Winner of The Macmillan Prize for Illustration 2025 announced in the 40th Year of the prestigious award
Macmillan Children’s Books is delighted to announce that Marguerite Davidson has won The Macmillan Prize for Illustration 2025 with her picture book Do You Want To Play?. She was named winner by Joanna Prior, CEO, Pan Macmillan, at the award ceremony on Thursday 19th June, held at the Pan Macmillan London offices, The Smithson.
The Macmillan Prize for Illustration (‘Mac Prize’) was established in 1985, in order to stimulate new work from non-professional illustrators, and to help them take the first steps in their professional lives as illustrators of children’s books.
The coveted award has discovered many award-winning and bestselling talents, including 2025 judge Emily Gravett, Ross Collins, Lucy Cousins, Morag Hood, Kate Rolfe and Bethan Woollvin. In 2023, Two Hoots published Kate Wolfe’s Wolf and Bear, which was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, as well as Cara Rooney’s 2021 winning book A Little World of Ants and We Want Our Books by 2019 winner Jake Alexander, which received great acclaim. Later this year, Macmillan Children’s Books will publish 2023 winner Becky Colvin’s debut picture book, The Great Green Island.
Led by Chair of Judges, Chris Inns, Art and Design Director, Macmillan Children’s Books, the 2025 judging panel comprised Emily Gravett, award-winning author-illustrator and previous winner of the Mac Prize in 2004 with her picture book, Wolves; The British Book Awards’ Illustrator of the Year 2025 Rob Biddulph, award-winning author-illustrator of Odd Dog Out, and the Macmillan Peanut Jones series; Imogen Russell Williams, children’s literature critic and author; Sanchita Basu De Sarkar, Owner of Children ’s Bookshop, Muswell Hill; Joanna Prior, CEO, Pan Macmillan and Emily Ford, Editorial Director, Picture Books, Macmillan Children’s Books.
Marguerite Davidson is an illustrator and filmmaker from California, with a BA in Studio Arts and a BS in Film Production from San Diego State University. She is also a graduate of the MA course in Children's Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. Marguerite also entered the Macmillan Prize for Illustration in 2024 and her entry was highly commended.
There were almost 400 entries for the Macmillan Prize for Illustration in 2025. Criteria for entry changed in 2023; previously, only students in full or part-time higher education in the UK could enter. Since 2023, the Prize is open to all non-professional illustrators based in the UK over the age of 18. All names are anonymized for the judging panel. Entrants discovered the Prize this year through an equal mix of social media, friend and illustrator recommendations, and colleges and universities.
As part of the commitment to increase awareness and access to the Prize, this year the Macmillan design team worked with Guild HE (https://guildhe.ac.uk/) to host an event around design and illustration in children’s publishing, along with illustrator and previous judge, Diane Ewen.
‘Once again I am thrilled to see the Prize attract such a wide spectrum of styles, thinking and exceptional talent. People can underestimate how many different elements go into making a successful picture book, but entrants to our competition certainly don’t. In many cases they take on this challenge and excel at it and the evidence is in the quality of our winners and highly commended entries. Marguerite’s winning entry Do You Want To Play? caught the judges’ attention immediately with its vibrant colour and flowing illustration style. Add to that a concept that invites the reader to interact with the book itself made this entry irresistible fun. Making a book entertaining, full of life and interactive in a physical way is ambitious, but Marguerite brought all of these aspects together in an elegant, accessible and visually stunning form. The judges all felt that this book would be a great book for adults and children to read and enjoy together, making it a joyful experience for all.’
Chair of Judges, Chris Inns, Art Director, Macmillan Children’s Books
‘This year was another strong year for the Mac Prize with work submitted by a fabulous range of talented illustrators. As a judging panel, we enjoyed seeing the variety of styles and the many dazzling imaginations at play on the page. I was struck both by the originality and the sense of tradition in the work; many entries reminded me of favourite picture books I’d read with my now nearly thirty-year-old daughter. The combined skills of both storytelling and artwork were really impressive and made me optimistic about the future of picture books and their ability to develop a life-long love of books and reading in children. Illustrated publishing is core to Pan Macmillan’s mission – as it has been for 160 years, since we first published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We all wish Marguerite Davidson and the other winners very many congratulations.’
Joanna Prior, CEO, Pan Macmillan and judge
‘As the Mac Prize celebrates 40 years, we have been delighted to see such a strong mix of voices and range of styles and themes coming through in the entries. We are always looking for picture books that speak to a child’s experience of their world and the Prize brings fantastic new talent to the surface that we are proud to publish on our Macmillan and Two Hoots lists.’
Alison Ruane, MD, Macmillan Children’s Books
‘I love creating stories with warmth, silliness, and cheeky animal characters. I work with a multitude of different media, but my current favourite is screen printing. I enjoy using a limited palette and building up layers of colour, texture, and shape. The initial idea for Do You Want To Play? came from a recurring image in my sketchbook of a stampede of animals all pushing and shoving their way out of the pages. I am fascinated by books that engage the reader in surprising ways, so I set about creating a story where the reader is trying to help the characters escape the book. I love to make people laugh with my stories, and that is at the heart of this project. My tutors encouraged me to enter the Macmillan Prize for Illustration, and I am thrilled to have won! It is such a great honour to win this competition especially with this project, which is so close to my heart.’
Marguerite Davidson
Second Prize was awarded to Carol Law for their work Mabel and Rufus and Third Prize was awarded to Nai Morris for their book, Sooty Jo The Chimney Pot Crow. There are also 20 highly commended entries.
Explore books from previous winners we have published at Pan Macmillan:
