Established in 2013, the Bath Novel Awards are annual international prizes for emerging authors. The Bath Children’s Novel Award is our £3,000 prize for emerging children’s authors and we are delighted to announce this year’s shortlist.
For the first time, we welcomed picture books alongside chapter books and novels for children or teens. Authors in 40 countries submitted 1,218 extracts and synopses between 1st June and 30th November and a longlist of 21 manuscripts announced in December 2022. The fulls of the longlisted books were then read in full by our team of Junior Judges aged seven to seventeen who shortlisted their favourite books.
Making the shortlist are: a picture book; three children’s novels and a free verse YA. Their casts include: a girl who rescues and rehomes words she finds scattered in the outside world; a Sri Lankan / Scottish girl who discovers a hidden world of tiny people who live in shells; a girl with the power to extract other people’s emotions as essences for therapeutic use; an eight-year-old Japanese boy who saves a miniature C19th ninja warrior he finds drowning in his bowl of soup; a sixteen-year old starting a new life after her mum was sent to jail.
All shortlistees win a compilation of feedback from the Junior Judges and one longlistee will win a place on Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and Professional Writing Academy’s acclaimed online editing course.
As the prize is judged ‘blind’ we will reveal the writers’ names when the winner, as judged by literary agent Amber Caravéo is announced on 28th February 2023.
In the meantime many congratulations to the authors of the Junior Judges’ top five manuscripts:
Beautiful Whisper
Corrine and the Democonch
Niniko’s Shop of Pure Essences
The Daring Misadventures of Hiroto Okami
The Other Side of Normal