On 27th March an excited group of Year 7 readers went to Heartlands High School to join students from other schools for the Haringey Children’s Book Award.  We’ve all read the six books, we all liked different ones for different reasons and we were delighted to be able to vote along with 400 others.  We started with an amazing workshop for our school with shortlisted author Christopher Edge.  He talked about “story sparks” (ie. inspiration), the quantum banana experiment and the fact that the average person accidentally eats 350 bugs a year – amongst other things!  We created the start of our stories, although we are not sure of the agreement we made with Chris that when we are rich and famous he’ll expect a 50% cut of our publishing and film rights profits!  After lunch we settled down in the hall to listen to the authors talk about themselves and their books and, after a massive drum roll, Kiran Millwood Hargrave was announced this year’s champion with the beautiful The Island at the End of Everything.  Just as  exciting was that we were able to buy books, chat to the shortlisted authors and others who had come for the day!  Mrs Ward brought S F Said to say hello as he was Fortismere’s Patron of Reading before Non Pratt – so many of us have read Varjak Paw and Phoenix.  We had a fantastic day.