The FCBG's Children's Book Award Voting Opens

Every year the Federation of Children’s Book Group’s Children’s Book Award winner is selected by young readers across the country.

With polls now open, any child in the UK can cast their vote for one of the top ten titles!

Sarah Stuffins the coordinator for The Children’s Book Award has very kindly written for us about the awards process including how the books are narrowed to the final top ten.

Headshot Sarah Stuffins Hello, my name is Sarah Stuffins and I’m the coordinator for the Children’s Book Award run by the Federation of Children’s Book Groups. Monday 2^nd March was a very exciting day for me as it was the day we announced the 2026 shortlist for the award – the culmination of a year’s work for many of our FCBG volunteers and children in our local groups.

Throughout 2025, publishers sent a total of 500 new fiction books to 10 of our local groups, where our volunteer local coordinators sorted them into age-appropriate bags and distributed them into schools and families. Here, thousands of children started reading and voting, sharing what they thought of the books. Over 58,000 votes later we counted them all up at the end of the year and the most popular 10 books were confirmed as the shortlist – 4 picture books, 3 younger readers and 3 older readers.

And now all the fun starts again! More copies of the books are being distributed throughout the FCBG and we work with partners, such as Read for Good and Book Clubs in Schools, who distribute books in their own networks. We’re also thrilled to work with Heath Educational Books, who are offering discounted sets of the books for people to buy!

Any children around the country can get involved at this stage – so buy your books and get your children reading! They need to read (or attempt to read) all the books in a category and then rank them. Online voting opened on 23^rd March on the FCBG website and closes at 12 noon on Friday 8^th May. On the website you will also find some downloadable resources, fantastic Read and Respond ideas to get more out of each book and links to blogs about the authors and illustrators.

And no rest for me now either as I am busy planning the award ceremony, which this year takes place in Birmingham on Saturday 13^th June. We will be livestreaming it on our YouTube channel and will then put up a recording to watch later. You can find recordings of previous ceremonies here.

Many thanks to Sarah for sharing with us a little about the Children’s Book Award! Don’t forget to cast your vote and keep an eye out to see which titles won!