An exciting annual reading event for Salford’s high school pupils is about to go live.
Now in its fourteenth year, the Salford Children’s Book Award is an initiative run by Salford Community Leisure’s libraries service.
The award is designed to introduce 11 to 14 year olds across the city to a wide range of books and authors, to promote that reading is fun and enhance literary development.
The scheme includes access to a set of six outstanding books to read over the course of six months and the opportunity for students to vote for their favourite titles from the selection.
Each year the shortlisted books are chosen by library staff, working closely with partner high schools, to select books that fit a set criteria.
The books must have been published between January and December of the previous year, be excellent stand-alone reads and the authors must live in the UK.
The shortlist has been put together from the top-issuing books for teenagers in public libraries across the North West, the shortlists and winners of a range of other book awards, plus recommendations from Salford school librarians, teachers, and specialist children’s librarians.
The six shortlisted authors are invited to the award ceremony that, this year is being held at The Lowry Theatre at Salford Quays on the 24th March, at which pupils get to meet the authors and there will be a book signing.
This year’s shortlist is as follows:
Jane Elson’s How to Fly with Broken Wings, Joanna Nadin’s Joe All Alone; previous winner Sally Nicholls’ An Island of Our Own; Katherine Rundell’s The Wolf Wilder; David Solomons’ My Brother is a Superhero and Katherine Woodfine’s The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow.
Linda Parker, Learning Resource Manager, from St Patrick’s RC High School in Eccles, has participated in the scheme for the last 14 years. Speaking about the Salford Children’s Book Award, Linda said:
“I’ve led reading groups for the Salford Children’s Book Award from its very beginning back in 2003. The process has evolved in many ways over the years but the key element that makes this award special has remained the same – this is a children’s book award voted for by children in Salford. This makes the winner impossible to predict and we have often been surprised at which books do win. The shortlist is eagerly anticipated every year by our pupils.”
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Friends Eve Goodwin and Stephan Titan-Cymone, who are in year nine at St Patrick’s have participated in two book awards so far. Last year, they spoke at the 2016 award together. Eve said: “We really enjoyed writing the speech for last year’s award and meeting other people who liked the books as much as we did. We also enjoyed listening to the authors talk about their opinions of the books.”
As well as a chance to vote for their favourite titles, pupils and teachers are invited to the award ceremony where pupils from participating schools are selected to go on stage and tell the crowd what they thought about the books.
Emily Stock, Schools’ Library Service Co-ordinator at Salford Community Leisure, said: “For fourteen years, Salford Schools’ Library Service has been encouraging pupils in Salford High Schools to love reading through the Salford Children’s Book Award.
“We aim to continue to inspire and engage our young people by providing the most diverse range of reading materials possible as we believe that reading different types of literature can really enhance learning, vocabulary and general knowledge.”
Since 2003, Salford Community Leisure’s Children’s Book Award has distributed over 3,000 books to schools across the City, has generated over 2,000 votes and 11 different authors.
ENDS
