Authors of three novels and three non-fiction books have been shortlisted for potential winners of the Blue Peter Book Award 2013.

"Fantastic Mr Dahl", a biography of the author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" Roald Dahl, written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Quentin Blake has been chosen as one of the 6 books that will be competing for the Blue Peter Book Award 2013. Walter Tull's Scrapbook by Michaela Morgan and Horrible Science: House of Horrors by Nick Arnold and Tony De Saulles are two other non-fiction books that have been shortlisted.

Cressida Cowell, author of the How to Train your Dragon series and one of the Blue Peter judges, said: "I love this shortlist of six because I think they are very different...In the non-fiction, there's the horrible science so if you like that kind of horrible, yucky kind of germ science, you'll love that. There's a really interesting, very personal story about a guy who was the first black outfield player in football and the first black officer in the first world war and that was a really interesting story that I'd never even heard of. And then, the third book there, Fantastic Mr Dahl was a wonderful book about writing. It's very rare to have a book, a children's book, about writing so I thought there was a real variety there. And it's the same with the fiction, three very different kinds of books and so it's a lovely list, a lovely shortlist."

In the fiction category, the novels making it to the shortlist include In the running for the fiction prize are the new novel by the David Almond's "The Boy who Swam With Piranhas", Shirley Hughes's "Hero on a Bicycle"and Liz Pichon's Tom Gates - Genius Ideas (Mostly).

"Doing the Blue Peter book prize is an amazing process to go through because for a couple of months your house is made of books, you just have them stacked up everywhere...Having that many books in your house is like Christmas, it's like book Christmas, because everywhere you look you can pick up a book and start reading about germs or start reading about the second world war or start reading about a boy who can float ... it's the nearest thing to properly being in a magic world," said Caitlin Moran, Times columnist and author of "How to be a Woman" who is also one of the judges.

Results will be announced March 7, 2013.