Bishop’s Stortford Picture Book Award continues to draw a crowd

30 Nov 2017

Ninth annual Picture Book Award as part of the Festival of Literature held at Bishop’s Stortford College will see the return of some old favourites.

2018 will mark the ninth Bishop’s Stortford Picture Book Award as part of the annual Festival of Literature held at Bishop’s Stortford College. The now well established and highly respected, Picture Book Award offers local schools the opportunity to get involved by voting for their favourite picture book titles.

With this year’s titles already shortlisted, voting is now underway and will close on 8th December.  This year sees a record 18 schools taking part from across Hertfordshire and Essex.

As the excitement builds ahead of the Picture Book Award ceremony, presented by Horrible Histories illustrator Martin Brown, on Wednesday 7th February 2018, ticket sales are already strong. Held at Bishop’s Stortford College, the shortlisted authors and illustrators, along with an audience of schools who have taken part in the voting, will find out which book has been voted the pupils’ favourite.

Maggie Garrett, Senior School Librarian and Archivist said “I’ve really enjoyed seeing the number of participating schools grow year on year. Each year we try to predict who might be the winner, but this year is definitely much more difficult as we have some old favourites returning.”

The nominees, which include several past winners, for the 2018 Bishop’s Stortford Picture Book Award are;

Bathroom Boogie by Claire Foges and Al Murphy

Dogger (40th anniversary edition) by Shirley Hughes

His Royal Tinyness by Sally Lloyd-Jones and David Roberts

I Want to Go First! by Richard Byrne

Kevin by Rob Biddulph

Oi Cat! by Kes Gray and Jim Field

Old Hat by Emily Gravett

The Great Gran Plan by Elli Woollard and Steven Lenton