On Wednesday 20th March, Fearnhill hosted the annual North Herts Schools’ Book Awards. We welcomed over 120 students and staff from 9 local schools (Highfield, St Christopher and St Francis’ College in Letchworth, The Nobel School and Thomas Alleyne School in Stevenage, Hitchin Boys’, Hitchin Girls’ and The Priory schools in Hitchin, and The Knights Templar School in Baldock). This was the biggest turnout in the event’s 7 year history.
We discussed a shortlist of recently published fiction titles, and decided voted the winners as follows:
The winner in the Younger Category is Land of Neverendings by Kate Saunders.
The winner the Older Category is A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge.
Attendees at the event also heard from the winner of last year’s older reader category, writer Lucy Adlington. We presented Lucy with an award handmade by Mr Marsh in Tech.
Lucy is the author of Red Ribbon, a novel set in a dressmaking factory in Auschwitz. Lucy gave an interactive talk to students, asking them what would they pack in a suitcase if they only had 15 minutes to do so? Lucy then went on to run a creative writing workshop with the English department and selected students at Fearnhill. Students were challenged to write a postcard thrown from a train in the 1940s – Destination: Unknown.
Visiting students were presented with a flower handcrafted from old book pages, make by Ms White in I.T and Kathryn in Y9 drew a thank you card for the author, based on the cover of her book. A huge thank you to Y9’s Will who learnt how to play the Harry Potter theme music on the piano especially for the event to welcome visitors as they entered the Hall.
You can see more about the event on Twitter thread #NHSBA2019 .