Year 6 – Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize award ceremony

Before half term, several children in Year 6 were part of a judging panel for the Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Prize (An award that aims to inspire young people to read about science and promotes the writing of excellent, accessible books for under-14s). As part of this they met each week to read and discuss the six shortlisted science books before deciding on how many stars to give each book and choose a winner.

Following this we received an invitation to attend the Young People’s Book Prize award event 2019 at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford which we went to today!

We had a brilliant morning taking part in a series of interactive workshops inspired by the shortlisted books. We learnt how to code and create our own computer games, explored the wondrous properties of water and challenged our perceptions of light, sound and space in the Wonderlab gallery. After lunch, we watched the exclusive award ceremony, hosted by CBBC’s Lindsey Russell, where the winner was announced. We listened to a Q&A session with the authors of the shortlisted books and took part in some of the on stage games and demonstrations.

If you are interested in reading the shortlisted books they are available in our school library.

• 100 Things to Know About Numbers,  Computers and Coding by Alice James, Eddie Reynolds, Minna Lacey, Rose Hall and Alex Frith
• The Bacteria Book by Steve Mould
• The Element in the Room by Mike Barfield
• Kid Scientists by David Stabler
• Planetarium by Raman Prinja (The winning book!)
• Science Makers: Making with States of Matter by Anna Claybourne