Children's Book Award - Readers needed!

You are invited to read all 3 of the shortlisted books in the Older Readers category of the 2016 Children's Book Award so you can rate them 1, 2, 3. Your vote will count towards the award, as this is the only award where children decide who wins. You need to read the books between November 2015 and the end of April 2016.

The shortlist for the Children’s Book Award 2016 Older Readers category is as follows:

– Apple and Rain by Sarah Crossan (Bloomsbury Children’s Books)
– Smart by Kim Slater (Macmillan Children’s Books)
– Listen to the Moon by Michael Morpurgo (HarperCollins Children’s Books)

About the Award

The Children’s Book Award (previously known as the Red House Children’s Book Award) is the only national award for children’s books that is voted for entirely by children themselves. It was founded in 1980 and each year since then children in book groups and around the UK have been reading as many new books as they can and voting to pick both the shortlist and the eventual winners. Past winners include J.K. Rowling, Patrick Ness, Andy Stanton, Malorie Blackman, Anthony Horowitz and Oliver Jeffers. Now in its 36th year, the award has often been the first to recognise the future stars of children’s fiction and has the ability to turn popular authors into bestsellers.

In 2015 this involved 800 books being submitted, with 48,000 votes for the shortlist alone and a grand total of over 80,000 votes being cast. Through the school's membership of the Oxford Children's Book Group 'Testing Group' several OLA students test-read and voted for the books which were in the Top 3 Older readers category. Two lucky OLA readers were invited to the Awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London in February 2015. They also attended lunch with the shortlisted authors and illustrators and talked to then Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman.

The shortlist for the Children’s Book Award 2016 Younger Readers and Younger Children's categories:

Younger Readers
– My Headteacher is a Vampire Rat! by Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham (Nosy Crow)
– Boy in the Tower by Polly Ho-Yen (Doubleday)
– Horrid Henry’s Krazy Ketchup by Francesca Simon and Tony Ross (Orion Children’s Books)

Younger Children

– Fabulous Pie by Gareth Edwards and Guy Parker-Rees (Scholastic)
– Is There a Dog in this Book? by Viviane Schwarz (Walker Books)
– Ready, Steady, Jump! by Jeanne Willis and Adrian Reynolds (Andersen Press)
– This Book Just Ate my Dog! by Richard Byrne (Oxford University Press)

Source and more information

The Guardian children's fiction prize – shortlist 2015

Two local authors have been shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, which is judged by their fellow authors. Sally Nicholls and Frances Hardinge, both from Oxfordshire, and David Almond and Kate Saunders make up the shortlist of four.

As described on the Guardian website:

An Island of our Own by Sally Nicholls
This is a joyful Treasure Island-style mystery for the Instagram generation. A loveable young pair don’t face pirates as they seek their late auntie’s buried hoard, but more contemporary devices - from crowdsourcing clues to metal detectors - winningly deployed in this funny and tender exploration of what makes a family.

A Song for Ella Grey by David Almond
An intense, windswept re-working of Orpheus and Eurydice that reverberates with intensity and passion, as beautifully presented as it is written. The transformative potential of art and the imagination radiates from every page of this book, which is as short, intense and all consuming as the love story it describes.

Five Children on the Western Front by Kate Saunders
E Nesbitt’s classic Five Children and It gains an outstanding sequel, with the ingenious conceit of transposing the cosy Victorian setting for the eve of the First World War, yielding devastating results. Enthralling, witty and often unbearably moving, an elegy to not only a lost generation but the first golden age of children’s literature.

The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
A compelling fantasy spun from one mesmerising idea: what if telling lies gave you the power to discover other people’s secrets? This gothic yarn of Victorian fossil hunters gone bad features an unforgettable young heroine, who fearlessly takes on monsters of the present and the past to build herself a better life.

The winner will be announced at the award ceremony on 19 November 2015.

Book-related art work

Some enjoyable art work around the school.

Sir Vince Cable

Sir Vince Cable attracted a big crowd to OLA for the Festival of Reading evening event, which was open to the public. He was here to talk about his new book After the Storm: the World Economy and Britain's Economic Future. As former Secretary of State for Business under the Coalition Government, and Liberal Democrat MP for nearly 20 years, until he lost his seat in this year’s General Election, this was an absorbing yet accessible insight from someone at the heart of government. This was followed by questions and book signing organised by local book shop Mostly Books. Many people bought copies, including the Mayor of Abingdon and members of staff.

A great champion of reading and bookshops, he started his talk by saying how reading novels during the challenging times of government helped keep him clear-headed.

Edgar Gerrard Hughes Chief Writer for The Day

Edgar Gerrard Hughes is Chief Writer for The Day. He talked to Year 10, and again to Sixth Formers about writing about the news. The Day online newspaper, to which the school subscribes, features three main stories each day. Each report aims to explain each news story so that anyone coming to the story for the first time will understand its context. Below Edgar signs the Library's Author Board.

Kjartan Poskitt

Kjartan Poskitt who created the Murderous Maths series gave two performances packed with laughter and maths! Years 7 & 8, and in a separate session, Years 5 & 6 from OLA Junior school plus visitors from St Edmund's School, Rush Common and Long Furlong schools, learned the 1089 times table in under 15 seconds, played poisoned chocolate, a strategy game, and even were squeezed through a greetings card! Maths at its funniest and cleverest presented by a witty mathematician, and if you want to learn a few tricks then visit his murderous maths website's Tricks section.

OLA Festival of Reading 2015

Ali Sparkes set the Reading Festival alight with her sparkling talks to OLA pupils.

Years 9 and 10's creativity was kindled through the stories which inspire computer gaming. The students needed no persuading to produce some clever and fun mash-up game story beginnings, which were delivered to the group. These included Slender Tubbies, Noddy and GTA, Call of Duty Ghosts meets OLA!

Music is a strong theme in many of her stories - her sparkly boots a nod to the time she released a single - featuring in Frozen in Time, Dark Summer and her sci-fi adventure Destination Earth. Years 7 and 8 pupils heard about Ali's link with legendary 80s funk pop band Level 42 and their lead singer and bassist Mark King, who are in the story, helping to save the earth from aliens.

Pupils from our Junior School enjoyed an entertaining and interactive talk on 'How I Became an Author', explaining how her determination and enjoyment of writing spurred her on. Her early career in journalism gave her good grounding in writing and lead eventually to her full-time career as an author. With a 'hypnotic disc' creating an optical illusion, flash cards to elicit groans, ahhs and cheers as she told her stories, this exciting session needed no trigger for the spontaneous applause which came at the end of each of her sessions.

Thank you Ali Sparkes for your energetic and fun sessions!