.
For schools thinking beyond World Book Day, Portsmouth hosted a large-scale reading lesson at Fratton Park as part of a world record attempt. Organisers put attendance at about 7,000 people, with author Dan Freedman reading from one of his own books and talking about how and why he wrote it.
The event formed part of In Our Words, a year-long literacy campaign designed to boost reading in Portsmouth through community activities. Portsmouth Creates chief executive Gemma Nichols described the scale of the logistics, which is the polite way of saying someone probably did not sleep much.
Across the Atlantic, the recent ABA industry briefing linked reading habits and sales trends to what children are buying and how they spend time. Circana BookScan analyst Brenna Connor said adult fiction sales in the US have been boosted by more immediate and biting themes with popular categories including manga, romance, classics, science fiction and fantasy, graphic superheroes and literature.
Connor said children’s growth was attributed mainly to activity books, with the infant reader segment up 8% in 2025, while middle-reader books declined. The briefing also included a reminder from bookseller Nic Bottomley that parents do not need to stop reading to children just because children can read independently.
