The winner of this year’s NE Teen Book Award, as we celebrate our 20th birthday, is Shell by Paula Rawsthorne!
The award was announced at a special event in Newcastle in front of a capacity crowd of 300 student enthusiastic judges, their librarians and teachers. Discussions of our shortlisted titles ranged from the importance of standing up for what you believe in to medical morality via the theory of relativity, political prisoners, unity and diversity and the power of the ballot box – not to mention the chainsaws. #UKYA really is awesome!
We were thrilled that local author, Dan Smith could join us to introduce his stunning new Viking adventure novel, She Wolf, which proved to be a complete sell-out, and staff from Seven Stories brought along some brilliant recommendations to keep our students reading now that judging is over for another year. Students from Thorp Academy also gave us a fantastic rundown of NETBA shortlisted titles through the years.
There were book voucher prizes for every single one of our student judges, lots of books sold and signed and LOTS of chocolate….
But the party didn’t end there! Our shortlisted authors also visited local schools to get even more young people across the North East reading.
Thanks to all of our authors and judges and to Seven Stories Bookshop for making it such a fabulous day and night of celebrations and reading.
Shortlisting begins soon for next year’s award. If you’ve read a book that’s blown you away let us know @nebookawards.
You could be meeting the author here in Newcastle next year!
History
NETBA was set up in 1999 due to popular demand; schools wanted a similar programme to the prestigious Carnegie Greenaway Book Awards to engage and challenge readers but one which was closer to home, one where our young people could make their own voices heard while discovering exciting new authors and maybe meet those authors for themselves.
The aim of our awards remains the same; we want to make young people more aware of the quality and variety of exciting writing out there, to celebrate and support both established and up and coming authors and to create opportunities for the authors to meet their avid readers. We remain amazed at how many schools want to take part and now around 25 schools sign up every year from across the whole Northeast region.
NETBA caters for the reading needs of OUR young people, allowing them to voice their opinions about the books and the reading which matters to them. Their vote decides the winner each year, their opinions are sought when drawing up the long and shortlists and they are critical, highly perceptive and insightful readers. Because NETBA is all about reading it’s also the only award in the world (that we know of) where the student judges, not the winning authors, get the prizes.
North East Teenage Book Award 