Guidelines

  • Order at least one set of the shortlisted books. The more sets you have, the more reading you'll have!
  • Put a poster up in your Library (which wil be e-mailed to you when you register).
  • Explore the website, especially the links on the Shortlists 2024 page (shortlists for 2025 to be announced in December 2024). Encourage the students to do likewise. 
  • Have a good look at the shortlisted books when they arrive and familiarise yourself with the material. They are all fantastic and they're yours to keep forever! 
  • Form a Reading & Rating Group. This can be made up of whatever body of students you like. The shortlist was deliberately chosen with books to appeal to boys and to girls, to reluctant readers and to more able readers. There's something for everyone there.
  • Photocopy or print out plenty of the Rating Forms (which will have been e-mailed to you).
  • Students should complete a Rating Form after every book read. Rather than students simply voting for their favourite book they will be asked to judge each title on its own merits. This should level the playing field and ensure that any of the titles could win the award! 
  • My (loose) recommendation would be that all Reading & Rating Groups should begin no later than Friday 31st January 2025 but if you've got your books in and you're all ready to go there is no reason why you can't start sooner if you want to. 
  • The final deadline for the return of ALL Rating Forms is Tuesday 8th April 2025. Please return them to 3 Northwood Place, Wadsley Park Village, Sheffield, S6 1RA. 
  • Although the Reading & Rating process will identify the winning books from the four shortlists, there is also the True Believers Award for the school that returns the most Rating Forms, the JABBICA (Judge A Book By Its Cover Award) to decide the best book cover (voted for by Librarians and Teachers only) and the 'Nuff Said Award, an award for the Best School Library Excelsior Award Display.
  • The Winners will be announced in June 2025. 
  • Registration for 2025 will open in November 2024.

Thank you very much to every school participating!

Paul Register