Tag: Illustration

By Katherine Woodfine

Lately, it’s felt as though the children’s books industry is being battered by one depressing headline after another. Reading for pleasure hits a new low; children are now swiping their books as if they were iPhones; and at any moment, the robots are going to come to rot our brains (not to mention, destroy our careers) with AI slop… You’d be forgiven for being downcast — perhaps even a little doomed? But to set against the gloom, I’d like to share (Pollyanna-style) some of the ‘glad things’ that I’ve lately discovered, as part of the judging panel for this year’s Branford Boase Award.

You probably already know that the Branford Boase is an annual award for debut children’s fiction. You might also know that it is unique, in that it celebrates both the author and the editor of the winning book. What you may not, perhaps, know is that the Award is named in tribute to two talented women in publishing — writer Henrietta Branford and editorial director Wendy Boase, who both died of cancer in 1999 — and aims to encourage the development of new writers in their memory.

It’s a wonderful prize, which has recognised authors including Marcus Sedgwick, Meg Rosoff, Siobhan Dowd and Mal Peet. A decade on, I still feel immensely proud to have been longlisted for my own debut, The Clockwork Sparrow — especially as it was an honour I shared with my editors, Ali Dougal and Hannah Sandford.

I was also very proud to be invited to be a judge this year. As a children’s author and a book reviewer, I flattered myself that I had a good overview of new titles, but the judging process proved to be full of all kinds of delightful surprises. Reading my way through this year’s longlist, I made rich discoveries across young fiction, middle grade, teen and YA.

It was no easy task for my fellow judges and I to choose just seven of these excellent debuts for our shortlist, but I think the books we settled on truly showcase that richness. There is so much variety to enjoy, from tender-hearted and thoughtful teen romance (Tart by Becki Jayne Crossley) to gripping and challenging science-fiction (Augmented by Kenechi Udogu).

There are books that will scare the life out of you (Jack McKay’s Gloam), books that will make you snort-laugh out loud (Harry Trevaldwyn’s The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King) and books that will lift your spirits (Ella Dove’s How to Roller-Skate On One Leg).

There are books that shine a light on important moments from the past (like Janeen Hyatt’s Evie and Maryam’s Family Tree) and books which feel absolutely rooted in the here and now — like Love on Sight by Asli Jensen, set in a brilliantly authentic present-day multicultural London.

There are books that pay tribute to literary traditions — Patch, the narrator of Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King is absolutely the successor to Georgia Nicholson and Adrian Mole, while Gloam has hints of Coraline, A Monster Calls and every horror story that ever made you scared to turn off the light — and yet they also feel distinctive and fresh. To say there’s something for everyone is a horrible cliché — and yet I do think that so many readers will be able to discover aspects of themselves, their lives and their interests in these pages.

In the statements from the editors that accompany each book, the judges also had the unique opportunity to reflect on something that is very often invisible — the unique creative collaboration that exists between author and editor. We witnessed the editors’ enthusiasm and dedication, as well as their skill, sensitivity and intelligence in helping to shape the stories and steer their authors in the first steps of their publishing careers.

Three of our shortlisted books were originally submitted for writing competitions: Love on Sight was entered for The Times/Chicken House competition and won the Lime Prize; Augmented won the inaugural Imagined Futures Prize for YA science fiction; and Evie and Maryam won the Guppy Open Submission Competition. If we ever needed proof of the power of these kinds of initiatives to bring compelling new voices into publishing, this is surely it.

Each of these books is well-written, well-crafted and compelling, but there the similarities end. In her 1932 essay ‘How Should One Read a Book?’ Virginia Woolf observed that ‘people are always behaving as if all books were of the same species—as if there were only tortoises or nothing but tigers’. The real joy of this process was witnessing the way that children’s books continue to thrive in all their wondrous variety.

This is a landscape of vitality, gloriously populated by tortoises, tigers and a whole variety of other creatures — impossible, possible and everything in between. It is a whole ecosystem of rich life, which makes clear that, in spite of all, what Frances Hardinge (herself a Branford Boase winner) so memorably described as ‘the beautiful jungle of children’s literature’ continues to thrive. If you, too, need to discover some ‘glad things’, then the Branford Boase is the perfect place to start looking.

The seven books shortlisted for the 2026 Branford Boase Award are:

Tart by Becki Jayne Crossley, edited by Cathy Liney (Bloomsbury)

How to Roller Skate with One Leg by Ella Dove, illustrated by Jennifer Jamieson, edited by Anne Marie Ryan (Orchard Books)

Evie and Maryam’s Family Tree by Janeen Hayat, edited by Bella Pearson (Guppy Books)

Love on Sight by Asli Jensen, edited by Shalini Vallepur (Chicken House)

Gloam by Jack Mackay, edited by Katie Jennings (Rock the Boat)

The Romantic Tragedies of a Drama King by Harry Trevaldwyn, edited by Emma Jones and Charlie Castelletti (First Ink)

Augmented by Kenechi Udogu, edited by Natasha Brown and Jenny Glencross (Faber).

