Carnegie Afternoon

On Monday 17 June, pupils from St Helen’s and John Lyon schools joined our Book Club girls to spend an afternoon in the Northwood College for Girls’ Recital Hall, discussing the novels that feature on this year’s Carnegie Award shortlist.

Eight fiction titles were shortlisted, covering a range of themes including female emancipation, identity, loss and family relationships and friendships. The book clubbers organised themselves into eight groups, one group for each of the shortlisted titles. Each group had a lively discussion about their selected title, helped along by staff and librarians from each of the schools. After some much needed refreshments, each group gave an interesting and well thought out presentation as to why their chosen title should win this year’s Carnegie Medal. Following the group discussions, the book clubbers voted for the title they thought should win. The winning title was ‘Long way down’ by Jason Reynolds.  The CILIP Carnegie Medal judges announced the winner the following day and the debut novel from Dominican-American author and slam poetry champion Elizabeth Acevedo won for her book ‘The poet X’

Mrs Annetts

School Librarian