Meet the Author - October 2024

Back in July, we hosted a very successful voting day for the Hampshire Book Awards where students from many Hampshire schools joined us to debate the 6 books that were up for the winning accolade. The students decided on the fabulous ‘Electric Life’ by Rachel Delahaye, and so in October we were delighted to be asked to host the Meet the Author event, when Rachel visited and was presented with her award.

Whilst this was an event with current Year 9 in mind as they had been the participating voting student when they were in Year 8, we were able to extend this event so that we also included 60 of our top readers in our current Year 8 - a reward for their efforts with reading and their impressive book borrowing rates. This means that they got an early initiation into the Hampshire Book Award.  We also, of course, had our hard-working readers from the HBA last year who are now Year 9 students. 

Students met and chatted with Rachel, and we all enjoyed a thought-provoking presentation on the power of technology and how it had inspired the winning novel. During the question session our students were fantastic – so much engagement and additionally so many great suggestions to Rachel as to the direction of the sequel! A great way to focus on reading for pleasure. We now look forward to launching HBA 2025, with lots of the participating Year 8 at this event ready to sign up.