Newcastle-born author David Almond's novel The Fire-Eaters has won the Whitbread prize for best children's book and will now compete for the £25,000 overall prize of book of the year with the other Whitbread category winners

The Fire-Eaters tells the tale of Bobby Burns, a boy growing up in a seaside community near Newcastle at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bobby's world is fraught with change and uncertainty from the looming political crisis to the much closer terrors of starting a new school and witnessing his dad's health falter.

Booker Prize winner DBC Pierre won the prize for best first novel for Vernon God Little; Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won in the best novel category; DJ Taylor won in the biography category for his Orwell: The Life; and the poetry prize went to Dundee-born Don Paterson for his collection, Landing Light.

This year the awards attracted a record 468 entries, including the highest ever number of entries in the Children's Book Award category. Each category's shortlist was selected by a panel of judges, this year including authors Tim Lott and Philip Hensher, Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, actress Jenny Agutter, radio and television broadcasters James Naughtie and Mark Lawson, and broadcaster Jane Moore.

The overall winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year will be selected and announced on Tuesday 27 January 2004 at the Whitbread Book Awards ceremony in central London.

For full details, see www.whitbreadbookawards.co.uk.