Scottish Book Trust today (12 May 2016) announced that The Scottish Children’s Book Awards have undergone an exciting restructure, unveiling brand new reading initiatives which have been created with the purpose of inspiring even more children across Scotland to get into reading.
On 3 March 2016 the Scottish Government announced an exciting new reading initiative for P4-7, to be delivered by Scottish Book Trust in partnership with the Government. The First Minister’s Reading Challenge will be launched in August, and will encourage pupils in P4-7 classes across Scotland to read for pleasure.
To allow schools to embrace the first year of this new project fully, The Scottish Children’s Book Awards will be replaced by two new prizes, The Bookbug Picture Book Prize and The Scottish Teenage Book Prize. Scottish Book Trust will no longer run a book award for 8-11 fiction as this age group is covered by The First Minister’s Reading Challenge.
The Bookbug Picture Book Prize will be for children in nursery, Primary 1, Primary 2 and Primary 3. There will be three picture books by Scottish authors on the shortlist – pupils will be encouraged to read the three books and then vote for their favourite. In addition, every P1 child in Scotland will receive the three books in the Bookbug P1 Family Bag, gifted in November. There will also be a continued focus on involving P4-7 pupils in a shared reading project with younger pupils.
Based on feedback from teachers and librarians, changes to this category include an earlier voting deadline to reduce the time pupils wait to find out the winning author and the provision of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE)-linked classroom activities and author videos. On announcement day schools will be sent an exclusive video which unveils the winning author, to serve as a base for the pupils’ own celebrations.
The First Minister’s Reading Challenge will initially be for Primary 4, 5, 6 and 7 pupils. Pupils will set personal reading goals to achieve by March 2017 and reading journals will be distributed to all schools in the Autumn term. A new website will be unveiled in August with support materials and a list of suggested book titles, to provide inspiration for pupils and teachers alike. A range of prizes will be awarded next summer to pupils and schools taking part in the challenge.
The Scottish Teenage Book Prize will be aimed at pupils in S1 right through to S6 and will include a short-list of three Scottish teen novels – pupils will be encouraged to read the three books and then vote for their favourite. In addition there will be a Book Trailer competition and CfE-linked learning resources with activities suitable for book groups.
Changes from previous years include an extension to the voting deadline to allow more time to complete the three novels. There will no longer be a book review competition, but instead pupils will have the chance to win an event with the short-listed authors in their school. On announcement day, schools will be sent an exclusive video which unveils the winning author, to serve as a base for the school’s own celebrations.
The key dates for the new projects are as follows:
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HELEN CRONEY – 0131 524 0160 / 07751 69 58 54
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