Shark in the Park wins inaugural prize

Author Nick Sharratt has won the inaugural Bookbug Picture Book Prize for his picture book Shark in the Park on a Windy Day, published by Picture Corgi.

Also shortlisted were Ross Collins for There's a Bear on my Chair (Nosy Crow) and Hare and Tortoise, The Favourite Aesop's Fable by Alison Murray (Orchard Books). A free copy of each of the three shortlisted books was given to every Primary 1 child during Book Week Scotland 2016, in the Bookbug P1 Family Bag. Shark in the Park on a Windy Day is the third book in the best-selling Shark in the Park series, where little Timothy Pope is blown this way and that as readers join him in peeping through his telescope. The prize, voted for exclusively by 19,000 Scottish children aged 3-7, was set up in 2016 to celebrate the most popular picture books by Scottish authors or illustrators, and is run by Scottish Book Trust with support from Creative Scotland. Nick Sharratt, who also illustrates Jacqueline Wilson's books, said, "I am absolutely delighted. I've had the pleasure of going into scores of Scottish schools, nurseries and libraries to work with hundreds of children over the past few years, so the fact that the voting was decided upon by the country's young readers makes the prize all the more special." Nick has worked as an illustrator and author of children's books since the late 1980s and has created illustrations for close to two hundred and fifty books. As well as producing around sixty of his own books (which have been translated into more than a dozen languages), he's worked with numerous writers including Julia Donaldson, Michael Rosen and Giles Andreae, as well as Jacqueline Wilson for whom he has illustrated more than 40 fiction titles.