Through the 2000 prize, announced 28 March, it recognised one book published in the UK during the preceding calendar year.
[3] At the same time, a summer program was inaugurated, using the newspaper's educational website and featuring a longlist announced in July.
The program initially comprised merely an opportunity to vote for longlist favourites, comments by the judges to guide summer reading, and advice on "how to build a classic library of children's books".
(2001 longlist) A version of the ongoing Young Critics contest was inaugurated in 2002 and the program has expanded since then to include online discussion and author interviews and appearances.
The newspaper's children's book editor Julia Eccleshare participated (from 2000 to 2016) in selection of the longlist and thereafter chaired the panel of final judges.
In 2001, The Seeing Stone by Kevin Crossley-Holland won the Tir na n-Og Award, best English-language book for young people with "authentic Welsh background".
It genuinely has equal, though different, appeal to all readers – 15-year-old Christopher Boone's narrative voice is at once childlike in its observations, and adult in its profundity.
(retrospective by CA, 23 Sep 2002) Ten years later there are dual competitions for children 17 and younger, one for individuals and one for teams of at least four schoolmates.