2025 Branford Boase Award Longlist
The longlist for the 2025 Branford Boase Award for children’s books has been announced.
In a press release, contest organizers remarked on the prevalence of genre fiction in children’s literature during 2024. Fantasy was a large part of current trends in children’s fiction, and this year’s longlist press release was titled “Apocalypse Now” in response to “a preponderance of post, pre and even mid-apocalyptic adventures” for children.
The 20-title longlist features many titles of genre interest, including:
- Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm, Ash Bond (Piccadilly)
- Songlight, Moira Buffini (Faber)
- The World Between the Rain, Susan Cahill (Everything with Words)
- The Love Interest, Helen Comerford (Bloomsbury Children’s)
- Skylar and the K-Pop Headteacher, Luan Goldie (Walker)
- This Dark Heart, Zeena Gosrani (Firefly)
- All the Hidden Monsters, Amie Jordan (Chicken House)
- These Stolen Lives, Sharada Keats (Scholastic)
- The Whisperwicks, Jordan Lees (Puffin)
- The Virtue Season, L.M. Nathan (Scholastic)
- Mayowa and the Sea of Words, Chibundu Onuzo (Bloomsbury Children’s)
- The Untameables, Clare Pollard (The Emma Press)
- Apocalypse Cow, O.R. Sorrel (Guppy Books)
- The Boy to Beat the Gods, Ashley Thorpe (Usborne)
The Boase award is “given annually to the author of an outstanding debut novel for children.” The author and editor of the winning title each receive an engraved trophy, and the author receives £1,000. The shortlist will be announced on April 24, 2025, and the winner will on July 9, 2025 at a ceremony in London.
For more information, including the complete longlist, see the Branford Boase Award site. For past winners, see the site or Locus coverage of the Branford Boase Award.
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