This year’s NHSBA discussion took place at Highfield – seven keen KS3 readers from St Chris (Rebecca, Cara, Nikhil, Nolan, Edie, Leah and Sachin) headed to Highfield on Tuesday to join 11 other schools for a morning of discussion, voting and listening to Elle McNicoll – the visiting author. Each student had read two the shortlisted books:
KS3 titles:
Saving Celeste by Timothee de Fombelle
Fake by Elle Fountain
Nisha’s War by Dan Smith
KS3/4 titles:
Future Girl by Asphyxia
You’ll be the Death of Me by Karen M McManus
Why is Nobody Laughing? By Yasmin Rahman
Once they had discussed the books, everyone got to vote for their favourite and the winners were:
Fake by Ele Fountain and Why is Nobody Laughing? By Yasmin Rahman
Students had a fantastic talk from multi award-winning author Elle McNicoll. Elle won our younger readers’ award in last year’s Book Award with her novel A Kind of Spark. This was a book which really captured our readers’ imaginations and was a popular winner in 2022. It was rather topical to hear Elle speak during Neurodiversity Celebration Week, as Elle is a neurodiverse writer who is both Autistic and Dyspraxic, and is a superb advocate for neurodiverse people and their potential to achieve their ambitions.
