Berkshire Book Awards Launch 2020

11 of our students with a literary leaning were excited to join the launch of the Berkshire Book Awards at St George’s Ascot on Wednesday 9th October.

All members of the group are regular participants in our weekly Year 7 and 8 Book Club, a forum for the discussion and review of books popular with their age group, and the students brought with them an enthusiasm for reading and a love of books that the awards aim to encourage.

The Berkshire Children’s Book Award was launched in 2004 seeking to identify the best, recently published books written for young people.  It is the only award of its kind, encouraging young people between ages 11 and 14 to both nominate the titles and select the winner. Thousands of young people from over 90 Berkshire schools and public libraries have taken part over the years and our latest recruits to the Fryer Book Club were no less eager to be involved.

On Wednesday the group joined 6 other schools to enjoy an introductory welcome by the Librarian of St George’s Windsor and the Librarian of Reading Blue Coats before a talk from author, Laura Wood.  Laura’s publications include ‘Under a Dancing Star’, ‘A Sky Painted Gold’ and ‘Vote Effie’ as well as the popular and award-winning Poppy Pym series.

Students had the opportunity to look at a variety of books at the event which launches the nominations for the long list. The Awards organisers will be collecting suggestions of books, published between 1st October 2018 and 30th September 2019 to create the long list of around 15-20 books. Once the long list is complete voting for the short list of 6 books will follow and finally the voting for the winner of the 2020 awards. Previous winners have included ‘A Spoonful of Murder’ by Robin Stevens in 2018 and ‘Alex Rider: Never Say Die’ by Anthony Horowitz in 2017.

Our students are looking forward to nominating and voting over the coming weeks and we look forward to discovering who the winner will be this year!