Children's Laureate Announced in U.K.

by Julia Eccleshare, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/27/2005

Jacqueline Wilson has been named the 2005-2007 Children's Laureate in England. She was presented with the Children's Laureate medal and a bursary of £10,000 at a ceremony in London yesterday. "I'm very proud and pleased to be the Children's Laureate," Wilson says. "I'm going to work as hard as I can to raise the profile of children's literature and to try to get every child in the country happily reading lots of books. I'm also going to campaign for more funding for libraries."

Wilson has won many awards, including the Smarties Prize, the Children's Book Award, the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and has twice won the Children's Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. In addition, she has been the most borrowed author in U.K. libraries for the past two years.

The role of the Children's Laureate is awarded once every two years to an eminent British author or illustrator to mark a lifetime's contribution to excellence. She is the fourth Children's Laureate; her predecessors are Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Michael Murpurgo.