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Katherine Woodfine

Katherine Woodfine is the author of more than 15 books for children, including the Sinclair’s Mysteries and Taylor & Rose Secret Agents series. Her first published novel, The Clockwork Sparrow, was a Sunday Times bestseller and was nominated for numerous awards. A champion of children’s literature, she has previously worked on projects including the Children’s Laureate, YALC (the UK’s first young adult literature convention) and podcast Down the Rabbit Hole, and is now the book reviewer for The Week Junior magazine.

The Branford Boase Award

Set up in memory of author Henrietta Branford and her editor Wendy Boase, the Branford Boase Award is the only award to recognise the editor as well as the author. Find out more about this year’s shortlisted books on the website. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 8 July.

By Amie Jordan

I’m often asked how I wrote on All The Hidden Monsters and the honest truth is that it was never meant to be a real book when I started it. It actually just started out as a bit of writing practice. It was a different tense, different genre, different style to the other Big Project I’d been focused on for so long. But I’d just lost all sense of it, of myself, and knew I needed to take a step back. I only ever intended to step away for a while, work on something so totally different that when I went back, I’d have a fresh mind and fresh eyes to refocus myself. And then… I just never left Downside.

I met my characters Sage, Oren and P. And the rest, as they say, was history.

But the rest, as I say, would not have been possible without Rachel Leyshon, my editor at Chicken House.

See, my biggest problem is that I can’t stop talking. I consider it quite a fun fact (my mother less so) that every school report I ever received from nursery to college said ‘Amie talks too much and distracts others’ – my recent diagnosis of ADHD explains a lot – and this very clearly translates into my writing. My ability to stick to a wordcount in a first draft is truly laughable.

Then if we add my OCD into the mix (I know, almost a whole neurodivergent set!) know that I’m constantly compelled to over explain in obsessive and totally unnecessary detail. And if this is a blogpost about honesty I might as well also note that I don’t plot or write in numerical chapter order either. That’s because my OCD thrives off lists, and plotting chapters out is simply tantamount to writing down a big ol’ list, right? And once a list is written it’s set in stone.

The OCD really struggles to change it up. Naturally, this can make the editing process later on pretty tricky to deal with! So anyway, I just find that if I’m not writing in a chapter linear/list order, it somehow all feels easier to move around later. If anyone is interested to know, the first scene I wrote in ATHM eventually settled in as part of chapter thirty-six.

Does any of that writing process make sense?

No, it doesn’t.

But the point I’m trying to make is that despite all that, despite the fact I know it’s not ideal but can’t help it anyway, Rachel didn’t instantly balk. Between all the initial chaos she was still able to see the vision, sift through and highlight what worked, what was unnecessary over complication, and work to understand exactly what I was trying to achieve, guiding me there in the parts I wasn’t quite pulling it off.

I’m totally aware that some days it would’ve been so much easier to just tell me what to do, but she never did. She has the patience of a saint and is such an inspiration and an encouragement to someone like me specifically, knowing the traits I’ve always let overwhelm and hold me back have not mattered. Proof that people like me can make it with the right editor at the helm.

So my advice to any aspiring writers, but especially to those that see themselves reflected in me, would be this: it’s actually fine not to be perfect right away. It’s fine to be flawed. And for God’s sake, don’t torture yourself over it. If working with Rachel has taught me anything, it’s that if you truly have that spark of magic to begin with then it’s always going to be in there somewhere, and the right people will be able to see it. The very best of them will make you thrive.

I wasted so many years not having the self-belief or the confidence in my own work, knowing that I was too chaotic to ever be the shiny, impossibly perfect writer I thought I had to be from the start if I ever wanted to succeed in this childhood dream of being an author. I wish I’d been braver sooner.

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Amie Jordan

Amie Jordan is from Salford and studied Film and Media at Manchester Metropolitan University. When she isn’t writing she spends her time knitting, having provided bespoke pieces for the costume departments of film, TV and theatre. All the Lost Souls, the sequel to All the Hidden Monsters, is out now!

The Branford Boase Award

Set up in memory of author Henrietta Branford and her editor Wendy Boase, the Branford Boase Award is the only award to recognise the editor as well as the author. Find out more about this year’s shortlisted books on the website. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 9 July.