SCHOLASTIC UK ANNOUNCE LOLLIES 2018 SHORTLIST...

...OF FUNNIEST BOOKS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE


Michael Rosen, children’s novelist, poet and former Children’s Laureate, today announced the shortlist for the 2018 Laugh Out Loud Awards (The Lollies), a set of awards, now in its third year, created by Scholastic UK, to celebrate the funniest children’s books.


Having long championed humorous books for children, Rosen said of the shortlist: “Anyone around children looking for books to have them giggling and laughing over and over again, these 12 books will do the job. They are infectious and contagious and dangerous! Children will want to read them and ask for more. People talk about the importance of getting children reading, well, these shortlisted books do the work all by themselves.”


Rosen and his judging panel, consisting of Katie Thistleton, presenter and host of the CBBC Children’s Book Club, primary school teachers and bloggers, Jo Cummins and Jonny Walker, as well Kate Newport, Product Director for Scholastic Book Clubs and Book Fairs, were tasked with selecting the shortlist from nearly 120 titles submitted by children’s publishers.

Rachel Partridge, Group Marketing & Publicity Director, added “The Lollies continues to grow apace as a celebration of all that is wonderful about funny books. The quality of the submissions for this year’s Lollies demonstrated the strength and depth of author and illustrator talent that abounds in UK publishing. We cannot wait to share these incredible books with teachers, kids and parents and have ambitious plans this year to engage even more schools and get as many kids as possible reading the shortlisted books and voting for their favourites before the votes closes on 14th December 2018.”


The Lollies are awarded in three categories: Best Laugh Out Loud Picture Book, Best Laugh Out Loud Book for 6-8 year olds and Best Laugh Out Loud Book for 9-13 year olds. The shortlisted books in each category are as follows:


Best Laugh Out Loud Picture Book:
Mr Bunny’s Chocolate Factory by Elys Dolan (OUP)
The Squirrels Who Squabbled by Rachel Bright and Jim Field (Hachette)
Oi Cat! by Kes Gray and Jim Field (Hachette)
I Can Only Draw Worms by Will Mabbitt (PRH)


Best Laugh Out Loud Book for 6-8 year olds:
Barry Loser and the Birthday Billions by Jim Smith (Egmont)
The Big, Fat, Totally Bonkers Diary of Pig by Emer Stamp (Scholastic)
There’s a Werewolf in My Tent! by Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham (Nosy Crow)
Lyttle Lies: The Pudding Problem by Joe Berger (Simon and Schuster)



Best Laugh Out Loud Book for 9-13 year olds:
Tom Gates: Epic Adventure (Kind Of) by Liz Pichon (Scholastic)
My Mum’s Growing Down by Laura Dockrill and David Tazzyman (Faber)
Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure by A. L. Kennedy and Gemma Correll (Walker)
Football Season 2: Where Football Saves the World by Alex Bellos and Ben Lyttleton and Spike Gerrell (Walker)


The winning book in each category will be decided solely by children’s votes, with schools and parents encouraged to help kids get involved and vote via the Lollies website, www.scholastic.co.uk/lollies, or via the Lollies PopJam channel.


The winning books will be announced in January 2019.


The Lollies were created in response to findings from the Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report™, (www.scholastic.co.uk/readingreport) which found that what two-thirds of children aged 6-17 looked for when choosing books for themselves were “books that make me laugh”.



The 2018 awards are sponsored by Happy Monkey Smoothies, with media partner PopJam also on board to provide a voting platform for children to pick their category winners.

Voting is open to teachers and their pupils, parents and children. The Lollies website will be open for voting from 4th June till 14th December 2018 at: www.scholastic.co.uk/lollies

Teachers can cast up to 35 votes on behalf of their class for each category.

The Lollies are also supported by Book Trust who will be working with Scholastic to encourage schools, parents and children to participate and vote for their favourites.

Scholastic received 118 submissions from publishers across all categories for the 2018 awards.




For further information, please contact:
Antonia Wilkinson antonia@wilkinson-pr.com / 0770 353 8554