Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer was awarded the prestigious WHSmith Children's Book of the Year Award at the Galaxy British Book Awards, the Oscars of the book world, on Friday, April 3rd.

Breaking Dawn is the fourth novel in the phenomenally successful Twilight Saga - a supernatural romance series in which Bella Swan walks the line between immortals (vampires) and mortals.

Breaking Dawn beat J. K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox, Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight, Francesca Simons' Horrid Henry Robs the Bank and Claire Freedman & Ben Cort's Dinosaurs Love Underpants.

Speaking from her home in Arizona, Stephenie Meyer said winning the award was "amazing and phenomenal". She went on to say how overjoyed she was and thanked all the people who read her books.

Published by Atom (an imprint of Little, Brown) in August 2008, Breaking Dawn has already sold over 400,000 copies in hardback. More than 47 million copies of the series have now been sold - including over 2.6 million copies in the UK - and it has been translated into 33 languages. Last November saw the release of the film Twilight - the first book in the series; a film version of New Moon - the second in the series - is due for release this November.

The shortlist was chosen by the votes of WHSmith's customers after a month long promotion of a longlist of titles from 6 different age brackets. The public together with the Academy of the British Book Industry then voted for their favourite from the shortlist.

Stephenie Meyer's life changed dramatically on 2nd June 2003, when the stay-at-home mother of three young sons woke up from a dream featuring seemingly real characters that she could not get out of her head. Three months later she finished her first novel, Twilight. The series has since become an international phenomenon, catapulting her to stardom. This year in the UK alone, a copy of The Twilight Saga has been sold every 6 seconds.