Hanging out the bunting at our Children's Book Award Discussion Day

On Monday 22^nd May, Beaumont students and the library team welcomed pupils from Marlborough and Sandringham to our Children’s Book Award (CBA) Discussion Day. The CBA is the only national book award voted for solely by children. It involves 250 schools across the UK. As part of the awards process, over 1,000 books have been reviewed and rated by children and whittled down to a shortlist of three. The aim of our library event was to explore and discuss the three books shortlisted for the 2017 prize and to vote as a group on which one the students think should be the eventual winner.

As a double celebration of books and reading, we were also delighted to meet writer Nicky Singer who joined us for the Discussion Day.  The library buzzed with lively debate as students chatted and played board games specifically created by Mrs Mayer-Khan to encourage discussion of the shortlisted titles. Staff from all three schools were impressed by the students’ knowledge of the books and the clarity and passion with which they discussed them.

After an hour of discussion, students were invited to vote for their favourite of the three books. The winner of the group’s vote was ‘Car-jacked’ by Ali Sparkes, a fast-paced adventure story which won by a small margin over Sarah Crossan’s verse-novel ‘One’. The overall winner of the national CBA 2017 vote will be announced on Saturday 10^th June.

Following the vote, students spent time producing artwork, reviews and writing inspired by the three books. This work will be collated into a portfolio and presented to the shortlisted authors. To commemorate our Discussion Day, all the students were also invited to pick one of their favourite ever books and write the title in a ‘Celebration of Reading’ journal. The result is a fantastically varied collection of book suggestions. This journal will circulate between Beaumont, Sandringham and Marlborough, hopefully inspiring other students to read some of the books recommended inside.

 

Once all the CBA activities were over and students had been unleashed on the refreshments table, we handed the floor over to Nicky Singer. The students were treated to a fascinating talk about her life as a writer, her work and the inspiration behind her books. There is so much to say about what we learned from Nicky that it merits its own post on our blog! Please click on the link below to read more about Nicky's visit:

http://libraryatbeaumontschool.blogspot.com/