I found that some of our readers struggled with the books this year has they were long heavy books for year 7. I have found over the years that I have been doing this the books seem to  have become much more challenging .  My group are mainly year 7 & 8, many find it difficult to get through all of the books in the available time. When books like What I Was are shortlisted,  although has an adult I enjoyed it,  many children don't really understand what is going on. I think there should be a wider mix of people on the judging panel has they seem to be out of touch with what children like to read.

i agree some of the books were long and difficult, but i though they were much more suited to younger readers than last years list. las year we stopped our year 7s reading some of the books, and most of them were horrid!

 

 

 

As our group is in a primary school, we decided to only shadow the Greenaway award, as we felt very few primary school children would be able to cope with reading 6 or 7 books in as many weeks (I would struggle!!).  However, I'm hoping to get some of our more able readers to have a go at shadowing Carnegie next year, so hopefully the shortlisted books won't be too unsuitable!

i must say i think there almost needs to be three awards. carnegie for the lets say 12 to 16 year olds.

 greenaway for younger ones up to say 8, then a middle catagory. that would make life easier and give more choice to schools.