Childrens book awards motivate authors, illustrators, publishers and the entire team that works to put together award-winning books. Awards help to highlight work and encourage people to create similar or even better outcomes. While books are an integral part of children’s life, they engage young minds creatively, and introduce new word usage.
Prominent Childrens Book Awards in India
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Childrens book awards create awareness and put the spotlight on good children’s books and promote reading habits. People come to know genres, authors and the best books to read. Then, which are these childrens book awards in India that acknowledge the great work that has begun to happen in the children’s book world in India? Read further to know more.
1. Bal Sahitya Puraskar
A component of Sahitya Akademi, Bal Sahitya Puraskar is awarded every year for children’s books written in 24 languages including English and 23 Indian languages.
2. Big Little Book Award
This award is given by Tata Trust through their initiative Parag, which endeavours to encourage reading and provide Indian children access to juvenile literature.
3. National Jarul Book Awards
The National Jarul Book award is a children’s choice award that recognizes Indian picture books. It promotes Indian children’s literature. Schools participate in this program where children read, nominate and select books for the award based on certain criteria. Authors, illustrators and publishers of Indian picture books can receive this award.
4. The Hindu Young World Award
Constituted by The Hindu newspaper, The Hindu Young World Award is the best children’s picture book story, illustrations, fiction and non-fiction.
5. Crossword Book Awards
This award is conferred by the Crossword Bookstore to recognize Indian writers and their literary work. The highest-selling books are tracked through the sales and readers vote to select the winners on the crossword web portal and offline in the bookstores.
6. Leading Reading Schools of India Awards
The Leading Reading Schools of India awards were started by Young India Books to promote reading habits among school children. Schools participating in this program conduct reading activities in the school.
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7. Publishing Next Industry Awards
The Publishing Next Industry Awards acknowledges and rewards publishing houses, books and professionals associated with books. The award is given by a forum of publishing professionals.
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8. Binod Kanoria Childrens Book Awards
The Binod Kanoria Childrens Book Awards endeavours to recognise and encourage creativity, illustrations and regional literature in India. The awards are in categories of literature for various age groups of kids.
9. Atta Galatta Book Awards
The Atta Galatta Book Awards are part of the Bangalore Literature Festival and have nine categories including awards in children’s literature. Atta Galatta is a bookstore in Bangalore that conducts the Bangalore Literature Festival that has more than twenty-five thousand people attend the two-day Lit fest.
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10. Valley of Words Book Awards
These book awards are in eight categories by the Valley of Words (VoW) Foundation Trust based in Dehradun. They are a not-for-profit organization that acknowledges and rewards literary talent in a variety of categories including children’s literature of India.
11. Kalinga Book Awards
These awards are part of the Kalinga Literary Festival that takes place every year in Bhubaneshwar, meant to recognize and support writers. The famous Kalinga book awards are in ten different categories, one of which is a children’s book award.
12. Peek-a-book Awards
These awards are part of the Peek-a-Book Literature festival by founder/author Lubina Bandukwala. They help keep the fun alive in reading books. The Lit fest has many activities like workshops, book reviews by kids and author interviews.
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13. Bandana Sen Library Awards
The Bandana Sen Library Awards honour school librarians, school leadership and their work in promoting reading books among their school children. Bandana Sen was (1943-2018) a passionate school librarian at the American Embassy School in New Delhi.
So, this award is not for books and authors but it is for those school librarians/teacher librarians who create a collaborative reading-learning eco-system in the libraries so that the children learn to read diverse genres and think critically with regards to information.
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Conclusion
Children’s literature provides a voice to children’s narratives and grants them wings of imagination and possibility. The childrens book awards serve as a pat on the back for the authors, illustrators, publishers and the entire team that works for making a children’s book. This makes them strive to produce encouraging work for young readers.
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