‘Why should adults judge children’s books?’ Australian kids take over prestigious book awards

This year, the Children’s Book Council of Australia has created a new set of awards judged by 2,000 children around the country. We meet some small judges with big opinions

Children’s and teens roundup – the best new chapter books

Estranged friends navigate a sleeping world, a boy discovers he is part-alien, and the hunt for a missing mother touches lightly on mental health issues

Le Petit Nicolas illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé dies aged 89

Sempé co-created much-loved French children’s books that have sold more than 15m copies worldwide

Raymond Briggs was famous for his grumpiness – but behind the facade he was shy, thoughtful and kind

The writer and illustrator – who has died aged 88 – was a stalwart of children’s literature, but readers of all ages delighted in his characters. The cartoonist Posy Simmonds remembers the man behind the drawings

Raymond Briggs remembered: ‘He made what he did look easy. Which is, of course, what geniuses do’

The beloved writer and illustrator of the Snowman and Father Christmas has died. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute

Snowman author Raymond Briggs dies aged 88

Beloved creator of Fungus the Bogeyman and Father Christmas brought a distinctive strain of melancholy to the genre

Poet Nikita Gill: ‘I worry about people getting tattoos of my work. What if I made a typo?’

Her touching verses about heartbreak, fat-shaming and body hair have made her Britain’s most-followed poet on social media – and now she’s heading for TV

Laurinda takes the stage: ‘Private school culture needs to change – the insularity, the entitlement’

Author Alice Pung and the two minds behind a new adaptation reflect on the beloved story of a girl navigating high school – Mean Girls meets Fight Club, with an Asian-Australian twist

Children’s and teens roundup – the best new picture books and novels

An angry kitten; a guide to rewilding; Mabinogion magic; wartime adventures; Olympian gods; first love and more; plus the best YA novels

The Guardian view on book prizes: don’t forget the children

Editorial: In a changing awards landscape, fiction for young readers should not be left out in the cold

Picture books for children – reviews

The human body is brought to life, difference is celebrated – and a very long dinosaur is tickled pink

Joan Lingard obituary

Prolific author best known for the Kevin and Sadie young adult novels charting friendship across the divide in 1970s Belfast

Never fear! Mo Willems’ spectacularly unscary monster is gobbled up by kids

Manual Cinema’s stage version of Leonardo the Terrible Monster is heading for the Edinburgh fringe – and its adaptors hope it inspires audiences to create their own creatures

‘There’s obviously a market’: why are there so many children’s books about anxiety?

Publishing is awash with titles for kids focused on worries, feelings and emotional literacy – and parents are buying them in droves

Rooted by Sarah Langford; Regenesis by George Monbiot reviews – how to fix farming

Modern agriculture isn’t working. Two energising books come up with contrasting solutions