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Hackmatack 2025 Winners!

2025 Hackmatack Winners: Book covers and photos of the authors listed above. Paul Gilligan is a white man with short dark hair and a beard. Bambi Edlund is a white woman with shoulder-length blond hair. She has a toy mouse sitting on her shoulder. Alex A. is a white man with shoulder-length light hair. He's wearing an orange touque. Elise Gravel is a white woman with shoulder-length dark hair.

The winners of the 2025 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award were announced on Friday, May 30 at a lively awards ceremony at the Paul O’Regan Hall, Halifax Central Library. They are:

English Fiction
Pluto Rocket: New in Town, written and illustrated by Paul Gilligan (Penguin Random House, 2023)

English Nonfiction
Operation Cupcake: How Simple Machines Work, written and illustrated by Bambi Edlund (Kids Can Press, 2023)

French Fiction
Les étranges, written and illustrated by Alex A. (Presses Aventure, 2023)

French Nonfiction
Alerte : culottes meurtrières : Fausses nouvelles, désinformation et théories du complot, by Elise Gravel (Éditions Scholastic, 2023)

Congratulations to the winners and all the nominees!

Read the full news release

Visit the award ceremony photo gallery

Click the image below to see all the photos.

Eight photos showing authors signing autographs, crowd of students, and an author portrait.

Watch the video

Watch here or on YouTube.

2025-26 Nominated Books

Here are our 2025-26 Hackmatack books! Our exciting reading program for children in grades 4, 5, and 6 introduces thousands of young readers to great Canadian books, authors, and illustrators.

Hackmatack is a terrific way to get children reading. It empowers them by giving them a say in choosing their favourite books and voting to select the annual award winners.

40 book covers in English and French, fiction and nonfiction.

View the 2025-26 shortlists: English | French

Download a PDF of the 2025-26 nominated titles: English | French

CELACentre for Equitable Library Access

You don’t have to be in a Hackmatack reading group to enjoy the books. And you don’t have to be a conventional reader. 

The Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) is an accessible library service, providing books and other materials to Canadians of all ages with print disabilities.

We’re happy to tell you that many of the Hackmatack titles are available for free in accessible formats for kids with print disabilities. 

You can get these titles from your public library, or through the CELA website.

We’d like to thank CELA for the wonderful work they do. Their collection has more than 700,000 professionally produced titles, with an emphasis on Canadian authors and stories, and favourites for kids and teens.

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