The winner of the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year award has been announced tonight.

Maria Gill's ANZAC Heroes has won it at tonight Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, in Wellington.

Effusive praise has come from one of the judges for this year's winner of the Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.

Convener of judges Fiona Mackie believes the book will become a literary taonga, because of the amount of detail it contains.

She said the book is an incredible, gold standard piece of work.

"It has photos that illustrates that persons life. It has the medals room which gives us all the information about the different medals. It has maps that show us where the people went and the battles they were involved in."

She said the book is quite astounding with a huge collection of photos, a medals room and maps.