The Chicken House is a publishing company owned by Scholastic Corporation, specialising in children's fiction.
Founded in 2000 by Barry Cunningham and Rachel Hickman as Chicken House Publishing, it was bought by Scholastic in 2005.
It has introduced many new successful authors, including Cornelia Funke, Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, Kevin Brooks, Lucy Christopher, Rachel Ward, M. G. Leonard, Rachel Grinti, Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Jasbinder Bilan.
The annual competition is for full manuscripts suitable for readers aged between 7 and 18 by unpublished, unagented writers.
In 2019 a second prize was introduced to mark the competition's tenth anniversary, with a publishing contract worth £7,500 awarded to the Chairman's Choice.