Celebrating 35 years of the Children's Books Ireland Awards

Irish Times

05-05-2025

Since 1990, the KPMG Children's Books Ireland Awards – formerly the Bisto Book of the Year Awards, then the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year Awards – have charted the development of children's literature and the undeniable talent of Irish artists who create stories for young audiences.
The awards allow us to track the appearance of writers and illustrators who would prove to be hugely influential over the course of their careers, to see the changing profile of shortlisted and winning artists and to celebrate a welcome increase in representation on the page.
Books for children and young adults are everything that books for adults can be: political, entertaining, thought-provoking, controversial, meaningful and surprising. Hard as it is to single out individual titles from hundreds of shortlisted books and winners, here are a few of the most culturally significant moments of the last 35 years of the KPMG Children's Books Ireland Awards.
1992: Wildflower Girl by Marita Conlon-McKenna
Some 33 years ago, the second book in the Children of the Famine Trilogy won the award for Best Book (Historical). The following year, Conlon-McKenna's The Blue Horse won the Book of the Year Award, and her career writing for children and adults has continued to flourish, with her latest book, Fairy Hill, published in 2023. It's clear, however, that the famine books have a hold on Irish readers and have withstood the test of time as just last year, the bestselling opener to this trilogy, Under the Hawthorn Tree, was the most borrowed children's book by an Irish author in Irish public libraries, a testament to its unwavering popularity.
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A new signed limited edition of all three books together will be published this month by The O'Brien Press. Exclusive to Kenny's Bookshop, this edition includes a new foreword by Conlon-McKenna reflecting on the legacy of the whole trilogy.
2005: How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers
The debut picturebook from author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers was published in 2004, having been plucked from the slush pile at HarperCollins Children's Books. In 2005, it won a Merit Award (now called Honour Awards) and in the following decade, 12 of Jeffers' books featured on the shortlist, winning 10 prestigious awards.
Jeffers' impact on readers, and on the publishing industry, has been seismic. In 2020, Apple TV+ released a short film, voiced by Meryl Streep, Chris O'Dowd, Jacob Tremblay and Ruth Negga, based on Jeffers' New York Times bestselling and TIME Best Book of the Year, Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth.
How to Catch a Star represents the start of Jeffers' journey with the character known as 'the boy', and predates the development of his distinctive handwritten type, used in later editions of the book and much imitated in picturebooks globally.
2016: Asking For It by Louise O'Neill
In 2014, Louise O'Neill's debut dystopian novel, Only Ever Yours, was published and won a host of awards, including the 2015 Eilís Dillon Award. There was much discussion, including from the
author herself
, about whether the book should be categorised as young adult or adult fiction, and how dark a plot young readers can withstand – a discussion that resurfaces often with 'crossover' fiction of this type.
O'Neill's sophomore novel, Asking For It, winner of the Honour Award for Fiction in 2016, caused shockwaves on a nationwide level and got Ireland talking about rape culture, consent and misogyny. O'Neill worked with RTÉ on a documentary, Asking For It?: Reality Bites, and in the aftermath of #WakingTheFeminists, the book was adapted for the stage appearing at the Everyman and the Abbey in 2018.
2021: Why the Moon Travels, written by Oein DeBhairduin, illustrated by Leanne McDonagh
This groundbreaking book, published by Skein Press in 2020, is a haunting collection of twenty tales rooted in the oral tradition of the Irish Traveller community, written and illustrated by Mincéir artists. Why the Moon Travels won the Eilís Dillon Award and the Judges' Special Award in 2021; it was noted for its artistic excellence and as a book that 'celebrates and shares a rich tradition that may be unfamiliar to many readers'.
Our judges said: 'in these stories, this world and the otherworld are intertwined, the personal is often used to explore the universal, and storytelling becomes a means of making sense of our surroundings'.
In 2022, Children's Books Ireland gifted 1,900 copies of the book to sixth class students across Ireland thanks to Enterprise Mobility's ROAD Forward initiative, encouraging students to read for joy and celebrating diversity in children's books.
Hall of Fame titles from this year's debut shortlisted artists
Moira Buffini, author of Songlight.
'I am really grateful to Eoin Colfer and his Artemis Fowl books because my son loved them so much and he wasn't a very keen reader. I'm sure those books have got many boys reading. They are so much fun and such gripping adventures. More recently, I particularly enjoyed On Midnight Beach by Marie Louise Fitzpatrick. It beautifully evoked a coming-of-age summer on the coast of Donegal. There was so much in this book that reminded me of my own teenage years. She captured something really universal and I absolutely loved it.'
Eilish Fisher, author of Fia and the Last Snow Deer.
'A book that I love and that is my 'hall of fame' children's book of the last 35 years is Girls Who Slay Monsters by Ellen Ryan. The stories of Ireland's goddesses, long forgotten over the centuries, are brought back to life through Ryan's beautiful storytelling in a way that enables readers of all ages to relate to these unsung heroes of Irish mythology. It reminds us all how timeless these stories are and how all literature can be enriched when we are brave enough to challenge traditional interpretations and embrace inclusivity and diverse perspectives.'
David Hare, author of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Irish Lighthouses:
'I loved reading as a child, but never really enjoyed children's fiction, or the classics. Willard Price's Adventure series were enjoyable, but books with facts and encyclopedias appealed to me, and a book I read over and over again was The Readers Digest Book of Strange Stories and Amazing Facts. I realise that this won't give me any literary credibility. As a parent, the books I most enjoyed reading to our children were by Oliver Jeffers, whose magical stories and beautiful illustrations remained with me long after my children became adults.'
Elaina Ryan is Chief Executive Officer, Children's Books Ireland