Kew Gardens features a hidden magical door in the winning book for this year’s £5,000 Waterstones children’s book prize.
Greenwild: The World Behind the Door by Pari Thomson was voted the winner by Waterstones booksellers. The book “is a spellbinding triumph that will make children fall in love with the world they are reading about, and with reading itself,” said Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones.
The book follows Daisy as she searches for her missing mother and discovers another world behind a hidden doorway in Kew Gardens. She soon learns that the new realm, filled with plants and magic, is under threat, and she bands together with a botanical expert, a boy who can talk to animals and a cat to save the green paradise.
Thomson lives near Kew Gardens – a place “full of sparkling glasshouses and carnivorous plants and lily pads big enough to take a nap on”, she said. “I have always felt that nature was a little bit magic – and Kew made me ask, what if it was true? What if the natural world all around us was brimming with magic? Greenwild is the answer to that question.”
Thomson is the 20th winner of the prize. Her debut “enchanted our booksellers with its sweeping escapism and standard-setting lyrical worldbuilding,” added Carvalho. “At once a fast-paced adventure story and a heartfelt entreaty to care for the natural world, Greenwild is a timeless fantasy tale.”
While Thomson won the overall prize and the younger readers award, Chloe Savage topped the illustration category with The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish, and Kayvion Lewis won the older readers award with Thieves’ Gambit.
Savage’s book “is a unique story about insatiable curiosity, taking us on an expedition that we long to believe took place,” said Nick Campbell, Waterstones children’s buyer. “It is full of fascinating illustrations that children will pore over and return to, from cutaways to evocative landscapes, and of course the elusive jellyfish.”
Thieves’ Gambit sees Rosalyn Quest enter a deadly competition for the world’s best thieves, in which the winner is granted a wish. “This fast-paced heist thriller is incredibly assured with a blockbuster feel,” wrote Fiona Noble in the Guardian.
Previous winners of the prize include Angie Thomas, Katherine Rundell and Kiran Millwood Hargrave. In 2023, Nadia Mikail won the award with her book The Cats We Meet Along the Way.
