The Esther Glen award for junior fiction at the Library and Information Association's Children's Book Awards has been won by the Wellington writer Barbara Else.
The awards were held in Wellington on Monday night.
The judges described Else's book The Travelling Restaurant as outstanding and respectful of the young reader's ability to understand humour.
The award for teenage novels went to David Hair for Pyre of Queens, part of a fantasy series.
The cartoonist Chris Slane and the comedian Matt Elliott, won the Elsie Locke Medal for Nice Day for a War, a book about Elliott's grandfather's experiences during World War 1.
