Best Children’s Picture Book Text 2024 Results

We are delighted to announce the final results of Searchlight’s Best Children’s Picture Book Text 2024 competition. Thank you to everyone who entered; it was joyful to read so many wonderful picture books. You are all so talented! Thanks also to our brilliant reading team for whittling down the stories to a longlist–not an easy task−and to our guest judge, literary agent Lorna Hemingway, for selecting the shortlist, second place, and ultimate winner.

Here are the long-awaited results.

A massive well done to our final 10. We love these stories and look forward to including them in Searchlight’s agent/publisher pitch book.

Lorna Hemingway said this about Tom Lancaster’s winning entry: Wow! Bamboo Hullabaloo was fun from start to finish! The text was a joy to read aloud due to its excellent rhyme and fast paced nature. I could envision some brilliant illustrations that could be full to the brim with hilarious incidental subplots of the kitchen staff trying their best to appease our main character. As for the main character, they felt perfectly relatable to any grumpy toddler that would be reading this story at home. 

The reason this book won is that it ticked every box!

• Relatable main character that the young reader will understand 
• Hilarious hijinks to counterbalance the discussions around tantrums 
• Great pace and brilliant page-turns! 

For the longlistees who have not been shortlisted–many congratulations on getting this far in the competition. Our longlisted authors do attract agent and publisher interest and some go on to be shortlisted by us with other stories, so success is within your reach.

We look forward to reading everyone’s writing again soon.