AWARDS that have attracted some of the UK’s top children’s authors to Bolton will return in September — but with a new look.

Lack of sponsorship and support forced the cancellation of the festival this school year, but now Bolton School is stepping in to open a new chapter in the awards.

The awards were first started in 2005 by Bolton Council’s library services, the school library service and the University of Bolton.

The award involves scores of children across Bolton voting for their favourite author.

The winner is announced at a special book festival, in which the authors are invited to the town to meet their young fans.

Bolton Children’s Fiction Book Award, as it will be now known, will be run by Bolton School’s librarians, who, with colleagues from schools across the borough, are now busy reading to draw up a shortlist of books and their authors.

The event will be officially launched by Brit Writers’ Award winner Sufiya Ahmed at Bolton School on October 4.

Children in years seven and eight will read the shortlisted selection before casting their vote.

The winner will be announced at an event at Bolton School in June 2014, which will be compered by previous Bolton Book Award winner Joe Craig.

Linda Frew, Bolton School’s senior librarian, said: “I was so disappointed when the Bolton Children’s Book Award stopped.

“Having a focus for reading, topics for discussion and feeling that they had a real influence on the outcome of the award meant that the pupils got so much out of it.

“The awards ceremony was a big event for our pupils — meeting the authors and being able to ask them questions was a real treat.

“We are hoping the new award ceremony will be a bigger event than ever.”

Puplis from all over Bolton will be invited to a day of author workshops, talks and question and answer sessions.

Mrs Frew said: “We librarians are all looking forward to seeing how our hard work of shortlisting books will enable pupils to have a great time being involved in discussions, voting, blogging, acting, making films and, let’s not forget, reading books and discovering brilliant new authors.”