For the first time in the award\u2019s history, two authors have shared first place in South Gloucestershire\u2019s literature prize for young people the Concorde Book Award.<\/p>\n
Murder mystery thriller \u2018One of us is Lying\u2019 (by Karen M McManus) and the moving and powerful novel \u2018Paper Butterflies\u2019 (by Lisa Heathfield) have both been chosen as the 2019 winners. The two authors beat off competition from four other shortlisted young people\u2019s fiction titles to jointly claim the coveted award.<\/p>\n
Once again this year\u2019s winners were chosen after an exciting district-wide reading challenge in which hundreds of young people from public and school library reading groups throughout South Gloucestershire read their way through a shortlist of six books.<\/p>\n
Votes were cast on World Book Day (Thursday 7 March) and the winner was announced on Tuesday 12 March at a gala event at the Bristol and Bath Science Park at Emersons Green.<\/p>\n
Vice-Chair of South Gloucestershire Council Cllr Brian Allinson presented the award. He said: \u201cI\u2019m thrilled to have been involved with the Concorde Book Award this year. Congratulations to all the young people who have taken part, their enthusiasm and love for reading really is inspiring. My thanks go to South Gloucestershire\u2019s libraries and schools who have worked together to organise this award, which celebrates young people\u2019s reading and gives young people a stage to share their interests and achievements. Finally, congratulations to the two authors for their well-deserved wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Receiving the award, \u2018Paper Butterflies\u2019 author Lisa Heathfield said: \u201cI’m incredibly honoured to have won the Concorde Book Award 2019, particularly as it was voted for by teen readers. And it was such a special event – meeting the fantastic students and sharing their love of books. I spend my days writing away at my kitchen table, so it really is a dream come true to hear their love for Paper Butterflies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The awards event saw a number of young people give presentations about their favourite books and conduct interviews with the shortlisted authors who attended. This year\u2019s award ceremony was also co-hosted by three young people from Abbeywood Community School and The Castle School.<\/p>\n
Guest speaker, author Virginia Bergin had an inspirational message for the audience: \u201cI think the Concorde Book Award is a brilliant event – and a brilliant way to get the word out there: you CAN become an author.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Concorde Book Award is a long-running \u2018young people\u2019s Booker\u2019 run by South Gloucestershire schools and public libraries in which groups of young people read a shortlist of novels. They are then encouraged to join a reading group, whether at school or in a local library, to read six books and talk about them with other group members, before voting on their favourite title.<\/p>\n
The scheme aims to promote a love of reading among 11-14 year olds (Year 7 to 9 secondary school students, Key stage 3), and thousands of young people have taken part since it was launched in 2007.<\/p>\n
The award is unique in being one of the few literary awards that involves children and young people all the way through from choosing the longlist and the winner, to giving presentations and author interviews at the annual award ceremony.<\/p>\n
Shortlisted books are made available from South Gloucestershire public and school libraries, and voting takes place on World Book Day in March each year.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s shortlisted titles were \u2018A Place Called Perfect\u2019 by Helena Duggan; \u2018A Pocket Full of Murder\u2019 by R J Anderson; \u2018Kick\u2019 by Mitch Johnson; \u2018One of us is Lying\u2019 by Karen M McManus; \u2018Paper Butterflies\u2019 by Lisa Heathfield; and \u2018The Explorer\u2019 by Katherine Rundell.<\/p>\n
Participants are also encouraged to contribute to a dedicated online forum as part of the process of sharing views on each book http:\/\/concorde2019.edublogs.org<\/a>\/. There is an award for the group that makes the best contribution to the blog.<\/p>\n For more information on the Concorde Book Award visit www.southglos.gov.uk\/concordebookaward<\/a>, www.facebook.com\/sgloslibraries<\/a> or find us on Twitter @southgloslibs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time in the award\u2019s history, two authors have shared first place in South Gloucestershire\u2019s literature prize for young people the Concorde Book Award. Murder mystery thriller \u2018One of us is Lying\u2019 (by Karen M McManus) and the moving and powerful novel \u2018Paper Butterflies\u2019 (by Lisa Heathfield) have both been chosen as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[551],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21084"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21104,"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21084\/revisions\/21104"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.southglos.gov.uk\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}