CBI Book of the Year Awards 2013

The CBI Book of the Year Awards (formerly the Bisto Awards) are the leading annual children’s book awards in Ireland. Now in their 24th year, the awards are made annually by Children’s Books Ireland to authors and illustrators born or resident in Ireland and are open to books written in Irish or English. The shortlist for the awards is announced annually in March and the winners are announced in May.

Belfast author Sheena Wilkinson has won the 23rd CBI Book of the Year Award and is the second author ever to win both the Book of The Year Award and the Children’s Choice Award for her novel Grounded. Set in a beak, contemporary Belfast, the novel follows a talented show-jumper from the wrong side of the tracks and his struggle to cope with his responsibilities as a boyfriend, son, employee and friend. The judges said ‘this powerful first person narrative is an unsentimental account of a teenager trying to cope with a series of unexpected responsibilities, and explores the effects of caring too much and of caring too little.’ Grounded is the sequel to Sheena’s previous novel Taking Flight, which won both the CBI Honour Award for Fiction and the Children’s Choice Award in 2011.

Children from Ballymote Community Library (pictured) formed one of the Junior Juries at this event which voted for the Children's Choice Award.

For more information on the winners and shortlist please click on the following link http://www.childrensbooksireland.ie/the-cbi-awards/shortlist-and-winners-2011/