Children’s picturebook award Oscar’s Book Prize has named Rachel Riley as Oscar’s Book Club Ambassador, to “inspire and encourage reading with children at a grass-roots level”.
The £10,000 prize, which is supported by Amazon and the Evening Standard, was set up by James Ashton and Viveka Alvestrand to celebrate magical stories for children in memory of their son Oscar, who was three-and-a-half when he died from a heart condition in December 2012.
This year Amazon is also teaming up with Oscar’s Book Prize to create Oscar’s Book Club, which aims to reach children in areas with typically low engagement with the arts. Throughout April, the Amazon Reading Volunteers, a national network of schools volunteers, will be donating the Oscar’s Book Prize shortlisted books to schools and nurseries across the country and supporting on the ground with group reading sessions, to inspire young children through the magic of reading.
Riley will be joining Oscar’s Book Club and Amazon this April to champion the campaign for early-years reading. She said: “I always loved reading growing up and now having children of my own, I have a whole new perspective on the magic of children’s literature. It’s a real skill to capture the attention of young children like mine, so we look forward to getting stuck into this year’s Oscar’s Book Prize shortlist in the coming months. I love what Oscar’s Book Club is doing to help children and young families to engage more with books, and look forward to experiencing the joy of reading with some of them for myself in a few months’ time.”
Oscar’s Book Prize has also announced its judging panel for 2024. Riley will be joining judge Zoey Dixon, Librarian of the Year 2020 and a Bookseller Rising Star in 2020. Children’s author and Oscar’s Book Prize alumnus Chris Haughton, who won the prize in 2022, will sit alongside them. Completing the line-up is Viveka Alvestrand, who co-founded the literary award in memory of her son Oscar, and Lisa de Meyer, the UK Books Country Manager at Amazon.
