It is with great pleasure that the HA is able to announce the winners of the Young Quills for Historical Fiction for 2023:

Young readers category

Winner: Tony Bradman for Bruno and Frida (Barrington Stoke)
Highly Commended: Judith Eagle for Accidental Stowaway (Faber)

Intermediate category

Winner: Tom Palmer for Resist (Barrington Stoke)
Highly Commended: Lesley Parr for When the War Came Home (Bloomsbury)
Highly Commended: Dan Smith for Nisha’s War (Chicken House)

14 years+ (young adult) category

Winner: Bill Konigsberg for Destination Unknown (Scholastic)
Highly Commended: Zoulfa Katouh for As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow (Bloomsbury) 

The Young Quills for Historical Fiction are book awards for authors writing historical fiction for young readers between the ages of 5 years though to young adult.

Publishers apply to have the books considered for the awards, allowing the HA to create a longlist. The books are then sent into schools across the UK. The shortlist for the Young Quills is then created based on the reviews of children and their thoughts, and the final decision is made a by a judging panel of experts that include an historian, an author and a literacy expert. 

The reviews

You can read a selection of children's and young people's reviews of all the books entered into this year's Young Quills via the links below: