4 March 2025
Since September, members of our Southern Schools Book Award (SSBA) group have read, and met weekly with our Librarian Ms Owens to discuss, the five books shortlisted for the award. On Friday 28 February, Ms Owens took the group to the SSBA presentation ceremony.
The five shortlisted books were Bite Risk by S J Wills, Sing If You Can’t Dance by Alexia Casale, King of Dead Things by Nevin Holness, The Things we Leave Behind by Clare Furniss and You Wouldn’t Catch Me Dead by Tess James-Mackey. Each author spoke about their book, while illustrator Chris Riddell did live sketches of them and characters from their book. This year’s winning book was The Things we Leave Behind, with You Wouldn’t Catch Me Dead highly commended.
After the ceremony, the students were presented with a token with which to purchase a book before meeting the authors to get them signed.
It was a lovely evening and a wonderful finale to another successful year participating in the Southern Schools Book Award.
A couple of weeks later, some members of the SSBA group took part in a regional heat of the National Reading Champions Quiz, with Daisy Lydia, Simran and Vivienne taking joint second place, just one point behind the winning school. Our other team of Ava, Elodie, Lyra and Nithali finished in a very respectable 11th place out of 23 teams. Congratulations, girls!