Recently I travelled down to Weston-Super-Mare for the very excellent North Somerset Teachers’ Book Awards. This is one of the very best regional prizes in my view because it involves a wonderful network of enthusiastic schools who share shortlisted books with children across the county and then vote for the winners. It’s also one of those very rare awards that isn’t fiction-only. NSTBA has categories for picture books, read-aloud stories, more advanced novels, poetry and factual books. They also do a great awards ceremony with loads of cake and local children announcing the winners.
And the 2019 NSTBA was doubly exciting for me because The Clue is in the Poo won the Information Book of the year category – hurrah! The book has been a big international bestseller, now translated into 8 languages and it’s so exciting that it now has an award.
As you can see I was delighted to win…
In my speech I explained how I have now written books about most of the things my mum used to tell me off for talking about (silliness, being bored, playing pranks, gross stuff, poo…).
Many thanks to the brilliant Sue Wisher and her team of dedicated book-loving teachers who run this brilliant scheme (now in its 5th year).
Loads of great authors and illustrators turn up and it was lovely to see familiar faces including Saviour Pirotta, Fleur Hitchcock, Liz Brownlee, Claire Barker, Stewart Foster, Huw Powell and more.
You can read more about NSTBA here.
