Hello, People!

Last year, we set up The Hampshire Independent Schools Book Award to find the (deep breath) best book published in the last year in Great Britain written originally for teenagers.

Once we came up with a shortlist, students in Independent School across Hampshire (that's a county in the South of England, by the way, for you non-British people who don't know) voted for their favourite book out of the six shortlisted.

They were:

The Ferryman, by Claire Mcfall.
A Dream of Lights, by Kerry Drewery 
Nowhere, by Jon Robinson
Ketchup Clouds, by Annabel Pitcher
The Wall, by William Sutcliffe
Charm and Strange, by Stephanie Kuehn

All six books were COMPLETELY AMAZING, but the winner was Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher.

Annabel Pitcher was unable to come to the St. Swithun's Literacy Festival to accept the prize in person because she had to stay at home to look after her new-born son, but she did send us a lovely recorded message.

This year, we are going to do the Hampshire Independent Schools Book Award again, and have finally finished nominating books that:

- Have been published in Great Britain in the last year
- Are INCREDIBLY well written.
- Were written originally for teens.

We've finally come up with this year's shortlist, and will soon be posting a book announcing them, so keep your eyes peeled for that! 

We got a Wattpad account so we could basically stalk amazing writers such as Sally Green and Elizabeth May.   It’s mostly going to be me, aka @OliveOwl64 , manning this account, but other people will be doing it too. 

By the way, we believe in follow for follow.  However, if you unfollow us after we've followed you, we'll unfollow you.

Thank you for bothering to spend a few precious moments of your time reading this!