A Decade of Outstanding Children's Literature: What the Fictitious Children's Booker Prize Could Have Honored Each Year

Strategic Insights -

In recent news, the Booker Prize Foundation has announced the establishment of a Children's Booker prize to celebrate contemporary fiction for children aged 8 to 12. Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the children's laureate, will be the first chair of judges when the prize formally starts in 2027. To imagine what the past decade's worthy winners would have been, a critic has conjured up a dream list of the best books published in the past 10 years. From Kwame Alexander's powerful tale of a 12-year-old girl who dreams of becoming a baseball player in the segregated American South to Liz Hyder's experimental fantasy set in the depths of the Bearmouth coal mine, the list showcases a diverse range of stories that have captivated young readers and critics alike.

Key Takeaways:

  • 2025's imagined winner, Black Star by Kwame Alexander, tells the powerful tale of a 12-year-old girl who dreams of becoming a baseball player in the segregated American South, introducing young readers to Harlem Renaissance poets such as Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks.
  • 2024's Movies Showing Nowhere by Yorick Goldewijk is a breathtakingly good Dutch novel about a teenager who discovers a time portal in the screen of an old local cinema, transporting readers back to special moments connected to treasured objects.
  • 2023's One Chance Dance by Efua Traore is a transportive tale that plunges readers into the world of Jomi, a young boy on a quest to find his missing mum in Lagos.
  • 2022's Never Forget You by Jamila Gavin focuses on the friendship of four young women as they forge their own path through the Second World War, while The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair by Natasha Hastings is set in 1683 during the Frost Fair, when the Thames has frozen, and Thomasina must use her wits to bring her brother back from the dead.
  • 2021's When the Sky Falls by Phil Earle is an outstanding wartime drama featuring an animal, following Joseph Palmer, a 12-year-old angry boy with dyslexia, and his friend Syd, as they face big moral questions.
  • 2020's Orion Lost by Alastair Chisholm is a twisty futuristic thriller set on a spacecraft transporting people to a new planet, where 13-year-old Beth must navigate the ship to safety while dodging meteors, space pirates, and mysterious aliens.
  • 2019's Bearmouth by Liz Hyder is a dark, claustrophobic, and intense fantasy told from the point of view of Newt Coombes, a virtual prisoner in the Bearmouth coal mine.
  • 2018's The Legend of Sally Jones by Jakob Wegelius is a quirky and heart-rending graphic novel about a gorilla's adventure through the Congolese rainforest, Belgian soldiers, and Istanbul.
  • 2017's Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean is an extraordinary survival tale inspired by the true story of eight boys who were stranded on a sea stack near St Kilda in the 18th century.

Statistics:

  • The critic imagines that if the Children's Booker prize had existed in 2017, Geraldine McCaughrean's Where the World Ends would have been a strong contender, receiving a stonking acceptance speech if she had won.
  • The author of Where the World Ends, Geraldine McCaughrean, is a veteran author who castigated the book industry for dumbing down language in children's literature, warning that a focus on "accessible" prose will lead to "an underclass of citizens with a small but functional vocabulary: easy to manipulate and lacking in the means to reason their way out of subjugation".
  • The Children's Booker prize will formally start in 2027, with Frank Cottrell-Boyce as the first chair of judges.

Sources:

  • Frank Cottrell-Boyce, "Bounty hunter" by Barry Cohen, The Guardian, 6 May 2023.
  • Kwame Alexander, Black Star, Andersen Press, 2025.
  • Yorick Goldewijk, Movies Showing Nowhere, trans. Laura Watkinson, Pushkin Press, 2024.
  • Efua Traore, One Chance Dance, Chicken House, 2023.
  • Jamila Gavin, Never Forget You, HarperCollins, 2022.
  • Natasha Hastings, The Miraculous Sweetmakers: The Frost Fair, HarperCollins, 2022.
  • Phil Earle, When the Sky Falls, Andersen Press, 2021.
  • Alastair Chisholm, Orion Lost, Nosy Crow, 2020.
  • Liz Hyder, Bearmouth, Pushkin Press, 2019.
  • Jakob Wegelius, The Legend of Sally Jones, trans. Peter Graves, Pushkin Press, 2018.
  • Geraldine McCaughrean, Where the World Ends, Usborne, 2017.