Chester's Back by Melanie Watt of Montreal. (KidsCan Press)

Montreal's Mélanie Watt and Midland, Ont.-based Alma Fullerton have won the 2009 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Awards.

Winners of the $6,000 awards were chosen by student jurors and announced at Market Lane Junior and Senior Public School in Toronto on Tuesday.

Chester's Back, Watt's funny book about the egomaniacal Chester the cat won in the picture book category.

Chester tries to take centre stage and argues with the author over control of the story and the way the pictures look, with Chester's red scrawl turning up all over Watt's renderings.

It's a second win for Montreal writer-illustrator Watt, who also took the prize in for her 2006 book Scaredy Squirrel.

"Very funny — I like it because of Chester's imagination," said a student juror. The book was chosen from a field of five books by student readers in Grade 3 and Grade 4.

The prize for young adult book went to Fullerton for Libertad, which was also a Governor General's Literary Award nominee.

Libertad is the story of a Guatemalan boy and his younger brother, who are left alone when their mother is killed in a freak accident. Together, they make the dangerous journey from their home in an attempt to find their father in the United States across the Rio Grande. Fullerton has written the story in verse.

"I loved the way it was written in poem [verse]. It's not a happy book but realistic and believable. I really connected to the characters and wanted to know what happened to them," said a student juror. Students in Grade 7 and Grade 8 chose Libertad from a field of five books.

The two awards for artistic excellence in writing and illustration in Canadian children's literature are administered by the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Foundation.

Other contenders for the picture book award were:

• Just One Goal!, by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko.
• M is for Moose: A Charles Pachter Alphabet, by Charles Pachter.
• A Pocket Can Have a Treasure in It, by Kathy Stinson and Deirdre Betteridge.
• Stanley at Sea by Linda Bailey and Bill Slavin.

Other contenders for the young adult award were:

• Starclimber, by Kenneth Oppel.
• Before Green Gables, by Budge Wilson.
• Word Nerd, by Susin Nielsen.
• The Shadow of Malabron, by Thomas Wharton.