The winners of the 22nd annual CBI Book of the Year Awards have been announced! This year’s awards were presented by Fergus Finlay yesterday at a ceremony in Wood Quay, Dublin. Friends, families and colleagues of the nine shortlisted authors and illustrators gathered to see the six CBI Awards dished out. We were delighted to be joined also by four of eight specially appointed junior juries comprising young people from school and library reading groups around Ireland, who treated us to entertaining and insightful presentations of their thoughts on each of the shortlisted titles and revealed the winner of the Children’s Choice Award.

Cavan author Celine Kiernan was presented with the 2012 CBI Book of the Year Award for her original and atmospheric novel Into the Grey. Set in the 1970s, the book tells the story of identical teenage twins Patrick and Dominic, who are forced to move after a fire destroys their family home. A strange and spooky series of events follows, which clearly kept our junior juries hooked, as, for the first time ever, the same book won both the Book of the Year and Children’s Choice awards. Celine was especially delighted to receive the Children’s Choice, stating in her acceptance speech that “The Children’s Choice Award means so much – children are the most honest of readers, and for them to have voted Into the Grey as their winner is the highest compliment I could ever have received. And then, on top of that, to have the recognition of the panel of judges whose vote is based on literary merit as much as enjoyment of the story is quite the icing on the cake.” Click here to read’s Celine’s guest post on the O’Brien Press blog to find out more about how she came up with the story. Congratulations Celine from all at CBI!

The winner of this year’s Eilís Dillon Award, which is presented to a first time author or illustrator, is Paula Leyden for her novel The Butterfly Heart. Paula’s book reflects much of her own experience growing up in Zambia and is a beautiful tale of friendship and magic set in the heart of Africa.

The Judges’ Special Award was presented to author Mark O’ Sullivan for his book My Dad is Ten Years Old, which deals with complex family and health issues and portrays a realistic teenage reaction to difficult family circumstances.

The ever popular Oliver Jeffers received this year’s Honour Award for Illustration for his picture book Stuck and its outstanding quality of illustration which encourages readers to journey imaginatively into the absurd. Check out the trailer for Oliver’s new picture book, The Hueys – The New Jumper here. We love these little guys and have been making our own Hueys all week!

Former Laureate na nÓg Siobhán Parkinson is the recipient of the 2012 Honour Award for Fiction for Maitríóisce - a novel in Irish which skilfully brings its protagonist back through five generations of her family.

Huge congratulations go out from CBI to all the winners and shortlisted authors, and a massive thank you is due to our wonderful junior juries and all those who attended yesterday’s ceremony and showed their support. The CBI Book of the Year Awards are the leading children’s book awards in Ireland and are a celebration of excellence in children’s literature and illustration. Keith O’Sullivan, chair of the judging remarked: “The range of subjects addressed by this year’s shortlisted and winning titles reflects a range of experiences for children of every age. Addressing contemporary and universal themes these books are brilliant examples of why children’s literature matters”.

There has been plenty of media coverage of Celine’s big win, with the Independent, The Irish Times, The Irish Examiner and the Metro Herald running features on the awards. RTE News2day also covered yesterday’s awards ceremony – you can watch online here. And then click here for a handy summary of the ceremony in tweets!

Click here to find out more about the CBI Book of the Year Awards, and here to find out more about this year’s winners and shortlisted titles.