The winners of this year’s Scottish Children’s Book Awards have been announced - and a comic theme was the magic ingredient in all of them.
John Fardell’s The Day Louis Got Eaten won children’s hearts in the Bookbug Readers’ category (3-7 years) with monsters who “got eaten and got burped out”, as Edie from Pittencrieff Primary in Dunfermline put it.
The Younger Readers’ category (8-11 years) was won by Jonathan Meres’ The World of Norm: May Contain Nuts, which was widely described by pupils as a “laugh out loud” novel.
And Barry Hutchison’s The 13th Horseman won the Older Readers’ category (12-16) and featured 14-year-old Drake who finds the Horsemen of the Apocalypse in his garden shed.
If there have been complaints in the past that there were not enough books to tempt boys to turn the page, this list will goes some way to addressing that.
The awards, supported by TESS, go from strength to strength. Run by the Scottish Book Trust in partnership with Creative Scotland, they are voted on by children from a selected shortlist in each category.
In 2006, their first year, 2,865 votes were cast; last year, 23,000 children voted - and this year, 35,000 took part, an increase of 36 per cent on the previous year.
A total of 1,589 schools registered and 1,212 schools took part in the voting.
The book awards, which are sponsored by Crerar Hotels, Barcapel Foundation, CALL Scotland (for accessible digital copies) and Waterstones, also provide resources for teachers.
Jasmine Fassl, children’s programme manager at the book trust, said: “The best thing about the Scottish Children’s Book Awards is that they get children excited about books.”
www.scottishbooktrust.comelizabeth.buie@tess.co.uk
WINNERS OF THE REVIEW COMPETITION 2012
Bookbug Readers- 1st Christian Upton, Edinburgh Academy Nursery (Solomon Crocodile by Catherine Rayner)
- 2nd Catherine Vass, Kyleakin Primary, Highland (Solomon Crocodile)
- 3rd Kirsty Hutchison, Sandford Primary, South Lanarkshire (Jack and the Flum Flum Tree by Julia Donaldson)
Younger Readers- 1st Aveline Theodora Shek, Flora Stevenson Primary, Edinburgh (Out of the Depths by Cathy MacPhail)
- 2nd Benjamin Afshar, Edinburgh Academy Junior School (World of Norm by Jonathan Meres)
- 3rd Nusrat Chowdhury, St Joseph’s Primary, Aberdeen (Soldier’s Game by James Killgore)
Older Readers- 1st Kirsty MacDonald, Sgoil Lionacleit, Western Isles (The 13th Horseman by Barry Hutchison)
- 2nd Andrew Thomson, St Ninian’s High, East Renfrewshire (The Prince Who Walked with Lions by Elizabeth Laird)
- 3rd Nina Hounsome, Robert Gordon’s College, Aberdeen (The 13th Horseman).
