St Albans Book Awards Ceremony

Pupils voted for their “Book of the Year” from a shortlist at the St Albans Book Awards

On Friday 25th January, the library staff took 8 pupils to the St Albans Book Awards Ceremony. The day was the culmination of lots of hard work by Librarians and pupils alike. In November, Librarians of participating schools met to agree a shortlist of books for this year’s award. The books chosen were Electric Life by Rachel Delahaye; The Clockwork Conspiracy by Sam Sedgman and King of Nothing by Nathanael Lessore. As well as reading all three books so that they were able to discuss and vote for their winner on the day, the pupils involved were asked to design a bookmark based on one of the books. Meanwhile the Librarians worked together to organise discussion questions for the shortlisted books, put together some fun book related quizzes and invite a popular author of young adult fiction to speak at the event. There was also a “Guess the book cover” quiz – not so easy when all the words have been removed from the covers!

The day started with small group discussions of each book in turn, led by the Librarians. The pupils really enjoyed meeting people from other schools and hearing each others different opinions on each of the books. After the discussions, pupils were given a voting slip where they voted for their favorite book. All the books were very different so it was quite tricky to choose a favorite!

The day continued with team quizzes until lunchtime. After lunch, Sue Wallman gave a fabulous talk about her journey to becoming a published author, the sources of inspiration for her books and also about the publishing process. The winners of the bookmark competition and the Book Award itself were then announced. Well done to Nathanael Lessore for his thought-provoking feel-good book about a school boy who begins to question everything he thought was important. Although I enjoyed reading all the books, this was definitely my favorite too!

The students really enjoyed the day and said:

“I loved taking part in the excitement of the book quiz.”

“I really enjoyed the talk by Sue Wallman and was fascinated by the fact that she didn’t choose her book front cover designs.”

“The Book Awards is an amazing day as you meet different students from different schools who are all sharing the same love and enjoyment for reading.”