The Young People’s Book Prize

The Young People’s Book Prize aims to promote literacy in young people and to inspire them to read about science. The Prize is unique in that the winner is selected by judging panels made up of young people at schools across the country from a shortlist curated by an adult judging panel. This year, students at Christ the Saviour were selected to judge on the panel of the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize.

Before Christmas, six children from each Year 6 class formed a judging panel. They read and rated six brilliant science books selected by the Royal Society. You can see the shortlist below.

It was a tough task, as all the books were interesting in different ways. Our panel had to judge the books using a range of different criteria such as appearance, inspiration, ease of reading and interest. We had to rate each of the books and then work as a panel to select the one we felt was the winner in each of these categories. The book that emerged as the favourite was ‘In The Key of Code’ by Aimee Lucido. The panel thought this book was original, inventive and heart-warming and taught us a lot about the programming language of Java, as well as the importance of joy in trying new things.

Last week, Year 6 tuned in to the virtual award ceremony where ‘Cats React to Science Facts’ was named the overall winner for 2020. Although this one was not our winner, CtS were so proud to have been a part of the decision making process.

A copy of all the shortlisted books can be found in year group libraries on the Broadway if you would like to judge these yourself. We would love to hear your opinions!