Blue Peter Book Awards 2013 - Winners announced!

Liz Pichon doodles her way to world domination (mostly) with Best Story win, whilst Horrible Science team score in Best Book with Facts

Hundreds of children from schools across the country have chosen Tom Gates: Genius Ideas, Mostly by Liz Pichon as the winner of the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story and Horrible Science: House of Horrors by Nick Arnold and Tony De Saulles as the winner of the Best Book with Facts. The winners were announced live this evening and received their trophies on a special World Book Day edition of Blue Peter, which was broadcast live.

The win for Liz Pichon’s Tom Gates series is another in a string of accolades for the author. In just two years since the first Tom Gates book was published, Pichon has been awarded the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, Red House Book Award and Waterstones Children’s Book Prize as well as being one of the featured World Book Day authors. The series has sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into over 20 languages. Winning the Blue Peter Book Award marks Liz as a major rising star in the children’s book world.

Horrible Science: House of Horrors helps young readers to discover gruesome facts about the hidden aspects of everyday living with cartoon illustrated fact-filled pages. There are over five million Horrible Science books in print, with author Nick Arnold working on the titles for more than 15 years with Scholastic. House of Horrors won out over Michael Rosen’s Fantastic Mr Dahl and Walter Tull’s Scrapbook by Michaela Morgan.

The shortlist was selected by a panel of judges including How to Be a Woman author Caitlin Moran, How to Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell, librarian extraordinaire Jake Hope and Blue Peter editor Tim Levell. Over 300 young Blue Peter viewers from a selection of schools across the UK and Ireland then went on to vote for their favourites to determine the overall winners.  Both of the winning books are published by Scholastic.

Liz Pichon said:

Just being on such an amazing shortlist was fantastic enough – but winning is absolutely AMAZING! A HUGE thank you to everyone involved: the judges, Blue Peter and to all the children who took part and voted for Tom Gates.

Author Nick Arnold said:

Winning this award is better than winning the lottery since I know that House of Horrors has been judged against the very best children's books.  This is an award for entire Horrible Science team and I thank them all.  Right now I feel so out of this world I am in danger of ending up on another planet!

Illustrator Tony De Saulles:

Nick and I are absolutely thrilled to have won the Blue Peter Best Book with Facts prize for Horrible Science House of Horrors. We have been making Horrible Science books for seventeen years and it's brilliant to know that children still love them.

Blue Peter Editor Tim Levell said:

The Blue Peter Book Awards are one of the few awards chosen by children themselves, and what comes through is how child friendly the books they’ve chosen are. Our aim with the awards is to get more children reading and the winning books look so exciting and vibrant, children are guaranteed to pick up them up unprompted and that’s got to be a great result for everyone.

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

Read our Q&As with the shortlisted authors for Best Story and some of the shortlisted authors and illustrators for Best Book with Facts

Find out about the young viewers' experience of taking part in the judging