| Publishers Info 2012 | Judges 2012 | Long List 2012 | Short List 2012 | Winners 2011 | Photos 2011 | Previous Winners | Endorsements  |

Julia Eccleshare (Chair)

Julia is the Children's Book Editor of the Guardian newspaper and Co-Director of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education. She is a critic and commenter on children’s books including being a regular contributor to Radio 4’s Front Row and Open Book. She is the author of several books including Beatrix Potter to Harry Potter: Portraits of children's writers, NPG and The Rough Guide to Picture Books, Rough Guides. 

She is also the editor of 1001 Children’s Books to read before you grow up.

Carol Webb

Carol Webb is currently School Librarian of the Year and works at Forest Hill School, Lewisham in South East London. Carol has worked in both the health and public library sectors before specialising in education. A CILIP Fellowship was awarded in 2007 particularly noting her work in reader development. She has written articles, co-authored The Innovative School Librarian, contributed to the forthcoming book Library Services for Children and Young Adults: Challenges and Opportunities in The Digital Age, given conference presentations and is currently working on her Doctoral degree in Education. Carol runs a Facebook page: Forest Hill School Library and her work is profiled at www.foresthillschool.co.uk .

Jason Wallace (2011 Branford Boase Award winner)

Born in Cheltenham in 1969, I spent my earlier years growing up in south-west London until my family upped and packed for a new life in southern Africa. Specifically, in Zimbabwe, where I encountered a tough, but excellent, boarding school and a world of fantastic experience.

Descendent of an International cricketer and sea-sickness sufferer - in the days when the only means of reaching the tour of Australia required many weeks at sea – I realised ambition was similarly never going to be easy when I decided, at the age of seventeen, that I wanted to be an author.

I'd always had a fertile imagination, but as far as I'm concerned it's the school I need to thank for inadvertently nurturing my will to write through strong discipline (there was no such thing as an excuse) and a sound education, both inside and outside of the classroom.

I returned to England with my life-plan in my pocket, and set about a university degree and then jobs. Needless to say, getting published didn't happen overnight, and writing had to become "the other job" for which I didn't get paid while life continued.

I still do “the other job” (building and helping to sort out corporate web sites), but - especially after the success of my first novel Out of Shadows - writing is very much my true passion... and always will be. I couldn’t stop if I tried!

Kate Agnew

I run the Children's Bookshop in Muswell Hill, which is a specialist independent bookshop that has been going for over 37 years. (I've worked there for the last 12.) We spend a great deal of our time in the Bookshop advising customers on books, both for individual children and schools, so lots of my own "spare" time is spent reading (which I love and, luckily, do fast!). I've also worked as a children's books’ reviewer, editor and anthologist, have acted as a consultant to various publishers, contributed to several publications on children's books and taught creative writing in school. I'm author of three books in Egmont's Bananas series and was manager of Heffers Children's Bookshop in Cambridge from 1991 - 99. I've previously been a judge of the Smarties Prize and the Whitbread Award.

Fiona Lafferty

Fiona Lafferty has been involved with children’s books for over thirty years. From her first job as a copy editor with Frederick Warne, she moved to edit the British Council’s children’s books review journal British Book News Children’s Books, a post she gave up to combine family life with freelance work in 1989. Until 2000 she was the Daily Telegraph’s Children’s Books Editor, organising its children’s books reviewing, and Children’s Books Adviser to the Good Book Guide, selecting and reviewing children’s books monthly and compiling the annual guides. For a number of years she combined part-time jobs as librarian at St Swithun’s Junior School and manager of the children’s department of P & G Wells, a busy independent bookshop in Winchester, organising bookshops for local author events, teacher conferences and book fairs. In 2006 she was appointed editor of The Good Book Guide, and became Editorial Director in 2010.