2024 Awards
The 2024 Dudley Children’s Book Awards have begun!
Take a look below at this year’s shortlisted titles!
Be sure to visit your school’s library to read these wonderful books or, if you would prefer, purchase a copy for yourself from Amazon using the included buttons, or any retailer of your choice!
As the books in the award span a range of ages please check the content material. It is the sole responsibility of individual schools to ensure the books are suitable for their students.
Short & Sweet Category
The List
It’s the end of the summer and Denny is having to move away with his mum now that she’s found a good job, but he’s not planning on leaving quietly. He’s made a list of scores to settle and wrongs to right before he goes. He asks his best friend, Jake, to help.
Jake is absolutely gutted that Denny is leaving and worries what life will be like without him. Of course he’ll do anything to help, no matter how weird or unrealistic the items on Denny’s list might be. But the list is more powerful than either of them realise – it can make and break friendships.
Northern Soul
Marv’s fourteen and his life is simple. There’s football. And his best mate, Jimmy. Perfect.
Nothing else matters until a new girl at school called Carly crashes into his life. For Marv, it’s love at first sight, his emotions flipped upside down, as he knows a girl like Carly will never notice him.
He needs help – lots of it – but when it miraculously arrives in the shape of a musical idol from the past, the path to Carly’s heart proves anything but easy …
First love is unforgettable, and poor Marv is about to learn this the hard way – him, and his northern soul …
The River Spirit
Young chimney sweep Tom has started seeing strange, supernatural things – fairies in the flowers by the river, a soot monster crouching in the darkness of a chimney, and then the mysterious river spirit Elle.
Elle joins Tom and the other children apprenticed to cruel master sweep Mister Crow. Together, they shimmy up the town’s narrow, filthy chimneys. But Tom has an ominous feeling in his bones, and when he faces his most dangerous job of all, the reason for Elle’s magical appearance becomes clear . . .
Drowning in my Bedroom
Gayla is trapped when floodwater pours into her bedroom in a residential centre for kids with disabilities. The other children have been evacuated while Gayla waited for her father, but now the streets around are cut off and she’s all alone with no way out.
Junjun’s makeshift shack has been washed away in the flood and he needs to find medicine for his sister, who’s sick after drinking contaminated water.
Children’s Category
The Wrong Shoes
There’s a bunch of kids in there and suddenly they’re all looking at me like someone who can actually do something, not just some weirdo with the wrong shoes and a rubbish coat . . .
Will has the wrong shoes – he’s always known it but doesn’t know how to change it. Navigating the difficulties of home and school when you feel you stick out is tough, but finding confidence with the help and empathy of friends can be all you need to see the way.
Angel of Grasmere: From Dunkirk to the Fells
July 1940 – as Tarn struggles to come to terms with the loss of her beloved brother in the chaos of the British retreat at Dunkirk, she and her friends scour the hills around their Lake District home, watching for any signs of the long-dreaded Nazi invasion.
But as the war drags on, with little good news from the front, the locals become aware of someone carrying out anonymous acts of kindness, such as saving a flock of sheep from a snowdrift and getting help for an injured farmer who might otherwise have died.
The Bletchley Riddle
It is the summer of 1940. The world is at war. These days, you don’t know who you can trust or who might be a secret spy…
Maths whizz Jakob Novis has been recruited to the secret codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park. As Jakob works to crack the Nazi’s Enigma cipher, his younger sister Lizzie is busy on an undercover mission of her own: to find their mother.
Filled with codes to decipher and mysteries to unravel, this is the unputdownable historical adventure that will have you on the edge of your seats.
WARNING: Magic Can Be Dangerous!
Tyler isn’t thrilled to be spending yet another mundane afternoon at Great Uncle John’s. And that’s putting it mildly! But after his visit sparks a chain of inexplicable events, he delightedly discovers magic at his fingertips.
Being able to conjure up a swimming pool and a wodge of cash are certainly perks. Yet the magic proves tricky to control. What’s more, it seems to be irreversible.
Teen Category
A Tempest of Tea
Arthie Casimir is a collector of secrets. At night her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse, feeding the vampires who stalk the streets. But when her livelihood is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike a deal with an unlikely – and frustratingly handsome – ally.
Desperate, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the dark and glittering vampire society. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it. For in the vampire-laden streets of White Roaring, things are never as they seem . . .
Signed Sealed Dead
True-Crime obsessed Paige, and her family, move across the Atlantic to her father’s eerie hometown, and it’s not long before she uncovers the town’s dark history – a string of unsolved murders and disappearances in the 90s.
And then notes start appearing at their dilapidated old home, about the secrets the house is keeping. The clues lead Paige to a diary concealed in the walls that belonged to one of the missing girls. Could this be the key to solving a quarter-of-a-century mystery, or will this make Paige the next target?!
Us in the Before and After
There is one side of that moment, and the other
Before
After
I have dreamed about it ever since
At the start of a long, hot summer best friends Elk and Mab face the fallout of a sudden death, and the lifelong consequences of a single tragic act.
Soulmates and Other Ways to Die
Good news: We all have a soulmate. Thanks to a gene mutation, out there somewhere is our perfect match.
Bad news: Your soul bond means you feel their pain before you’ve even met. And if your soulmate dies . . . you die too.
Control freak Zoe is determined to stay alive – and single. She carries a survival kit for every eventuality, but even she can’t prepare for a match with Milo Spencer, a boy who lives for recreational danger. It’s time to find a cure . . .
