Nevermoor wins children's book prize

Nevermoor, Jessica Townsend's tale of a courageous young girl who must overcome a terrible magical curse, has won the Younger Fiction category of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize.

The judges said Nevermoor 'bursts with magic, intrigue and wonder'. In Nevermoor, heroine Morrigan Crow is cursed to die on the eve of her 11th birthday, but a mysterious visitor named Jupiter North has other ideas and whisks her away. Strange faraway lands, shadowy hunters, dangerous trials and an epic struggle follow as Morrigan struggles to avoid her deadly fate. The Secret of Black Rock by Joe Todd-Stanton won the Younger Fiction award. Erin, the heroine of The Secret of Black Rock, is a born explorer who dreams of sailing far out to sea to find the secrets held within the distant deep. But her voyages are destined to take her deep into a mystery she never imagined, uncovering the secret that lies behind the long-feared legend of Black Rock. The Older Fiction prize and Overall Winner was won by Angie Thomas's The Hate U Give, about a teenager whose life is split between the affluent school she attends and the much poorer suburb that is her home.