A book inspired by a game the author’s family played during lockdown has won this year’s Waterstones children’s book prize.

The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please was announced as the winner of the £5,000 award, voted on by Waterstones booksellers, at a ceremony on Thursday evening.

The book tells the story of Rene, who opens a cafe beside an enchanted wood and prepares to serve the finest cuisine with the help of a waiter, Glumfoot, only to discover that the locals have a very odd palette, favouring disgusting foods.

“The story grew from a game my wife, son and I would play during lockdown”, said Please. His wife, Jess, would pretend to be a “pompous chef”, his son, Axel, would play the “downtrodden waiter”, while Please himself would act the part of a demanding customer.

“The dynamic of these three characters was so rich, the setting so loaded with potential, and the opportunity to showcase my long-practised and long-underappreciated art of rearranging food to look funny, made the story impossible to resist”, said Please.

Please is a writer, animator and illustrator whose works include the 2011 stop motion animated film The Eagleman Stag, which won a Bafta for best short animation. His debut novel, The Expanded Earth, will be published 3 April.

Writing in the Guardian, Imogen Russell Williams described the winning title as an “unusual, intricate, delightfully grotesque rhyming picture book”.

The book “champions the fun and playful joy to be found in children’s books, takes delight in the delicious and disgusting in equal measure, and begs to be read on repeat”, said Bea Carvalho, head of books at Waterstones. “We know that children and adults alike will fall for Rene and Glumfoot, their sweetly slapstick dynamic and their gorgeously surreal world.”

While Please won the illustrated books category along with the overall prize, Carlos Sánchez topped the younger readers category for Rune: The Tale of a Thousand Faces, and Nathanael Lessore prevailed in the older readers category for King of Nothing.

Rune – the first graphic novel to be named winner across any category in the prize’s history – features a magic system based on sign language. The book “encapsulates everything that is fresh and exciting about the current graphic novel market”, said Lucy Jakes, children’s buyer at Waterstones. The art is “beyond aesthetically pleasing, with every image worthy of being framed on a wall”, the worldbuilding is “exquisite”, and the sign language-based magic system is “seamlessly inclusive”.

Lessore’s King of Nothing is a teen comedy about an unlikely friendship between two boys. “It’s testament to Lessore’s lightness of touch and believable characters that despite delving into big topics such as toxic masculinity and grief, this is an immensely readable book that never feels too worthy”, wrote Fiona Noble in the Guardian.

Previous winners of the prize include Angie Thomas, Katherine Rundell and Rob Biddulph. In 2024, Pari Thomson won for her book Greenwild: The World Behind the Door.

Winning authors and illustrators are promised “ongoing commitment” to their writing from Waterstones shops.