The Lonely Beast wins the Bishop’s Stortford Picture Book Award!

Chris Judge’s debut picture book, The Lonely Beast, beat stiff competition to win the 2012 Bishops’s Stortford Picture Book Award.

Chris Judge came over from Dublin for the ceremony at Bishop’s Stortford College earlier this month, which was attended by an audience of over 150 excited children who had been involved in the voting process. Acclaimed novelist Anne Fine announced that The Lonely Beast was the winning book, followed by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s The Highway Rat in second place and Nadia Shireen’s Good Little Wolf in third place.

And finally, it was time to continue the tradition set by past ceremonies, with the unveiling of a commemorative painting by Simon Bailey, the College’s own talented illustrator, who, when not drawing, can be found teaching Geography in the Junior School. This time he’d painted a hoard of Beasts running wild in the school’s grounds!

Nadia Shireen, Axel Scheffler, Anne Fine, Chris Judge and Hiawyn Oram

Simon Bailey, Chris Judge and Anne Fine