Blue Peter Book Awards 2013: The Judges' View

The shortlisted books

The shortlisted books for this year's Blue Peter Book Awards have now been announced!

Find out more about what judges Caitlin Moran, Cressida Cowell and Jake Hope thought of the books selected

Caitlin Moran

I wanted to be a judge on the book awards so badly... When I got the email asking me to be a judge I screamed at the top of my voice and stood on a chair and went ‘YES’ and agreed to it within about 30 seconds because I have wanted a Blue Peter badge since I was 10. This is the greatest gift I could ever be given. If it was a choice between marrying Prince William and becoming the Queen and getting one of these, I would want one of these. So being a judge was basically my way of cheating my way to a badge, 20 years after I should have won one.

Doing the Blue Peter Book Prize is an amazing process to go through because for a couple of months your house is made of books: you just have them stacked up everywhere. There’s nothing much more exciting in the world than sitting down and arguing about books that you love for hours and hours. When I look at the final six I just want to go back in and read them again.

One of my favourite books was Hero on a Bicycle which is set in World War II. It’s about an 11-year-old boy who has a bicycle and goes out every night. It's just really beautifully written, as soon as you start reading it you feel the Italian sun on your arms, you can smell the lemons, you feel the fear. The Nazis have taken over the village, there are all these secrets he's got to keep, and his father has disappeared. By the time you get to the end, you feel like you've been through and you’ve won the war along with Paulo on his bicycle.

Out of the non-fiction books probably my favourite was Walter Tull's Scrapbook because it’s a story I’d not heard before. He was the first black football player in Britain and then was the first black soldier in World War I to be given a massive commission. It's a story of amazing triumph and people overcoming prejudice, and then ends with sorrow.

Cressida Cowell

It's been fantastic being a judge. Spending a day chatting about books with other people and hearing why other people liked books is just really good fun.

I love this shortlist of six because I think they are very different. There's a real variety of books. I get loads of children writing to me, and saying they want to be writers, so I was so happy to see Fantastic Mr Dahl on the list, because it's about writing and the way that writers make stories. I think children will love reading this because it’s all about Roald Dahl and how he writes - and I think it will give children ideas about how they might write their own stories.

I loved The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas which is written by David Almond and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers. I loved the main character Stan, and I really loved his Uncle Ernie, who's obsessed with his fish business. Oliver Jeffers' illustrations are very touching and beautiful, and it was also very poetically written.

It's great to have a prize like this because it got ME reading different kinds of books, and experimenting, and trying books that I might not have tried before. I think that's one of the things these prizes do: they get kids reading and get kids excited about reading.

Jake Hope

Being a judge was fantastic: it's been amazing. There are so many book awards that are geared at older readers or at very young readers so having one that kind of aims at the middle felt really important.

There are over 10,000 books being published a year in the UK and so knowing which books to go for, picking those out, can be quite a difficult task, so awards like this that offer an inroad to particular titles or authors are really valuable.

I think the shortlist is fantastic: there’s so much in there. One of the books that made a big impression on me was Tom Gates - Genius Ideas (Mostly) by Liz Pichon. It's an amazing book because of the way the story and the pictures work together. I think it’s one that will make people laugh and think at the same time.

One of the non-fiction titles I enjoyed was Horrible Science: House of Horrors. I think one of the things about it that will really appeal is that it shows us some of the more grim and gruesome aspects of everyday living and so these are things that we probably all live with in our everyday lives but we’re not quite aware of. It helps you see the world in a different way.

It's now over to more than 200 young Blue Peter viewers drawn from schools across the UK, who will decide the winners of the Blue Peter Book of the Year 2013 in each of the two categories.

The winners will be announced and awarded a Blue Peter trophy on a special edition of Blue Peter dedicated to children’s books on Thursday 7 March 2013, to coincide with World Book Day.

Find out more about the Blue Peter Book Awards 2013 and the six shortlisted books