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UPDATED: “Philosopher’s Stone” Makes British Book Awards Short List

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UPDATE (April 2):

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has made it onto the short list for the 30 from 30 award, celebrating 30 years of British publishing.

Harry’s first adventure at Hogwarts was one of 30 books on the long list that has made it onto the short list of 11 titles. Ten of these books are previous British Book Award winners, and one is a wildcard entry that “did not win a Nibbie in the year of its success, but perhaps ought to have.” 

Here are the titles short-listed for the award:

  • 5 Ingredients by Jamie Oliver
  • Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
  • The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
  • The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
  • The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
  • Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith
  • Wild Swans by Jung Chang
  • Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  • This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay (wildcard entry)

A winner for this category is set to be announced at the British Book Awards, which have been rescheduled to take place on June 29.

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone has been nominated for a British Book Award that celebrates the past 30 years of publishing, and it needs your help to get on the short list.

This year marks 30 years of the British Book Awards, which are often affectionately referred to as the Nibbies. To celebrate this milestone, awards organizer The Bookseller has created the 30 from 30 award that aims to crown the best overall book of the last three decades.

In a long list of (you guessed it) 30 books, Philosopher’s Stone has been nominated alongside a wide variety of children’s and adult fiction, as well as biographies, cookbooks, and other non-fiction. This includes Northern Lights (known as The Golden Compass throughout North America) by Philip Pullman, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, and 5 Ingredients by Jamie Oliver.

 

 

What connects the titles in this eclectic long list isn’t genre or audience, but rather the overall impact the books have had on publishing, such as launching the career of an unknown author or becoming best sellers all over the world. For Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller and chair of the judging panel, the British Book Awards are an opportunity to celebrate the impact of these books, alongside 30 years of memories from across the industry.

For 30 years the British Book Awards have celebrated and rewarded everything that is good about British publishing through its big, successful and prize-winning books. This is an opportunity to relive a few memories of these past three decades, to cherish the books, authors, illustrators, agents and publishers that brought them to market and the booksellers and librarians that sought out readers for them. This is our way of acknowledging the wider import of these titles, many of which launched careers, defined genres, or simply enabled their publishers to breathe again.

Philosopher’s Stone was awarded a Nibbie for Children’s Book of the Year in 1997, and J.K. Rowling has gone on to receive a further five awards, including the Outstanding Achievement Award in 2008 and most recently, the Bestseller Award in 2017 for the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child screenplay.

Readers can vote for which titles they want to see make the short list, which will be revealed sometime in March. Nine books from the long list will make it through to the next round. The awards ceremony will take place on May 18.

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Lucy O'Shea

I was given a copy of Philosopher's Stone in 2001, and instantly, I was hooked. Since then, my passion for Potter has been equaled only by my passion for fair access to education (and watching motorsport). A spell I wish could exist in the Muggle world is the summoning charm because this Hufflepuff is not a "particularly good finder"!