About

The Bangkok Book Awards are run by a group of inter­na­tion­al school librar­i­ans in Thai­land. The award is designed to cel­e­brate excel­lence in children’s glob­al lit­er­a­ture and cre­ate a shared local com­mu­ni­ty of enthu­si­as­tic readers.

The Awards pro­gramme has four cat­e­gories: Pic­ture Books, Younger Read­er Books, Junior Books, and Young Adult Books. The short­list­ed books have all been pub­lished in the last five years and pro­mote diver­si­ty of author, theme, genre, set­ting and nar­ra­tive style. We real­ly do hope there is some­thing for every­one to dis­cuss, debate and enjoy.

Please con­tact Stephen Mur­ga­troyd, Head of Libraries at Bangkok Patana School, with any ques­tions about the Bangkok Book Awards.

A range of titles were con­sid­ered, from which the short list was drawn. The fol­low­ing cri­te­ria were used to help the short­list­ing pan­el to arrive at a bal­anced selec­tion of books:

  • Books first pub­lished, or pub­lished in Eng­lish, over the past 5 years (at the point when the books are long/shortlisted). This year, the process took place between Jan­u­ary and March 2020.
  • Only the first book in a series was considered.
  • FICTION — Unre­al­is­tic, Fan­ta­sy, Sci-Fi.
  • FICTION — Real­is­tic (vari­ety of genres).
  • NON FICTION — both nar­ra­tive and tra­di­tion­al, along with mem­oirs, auto­bi­ogra­phies etc.
  • For­mat vari­ety (graph­ic, verse, poet­ry, short sto­ries, etc.)
  • Geo­graph­i­cal con­nec­tion (by author’s ori­gin, coun­try of pub­li­ca­tion, set­ting of sto­ry, etc.)
  • Diver­si­ty (gen­der, race, cul­ture, abil­i­ty, etc.)
  • Trans­la­tion.
  • Social/global issues.
  • Books with a Thai­land or Asian connection.