The Dark Wild by Piers Torday (Quercus in the U.K.), has won the 2014 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, announced Thursday evening in London.

Torday told PW that he was “deeply honoured and thrilled” to have won the award. “The Last Wild trilogy is for children,” he said, “but the subject it addresses, the challenge of climate change, is one that faces us all. I know from the overwhelming response to The Last Wild from U.S. readers that they feel very strongly about these issues. Now I hope this accolade will encourage more people to join Kester and his animals on their journey, which continues when The Dark Wild is published next January by Viking.”

The judges for the award were Frank Cottrell Boyce, Gillian Cross, and Katherine Rundell; Julia Eccleshare, the Guardian’s children’s books editor, served as chair.