The Little Rebels Award will be taking a pause in 2026.
We have been proudly celebrating radical fiction for children since 2013, and in that time we’ve seen the prize grow and grow. Such is its success that the work the prize generates now exceeds the capacity of the small team running it.
Like so many endeavours in the book world, the award runs mostly on love, enthusiasm and unpaid labour, and we’ve temporarily reached a point where the workload is unsustainable.
We are incredibly grateful for the funding we receive from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, which goes to the prize money, promotional materials and the ceremony, but we have no funding beyond this, and our hope this year is to find additional funding opportunities to help us pay for administrative support. We would welcome any ideas or suggestions in this respect!
We will continue to run our social media accounts throughout 2026, and we will be highlighting children’s titles published in 2025 which might otherwise have been amplified by a longlist – so do continue to follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to stay up to date.
This was a really difficult decision, but we hope this pause will allow us to regroup and come back with a bang in 2027.
Thank you to all our friends and followers for supporting the prize all these years and helping us to celebrate socially and politically engaged storytelling for children! We will see you soon.
The Little Rebels Team x
The Little Rebels Children’s Book Award 
One response to “Little Rebels on pause for 2026”
I recommend the Little Rebels list frequently and really appreciate all that is done to maintain this great work !