Triumphant trio claim Scottish Children’s Book Awards

The awards, which celebrate the best of Scottish writing and illustration for young people, are run by the Scottish Book Trust and Creative Scotland and the winners are selected by an exclusive vote just for children. This year a whopping 31,000 votes were cast – a record breaking number for the competition.

Winner of the Bookbug Readers category (3-7 years) was acclaimed author, illustrator and cartoonist John Fardell for his quirky picture book adventure story The Day Louis Got Eaten. Popular children’s author and comic Jonathan Meres won the Younger Readers category (8-11 years) for the first of his books about the hugely lovable but hapless Norm - The World of Norm: May Contain Nuts. And previous winner Barry Hutchison scooped the category for older readers (12-16 years) with The 13th Horseman, a funny and richly imagined fantasy story about a young boy who discovers the horsemen of the apocalypse in his back garden.

All three of these winning authors have appeared at the Book Festival in the past. Visit the media gallery pages of our website where you can listen to a recording of John Fardell’s 2011 event in which he introduced The Day Louis Got Eaten for the first time, and hear Jonathan Meres making people laugh with his whacky tales of Norm.