Last Wednesday, twelve students from Chantry, Newminster and King Edwards, attended the North East Teen Book Award ceremony at The Centre for Life in Newcastle. All were really looking forward to meeting the authors of the six books that they’ve been studying since October. Some were rather nervous because they would shortly be presenting one of the authors to an audience of about five hundred peers and adults!

The Teen Book Award is aimed at Y10 students and presents a considerable challenge for Key Stage 3 in terms of the number of books to be read, their themes and complexity. It’s also fair to say that, sometimes, the subject matter can be controversial. It’s greatly to the credit of our younger students that they’re so keen to give it a go!

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Not only do they have to read the books, they have to discuss them at weekly meetings and summarise their opinions for everyone to read – including the authors themselves – on the NETBA website:

http://northeastteenagebookaward.wordpress.com

Extracts are selected, made into posters, one for each shortlisted book, and presented to the authors as souvenirs. We usually manage to acquire at least one and you can see this year’s on display outside Chantry library, a memento of a great evening!

Before the awards are made, each author is introduced by a group of students, talks about their books and answers questions.  This year, students from Newminster and KEVI were praised for their very professional introduction of Matt Haig, who writes for adults as well as younger readers.

Afterwards, the authors signed our books and chatted informally.  In fact, no one seemed to want to go home, they were enjoying themselves so much! This was definitely the highlight of the evening.

Our parents enjoyed themselves too:

“It was excellent – entertaining and inspiring authors, and wonderful to see the children passionate about books.”

“I love coming to the awards ceremony. I enjoy listening to the inspirational talks from the authors and also to the children’s responses and opinions.”

And think it’s very worthwhile:

“My daughter has been encouraged to read genres that she wouldn’t usually try and think more deeply about the content of the books.”

“I think discussing the books and listening to other children’s take on them brings about maturity and confidence.”

“It has opened her eyes to different forms of fiction.”

“The Book Awards are a fantastic concept and it’s great to see so many inspired children.”

We’re currently finalising the shortlist for the junior version of this award, NEBA.  If your child is an avid and mature reader in Years 6 – 8 and thinks that they might like to take part, please get in touch with Mrs Inverarity for details: [email protected].