2025 Awards
Our shortlist has been confirmed!
It’s official – the 2025 Dudley Children’s Book Awards have begun!
Below, you will find the shortlisted entries for each awards category. Check these books out of your school library, or even buy your own copy from Waterstones!
Then, when you’ve read them all – cast your votes!
Short & Sweet Category
Puloma and the Bear
Unwanted and lonely living with her unkind aunt, Puloma ends up running away with the circus. She’s relieved to find work and a place to live but can’t understand why the other circus workers are constantly worried about the police finding them.
The reason for their fears is the circus’s star act – a dancing sloth bear called Nyla. This form of cruelty is now illegal in India, and when Puloma sees Nyla being mistreated, she decides to try to help her escape …
The Deadsoul Project
Kyle and Lauren Dempsey believe their soldier stepdad is dead, killed in action in Northern Ireland. But then he turns up at their flat in the Alpine Heights tower block, terrifyingly changed.
One day later, a mysterious virus seems to be running rampant through the building and many residents are dead.
Nobody has ever discovered what really happened – until now …
The Boy at the Window
Folk say the fog plays tricks – that it shapes itself into little hands and frightened faces that press at people’s doors and windows, desperate to come inside.
But Hugo is convinced the ghost he has seen at the window is no trick of the fog. The boy’s hollow eyes are haunting him. What would happen if Hugo were to open the door and let him in? Brace yourselves for a chilling, wintery ghost story …
Dance of Resistance
Dancer, singer, actress, movie star, civil-rights activist – Josephine Baker was a phenomenon!
Overcoming the poverty and abuse of her childhood in a segregated America, Josephine grew up to become one of the biggest stars of the early twentieth century, particularly adored in her adopted country of France. She used her connections to help the Resistance in their fight against the Nazis during the Second World War and later became involved with Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement in the US.
Children’s Category
Serial Chillers
Welcome to Hazard. An ordinary town where strangeness is a way of life. A town where sink holes appear with no warning, where people go missing way too often and where things really DO go bump in the night …
To Travis and his classmates, Hazard is home. But when they’re set a school project to investigate the history of the town, they soon realise that something strange and alien lies beneath Hazard.
People Like Stars
Three 13-year-old strangers are connected by one big secret. Nervous Ayrton was stolen away from his mum as a baby. He was returned safely, but now Mum won’t let him out of her sight.
Curious Stanley has a Forbidden Grandmother. His mum won’t even talk about her. Homeless Sen has finally found a place to live, but she’ll be out on the street if she upsets her secretive landlady.
What happens when their paths cross…?
Sin Bin Island
When Jack Digby is sent to Cyril Sniggs’s Correctional Orphanage for Wayward Boys and Girls, he doesn’t expect lessons in how to fire cannons and fend off pirate attacks. But perhaps he should, as the school, some say, was founded by a pirate.
Even stranger, at the end of each year, the four worst-behaved pupils are banished to the terrifying Sin Bin Island, where they must survive for a week. Legend has it, the island was once used to smuggle magic onto the mainland, but in over 300 years the magic has never been found.
Shrapnel Boys
When war comes to London in 1939, Ronnie Smith is scared and excited: scared of the bombs that fall at night, but excited to race his friends to collect the best bits of shrapnel every morning.
But for Ronnie, the battles aren’t just in the sky and on the streets. They’re at school and at home too. His little brother is up to no good with a secret job and dangerous new friends, and Ronnie’s worried he’s getting himself into big trouble.
Teen Category
The Other Girl
Two girls meet on a train journey.
One of them – privileged, chaotic – is heading to an exclusive Swiss rehab centre following months of partying and living wildly.
The other – who couldn’t be more different – is down to her last penny, running away.
When they get off the train they are both pretending to be the other. Just for a short period, of course. Just until the rehab stint is over…
Mondays are Murder
Seventeen-year-old Kay left her sleepy hometown after the devastating death of her friend, Ivy. But when Kay is forced to come back, she receives an anonymous letter that turns her life upside down.
The letter tells her that there will be a thrill on Tuesday, a wreckage on Wednesday, treachery on Thursday, a fire on Friday, sabotage on Saturday, a stabbing on Sunday – and her murder on Monday.
And if Kay can’t figure out who is behind the threats, the worst day of the week is about to get deadly…
Traumaland
Eli has been in a near-fatal accident, which has left him with no memory and no emotions. According to his therapist, he suffers from an Overwhelming Emptiness.
Desperate to feel something again, Eli winds up at TraumaLand, an underground club where crowds of emotionally numb party-goers seek a new thrill. Through hyper-real virtual reality simulations, they can experience nightmarish events happening to other people.
Cloud Nine
Sixteen-year-old Evangeline has been dead for decades. Her accidentally heroic demise secured her a spot on Cloud Nine, the luxurious top tier of the Afterlife – but it turns out that even paradise can get boring.
After a century of terminal niceness, Evvy volunteers to train as a celestial guide. Now it’s her job to watch over people during their final hours on earth, ensuring they don’t screw up their chances of a decent Afterlife.
Evvy isn’t averse to bending the rules, and she always gets results – until she makes the fatal mistake of falling for a living boy.