On Monday evening, eleven students from Newminster and KEVI braved the weather and headed for the North East Teen Book Award ceremony at the Centre for Life in Newcastle.

They’d been reading and discussing the six shortlisted books since October and were looking forward to meeting the authors and discovering whether their personal favourite had won.

We all thought Paper Butterflies deserved to win. Even if it wasn’t our personal favourite, few of us will forget this compelling and cleverly structured story of an abused child let down by her father, her teachers and ultimately, America’s justice system.

In fact, obtaining justice was a common theme in this year’s shortlisted books. In Cell 7, the British legal system has been scrapped in favour of trial by TV reality show in which viewers decide who lives and who is eliminated. It’s the first of a trilogy, all of which are now available.

Berlin Love Song follows the fate of a Romani gypsy circus troupe and a member of the Hitler Youth during World War Two. It makes a fascinating and authentic read.

In Show Stopper, society is divided down the middle into Dregs – from whom everything, including dignity and self-determination, has been stripped and Pures – the ruling and privileged class. Gruesome reading!

Troublemakers explores the meaning of family and the influence of politics on an unusual family unit in contemporary London. It’s funny, thought provoking and intelligent.

Piglettes is a wickedly funny story featuring three overweight teenagers who deal with a public humiliation as pigs on Facebook by taking to the road and cycling to Paris. Their aim is to publicise the hypocrisy around self-image and promote home-made sausages by selling them along the way!

You can find out what we thought of these books on the NETBA website.

Extracts are selected from these reviews, made into posters and presented to the authors as souvenirs. This year, 29 of the 35 extracts selected by the organizer were from our school! We always have plenty to say!

Before the winner is announced, each author is introduced by a group of students, talks about their books and answers questions. This year, we were privileged to be asked to present two of the six shortlisted authors: Catherine Barter and her novel, Troublemakers and French author, Clémentine Beauvais with Piglettes.
Our students were able to get together for rehearsal only minutes before they were due on stage – but you can see how well they performed in these clips:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1egFTeNXfIXzH_g97ABRv2RYpMKB_wCNO
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jWLs72zUHvFXo40GYAe_LnRxMIxoq4k0

As usual everyone, including parents, had a brilliant time and came home with piles of autographed books!

NETBA is challenging for Key Stage 3 as it’s aimed at Y10 and involves a considerable amount of reading and discussion – and some writing. Sometimes the stories are complex and the topics controversial. It’s greatly to the credit of our younger students that they’re so keen to have a go!

If you’d like to get involved with next year’s NETBA or with the junior event, NEBA (which starts very soon) please get in touch with Mrs Inverarity.