Children's authors up for Awesome awards

Pupils from schools across the South east will vote on their favourites from the five shortlisted titles:

Time Travelling with a Hamster (Ross Welford), The Clockwork Sparrow (Katherine Woodfine), The Imagination Box (Martin Ford), Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot (Horatio Clare) and Beetle Boy (M.G. Leonard).

The brainchild of Cranleigh Prep School’s Head of English, Kate Schutte, The Awesome Book Awards are designed to encourage a love of reading among young children.

Mrs Schutte said: “We’re delighted that so many schools have signed up to take part in this first year.

“We really hope that this will help us to highlight and foster a great love of reading amongst prep school aged children.”

The criteria were as follows: books must be fiction, from lesser known authors, suitable for able readers aged 7-10, appealing to a co-ed audience and available in paperback from May 2015.

Pupils from South East schools will read all five of the shortlisted titles between September 2016 and March 2017 and vote for their favourites.

Winners will be announced at the final awards ceremony and book signing in early May 2017.

“It’s exciting for younger children to see how these kinds of awards work, and we’re really looking forward to welcoming them to Cranleigh for our glittering awards evening where all of the shortlisted authors will read extracts from their books and prizes will be awarded by a very well known children’s author,” added Mrs Schutte.

“We are always looking for new ideas that will keep the joy of stories and reading fresh. This year we’ve had great success with our Accelerated Reading scheme, a new library re-fit, and author visits and workshops.

“With the Awards we can extend this to many more pupils across the South East.”

For more information on the Awesome Book Awards visit: http://www.cranprep.org/awesome/

Contributed by Cranleigh School

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