Children’s Laureate Cressida Cowell and former Blue Peter host Konnie Huq are on the judging panel for a book prize celebrating science writing for children.

Cowell, author of the How To Train Your Dragon books, and Huq, herself a children’s writer, will help choose the winner of the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize, awarded annually to the best science book for under-14s.

Joining them on the panel as chairman is seismologist Mike Kendall, along with teacher Gail Eagar and Royal Society research fellow Professor Rosalind Rickaby.

The judges will comb through this year’s submissions of children’s science books and produce a shortlist which will be voted on by school children across the UK.

Cressida Cowell
Cressida Cowell (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Cowell, whose spell as Children’s Laureate was recently extended by 12 months due to the coronavirus outbreak, said: “We need the children of today to become creative, innovative adults, who can use scientific knowledge to find solutions to the many challenges our world faces.

“To do that they require the best possible books to excite and inform them about science from the earliest age.”

Huq, who recently published her first children’s book, Cookie And The Most Annoying Boy In The World, said: “From a young age I’ve always been drawn to both science and the arts, which is why judging the Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Prize is a dream come true for me – it combines my two main passions: science and reading.”

Last year Planetarium: Welcome To The Museum won the prize.

With schools across the country closed due to the pandemic, organisers said the timings for this year’s prize will be kept under review with the hope of beginning in the new academic year.