After months of reading and ruminating, Cumbria's secondary school pupils have selected their favourite book.
Following a tense round of voting yesterday (18 June) at the University of Cumbria’s Newton Rigg campus, around 80 pupils representing schools from across Cumbria chose the fantasy adventure book Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy as the winner of this year’s Spellbinding book award.
The competition, in its sixth year, is organised by Cumbria County Council's Library Service for Schools. This year's event was sponsored by the University of Cumbria.
Nominations for the competition came from pupils across the county aged 11-14. A top ten list of books was compiled which pupils were then encouraged to read and review in their school reading groups.
Between them, they reduced dozens of potential winning titles to a shortlist of three which, as well as the winner, included Deeper than Blue by Jill Hucklesby, and Fearless by Tim Lott.
Councillor Gary Strong, cabinet member for community development, said: "This year’s Spellbinding award has proven enormously successful with dozens of schools taking part. It is great to see young people getting exited about reading, particularly as this is part of the National Year of Reading in Cumbria."
ENDS
Notes
Skulduggery Pleasant is an engaging and compelling detective story set in Ireland. It features a skeleton detective with razor sharp wit—Skulduggery and his sassy teenage sidekick, Stephanie.
When Stephanie notices the stranger with the overcoat, sunglasses and frizzy hair at her uncle’s funeral, the next time they meet he is saving her life. For Skulduggery Pleasant is fighting to save the world form the wizard , who has gone to the dark side, Nefarian Serpine. The friendship between Stephanie and Skulduggery is like a friendship between two old souls who were friends in a previous life and who have met again.
Stephanie enters Skulduggery’s shadowy nether-world and learns about the Ancients, the Faceless Ones, and the Sceptre they all seek. What’s more, she’d choose life on the edge with the wise-cracking Skulduggery to her old existence any day!
Skulduggery Pleasant is a supernatural mystery of the treasure hunt variety which is very well written with plenty of wisecracking humour. Comments being heard in the publishing world are whether this is the next Harry Potter?
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