Bisto Book of the Year Awards - Leabhar-Ghradaim  Bisto  

The Bisto Book of the Year Awards, in partnership with CBI, are the leading annual Children's Book Awards in Ireland. Now in their 20th year, the awards have been sponsored by Bisto (Premier Foods) since their inception. The Awards are made annually by Children's Books Ireland to authors and illustrators born or resident in Ireland. The shortlist for the  awards is announced annually in March and the winners are announced in May.  The award is open to books written in Irish or English.

There are a total of six awards made:

The Bisto Book of the Year Award
The Eilis Dillon award for a first children’s book
The Bisto Honour Award for Writing
The Bisto Honour Award for Illustration
The Special Judges Award
Children's Choice Award

Each year CBI assembles a panel of judges who have considerable expertise and interest in books for children. The panel operates wholely independently of CBI.   Excellence in children’s books is the over-arching criterion.

Criteria for excellence
1: Literary/artistic - An excellent children’s book is extremely well conceived, structured and written or illustrated (or both).

2: Respect - An excellent children’s book appeals to an audience of children or young people, without patronising or exploiting that audience.

3: Engagement - An excellent children’s book entertains and engages the sustained interest of its intended readers.

4: Experience - An excellent children’s book offers its readers a stimulating and satisfying aesthetic, imaginative, intellectual or emotional experience that goes beyond the banal and the obvious, and develops or challenges the reader’s inner life, sense of self or understanding of and engagement with the world.

Note on honour award for illustration
Judges will primarily focus on the quality of the illustration but may also take into consideration how well the illustrations work together with the text.

Note on honour award for fiction
Judges will be aware that the text of a picture book or illustrated book can be considered in its own right for the fiction honour award.

Note on judges’ special award
This will be awarded to any book on its merit alone and  will not be awarded in recognition of a body of work by a publisher, author or illustrator. The judges will clearly identify their reasons for making this special award. If the judges feel that no book on the shortlist merits the award, it will not be given. 

External considerations-
While design and production will be given due consideration, such issues will not weigh substantially against a book that is otherwise outstanding, especially in the case of a book that is not illustrated.

Eligibility
Book publishers are invited to submit titles for consideration, provided all eligibility criteria are met.

•    Books must be a first edition, published between January 1st and December 31st 2009. Books may be published in Ireland or abroad.

•    Authors/Illustrators must be Irish Citizens or resident in Ireland.

•    Book must be written for a child/ young person audience

•    Books must be currently available in Ireland. Details of distribution must be completed on entry form.

•    Books must meet basic professional standards of publishing and printing.

•    Books may be in English or Irish.

•    Books may be fiction, non-fiction or poetry.

•    Academic textbooks, Translations and Re-issues are not currently eligible.

•    Anthologies are eligible, at the discretion of the Judging Panel, provided they are primarily of Irish content, i.e. Editor, Contributors etc.

Children’s Books Ireland reserve the right to include/exclude any titles for the awards.