Discover the books on the shortlist for the 2025 Klaus Flugge Prize - with introduction by Kate Winter

Judge and 2024 Klaus Flugge Prize winner, Kate Winter introduces the books that caught the judges’ eyes this year and have made it on the 2025 shortlist.

2025 Klaus Flugge Prize Shortlist

My Hair is as Long as a River illustrated by Emma Farrarons, written by Charlie Castle

The Café at the Edge of the Woods written and illustrated by Mikey Please

Grandad’s Star illustrated by Rhian Stone, written by Frances Tosdevin.

Here's what she had to tell us:

"We had a fantastic day looking over the books and discussing in great detail what stood out for us as judges from the longlisted books. In addition to their artistic skills, we looked for storytelling ability, control of pace, characterisation and – hard to define - promise!

We feel that the three illustrators we shortlisted have incredibly distinctive visual languages and that these illustrative voices came to the forefront of each book, making the stories come alive for the reader and adding depth to the narrative, be it humorous, joyful or touching.

Emma Farrarons’ book My Hair is as Long as a River, is a tale that empowers children to love and be confident in who they are and to look for the magic in themselves. In this instance a young boy with very long hair delights in all the things he can be and imagine whilst playing with friends. Emma Farrarons’ imagery feels effortless and, like a river, seems to flow onto the page. We admired the embrace of the imagination and the wonderful way Emma creates her own world on the page through a sophisticated colour palette with hand drawn and painted visuals. We are taken under water, up into the trees, underground and through night and day. Each scene is created imaginatively and with great artistic skill. I have watched Farranons’ journey from geometric mindfulness colouring books to re-exploring and developing her illustrative approach for children’s picturebooks which is now rooted in observational drawing. The hard work to find her visual voice has really paid off and we all delighted in this book for the sweet and expressive characters, the storytelling within the images and the clear and evident understanding of how children look and move and play and think.

In The Café at the Edge of the Woods, Mikey Please’s career as an animator feels instrumental to the narrative structure and filmic experience of this book. This feels so different in its artistic approach from many of the books on the longlist and generally in children’s books. It’s a bit Fungus the Bogeyman and a bit Brothers Grimm. There’s a clever use of a wooden texture in the mark-making that to me suggests an old folk tale somehow, as though it were printed with woodcuts, and this makes it feel timeless, as though this book has been around for a while. It’s a long book of 48 pages and every page is swarming with details, characters and quirks. It’s the kind of book I would have got lost in as a child, staring at the food, the gruesome but likeable characters and noticing new parts of the story with every read. The words, also written by Mikey, are accomplished and lyrical but the images steal the show. We enjoyed the experience of this longer story and felt that the visual narrative showed a sophisticated understanding of comic timing. It is evident that Mikey Please understands the physicality and expression of the moving figure, as all good puppeteers, animators and illustrators should. It’s a great book. We predict Mikey will come full circle and an animated film version will be on the cards soon.

Grandad’s Star by Rhian Stone approaches the subject of dementia and loss but also the strength of memories and remembering. The illustrations balance reality and the imagination beautifully through Rhian’s exquisite use of colour. The use of a cool blue to depict sadness and confusion, by some artistic magic becomes the colour of the beautiful night sky and of good memories associated with her grandfather; grief and loss replaced by love and gratitude. We admired Rhian’s ability to balance line work with soft pencil textures, to bring clarity to some areas of the page and gentle fuzzy suggestion of the places and backgrounds in others. The sometimes swirling and dreamlike compositions, bring the child’s thoughts and memories to life on the page effectively, as the reader travels from real life to a kind of eternal place where her grandpa’s memory lives on. As judges we felt that she showed a strong sense of narrative and was able to bring the emotion to the story with good pacing, a loose and light artistic approach and the expressive body language and visible connection of the characters.

Overall, these three books all show how diverse and unique illustrative approaches can be and how visual storytelling is thriving in children’s books. We are all excited by this shortlist and are very much look forward to seeing what they all do next. "

The 2024 Winner

Kate Winter won the 2024 Klaus Flugge Prize with her book The Fossil Hunter. Her new book, The Cave Explorer, will be published in September this year.

Key Information

The winner of the 2025 Klaus Flugge Prize will be announced on the evening of Thursday 11 September 2025.

Set up in 2016, the Klaus Flugge Prize is ten years old. The prize is awarded annually to the most promising and exciting newcomer to children’s book illustration. It honours venerable publisher Klaus Flugge, a supremely influential figure in picture books and founder of publishing house Andersen Press.

In the ten years since it was founded, the Klaus Flugge Prize has gained recognition as one of the most significant children’s book awards. The support it gives new illustrators at the beginning of their careers is invaluable and the prize continues to raise awareness of the art of picture book illustration in general.

Kate’s fellow judges are illustrators Yasmeen Ismail and Bruce Ingman, teacher and EYFS educational consultant Rachna Joshi. Julia Eccleshare is chair of the judging panel.