Message from Kingston and Richmond councillors

We are proud to announce Spark! the Kingston and Richmond Children’s Book Award.

Both Kingston and Richmond boroughs, together with Achieving for Children, are committed to the enthusiastic promotion of reading for our young people. Through Spark!, children in our primary schools and libraries will vote on their favourite books published in 2020, from our identified shortlist.  It is just one of the many ways that our two councils, schools and libraries are working to ensure that all children get the chance to enjoy great books. 

Kingston and Richmond have over 100 schools and more than 35,000 young readers who can be reached by these awards. We hope that publishers will wish to support this initiative to connect our young people with excellent contemporary writing and help us continue to build interest in great books across our boroughs. We are looking for books that reflect the diverse and exciting nature of our boroughs.

Based on your nominations, a panel of teachers, librarians and booksellers from both boroughs will make the short-list and our young people will vote for the winning titles, during the period of January to April 2021. The books will be widely promoted in schools, libraries and by local book-sellers, who are all supporting our new awards.

We sincerely hope that you will wish to enter a book for one or more of the following three categories:

• Ages 4-7 
• Ages 7-9 
• Ages 9-11 

These are challenging times for us all, but for that reason alone, we believe that there is no better moment to promote exciting, diverse books which have the power to inspire young minds and further develop the rich imaginations of our children.  

We hope together that together, we can light the Spark! of great reading habits that will last our young people a lifetime.