The year 5 & 6 librarians of New Road were very proud to be selected to judge The Royal Society Young People's Book Prize earlier this year.
This is a new project for the school which has enabled these Year 5 and 6 pupils to review the six shortlisted STEM books for the coveted Royal Society Book Prize. Some of our judging panel have even been counting down the minutes each week for their session with Mrs Klibi, and on Monday 9th March, they finally voted for their favourite: The Wild Life of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals by Mike Barfield and Paula Bossio.
The librarians also entered a video competition for the Royal Society Judging Panel.
On Monday 20th April the librarians were invited today to watch the live screening of the Royal Society Young People's Book Prize from 1pm - giving up some of their lunch time. There were squeals of delight when our school became just that little bit more famous. Riley's question: "What is the most fascinating rock you have seen?" was posed to one of the shortlisted authors, Nancy Dickmann, live on stage. She said it was a fantastic question and went on to talk about the Petrified Forest in Arizona and its fossil trees. The excitement for us didn't stop there, as there were two clips shown of our video submission.
The link to watch the awards ceremony is Royal Society Young People's Book Prize 2025
Here are the most relevant parts for New Road:
11:48 Mike Barfield - he wrote the book that our children voted for (the eventual winner)
13:22 Nancy Dickmann answering Riley's question and New Road Primary being mentioned
22:57 start of the video submissions
24:35 a clip form New Road's video
25:18 a clip from New Road's video
39:10 announcement of the winner - Mike Barfield
We are so proud of our hardworking and dedicated librarians. They have put so much effort into their role:
- organising, labelling and constantly tidying the library
- attending library and TRS meetings
- being judges for the Royal Society panel - reading all the books, reviewing them, giving their opinions, having discussions about their favourites and justifying their opinions, writing down their views, voting for their favourite in a democratic manner without any conflict, scripting their own lines for the video, being 'second take' wonders for the video and then composing questions for all the authors.
Despite all this hard work, they want to do it all again next year!
Thank you to everybody who has supported this educational and successful project.
All of this year's books and previous shortlisted titles from the Royal Society's Book Prize will be making their way into the school's libraries and classrooms for other children to enjoy.
