Astonishing SOLO run continues!

Little Island Books are delighted to announce that Solo by Gráinne O’Brien has this week been named on the shortlists of two major awards: the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the KPMG–Children’s Books Ireland Awards.

This comes after a stunning run of awards attention for the debut YA novel, including:

• Winner: Teen & YA Book of the Year, An Post Irish Book Awards 2025
• Shortlisted: Irish Book of the Year, An Post Irish Book Awards 2025
• Shortlisted: Books Are My Bag Reader’s Awards 2025
• Nominated: The Carnegie Medal for Writing 2026
• Selected: Kirkus Reviews Best Teen & YA Verse Novels 2025

Published by Irish small press Little Island Books, Solo, by Limerick native O’Brien – a well-known bookseller with Kenny’s Bookshop in Galway – is one of the outstanding Irish publishing stories of the past year. It reached 4th place in the Irish Times bestseller chart in its week of publication; earned starred reviews from Kirkus (“A tightly written, incredibly well-characterized work: bravo”) and Inis Magazine (“Comes alive on the page”); and has been widely praised by authors including Donal Ryan (“Solo is a triumph. I absolutely adore it”) and Cecelia Ahern (“Solo is a work of art. Truly truly adore it.”)

Little Island titles have previously won the Children’s Books Ireland (CBI) Book of the Year three times, as well as several other CBI awards. They have previously had one title on the Waterstones Prize shortlist: Meg Grehan’s modern classic, The Deepest Breath.

Little Island’s Matthew Parkinson-Bennett says: “As a 3-person team in a small office in Dublin, getting onto the same major prize shortlists as publishers that measure their turnover in the hundreds of millions is what gets us out of bed on a cold wet morning!

Publishing is still an industry where the little guy can go toe-to-toe with the goliaths, and we’re really grateful to Waterstones, KPMG and Children’s Books Ireland for acknowledging the work done by indie publishers. We are thrilled for Gráinne O’Brien (and delighted to be publishing her next two books!) and grateful as ever to our funders, chief among them The Arts Council of Ireland.”

For PR enquiries, please contact: info@littleisland.ie