Meet the judges

Irfan Master

Irfan is the critically acclaimed author of Out of Heart, which was longlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal for Children and the UKLA Book Award 2018. His first novel, A Beautiful Lie, was shortlisted for the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize, the Branford Boase Award for debut authors and was featured on the USBBY Outstanding International Book Honour List. He has made numerous contributions to published anthologies including a short story for A Change Is Gonna Come (2017), an award-winning anthology of short stories and poetry for young adults written by authors from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. Irfan is based in London.

Annie Everall

Annie is Director of Authors Aloud UK, an agency organising school visits and tours in the UK and Internationally for children’s authors and publishers. She serves on the committees of the CILIP School Libraries Group, ASCEL, FCBG and the Literacy and Reading section of IFLA. She is also a Trustee for Read for Good. She is a children’s book reviewer and is a judge for the Pupil Library Assistant of the Year Award. She was awarded the OBE in 2001 for services to children’s books and libraries.

Joseph Coelho

Joseph is a multi-award winning children’s author and poet. His debut children's collection Werewolf Club Rules is published by Frances Lincoln and was the winner of the CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award. His Collection for older readers, Overheard In A Tower Block went on to numerous long- and short-listings for various awards, including the Carnegie Medal. His picture book, illustrated by Allison Colpoys, If All The World Were… won the 2019 Independent Bookshop Week, Book Award. He wrote and presented Teach Poetry - a 10-part BBC online series that aims to make the writing of poetry fun and accessible to all.

Deborah Maclaren

Deborah is the co-owner and Managing Director of the LoveReading portfolio of websites: LoveReading, LoveReading4Kids and LoveReading4Schools - and she adores books!

LoveReading4Kids is the biggest and best recommendation site for children’s books: reading, reviewing and recommending so that the children in your life can easily find their next favourite book. Their experts select books right across the age ranges from toddlers to teens. Since 2005, families across the nation have trusted LoveReading to curate a steady stream of wonderful books for every age range.

Joshua Clarke

Joshua is the Chair of the Secondary Working Group for NATE and a working English teacher during the day. His work includes promoting the value of English as a subject, and aims to collate and disseminate excellent practice for the teaching of reading, writing and spoken language in schools.

Joshua spends a lot of time reading and during lockdown found himself re-reading the entire Chronicles of Narnia and discovered the joys of The Legend of Podkin One-Ear by Kieran Larwood.

Stella Thebridge

Stella Thebridge has been Principal Librarian: schools and reading for Warwickshire Libraries, managing reader development activities in the public libraries and also the Schools Library Service since 2010. She has been a member of ASCEL for that time and Chair for the past two years.

Guy Fowles

Guy is Director of Marketing and Communications at the National Literacy Trust. With 15 years' experience building marketing teams within publishing, travel and the events industries, Guy aims to transform lives through literacy.

Gill Worrall

Gill is Resource Developer at Corum Beanstalk. She creates learning content for all audiences - volunteers, parents, grandparents, professionals - and anyone who wants to get better at reading with children. This covers many aspects from creating interactive workshops and recommending books, to social media posts with tips and advice to help individuals become more confident and effective at inspiring children to discover the joys of reading.

Jemma Wallace

Jemma, won the 'One in four' new writer competition in 2018; a competition run by Orion imprint, Trapeze, and the charity Gingerbread, to highlight the fact that a quarter of families in the UK are headed by a single parent. She has since published her debut novel The Truth About My Mother in February 2020. Jemma lives near Edinburgh with her eight-year-old son, Archie.

Emma Braithwaite

Emma is The Reading Agency's Programme Manager for Children's Reading and responsible for delivering their annual Summer Reading Challenge - the largest reading for pleasure programme for children in the UK. She previously spent 12 years working in children's education publishing

Rachel Tonkin

Rachel is the Director of Communications at Family Lives. Rachel joined Family Lives in 2012 following a merger with Parenting UK where she was Head of Communications. As Director of Communications Rachel oversees all Family Lives communications work with their wide variety of stakeholders both individual and corporate through their suite of Family Lives websites, social media and press activity, and is also working on their digital innovation project.