On Tuesday 26th March sixteen boys, Joseph Bigley, Charlie Johnson, Alex Meadows, James Randall, Zac Richardson, Sulaimaan Ahmed, Raiden Swindells, Matthew Hannon, Junior Connor, Hugh Lawrence, Rajan Naidoo, Harry Wynne, Buckley Loftus, Raveen Mallawa, Hemanth Bheemireddy, and Methul Gamage, went to Crosby Library for the Sefton Super Reads award afternoon.
Pupils from several local schools gathered to hear two of the shortlisted writers, Ele Fountain, author of Boy 87, and Sylvia Bishop, author of The Secret of the Night Train, talk about the inspiration for their writing, and the background to the books. Boy 87 was written in Addis Ababa, where Ele and her family had moved. Some of the characters were based on the Ethiopian women she had met there. As she had been a publisher’s editor before she wrote her own novel, Ele decided to use a pseudonym so she was unknown to publishers, who accepted her book on its own merits. Ele’s favourite authors include Philip Reeve and Patrick Ness, while Sylvia loves John Steinbeck. As Sylvia loves to do research, she made the train journey from Paris to Istanbul, before using it in her book. She is now working on a novel about smugglers in the eighteenth century, researching in the National Maritime Museum and its library.
Pupils asked some very perceptive and searching questions, before the winners of the book review competition were announced. Rajan Naidoo won a prize for his review of Charlie and Me by Mark Lowery. The winner of Sefton Super Reads 2019 was Boy 87, the first award Ele has ever won. She said she was especially delighted, as this award is decided by the votes of children.
Mrs Rea and Mrs Coleman, and all the boys, enjoyed spending the afternoon hearing about books
Twelve year old Darren Toh, who was born deaf, has been awarded the highest possible IQ score by MENSA, months after passing his GCSE Maths exam with a Grade 9. 
The School was shortlisted in recognition of the amazing work it does in our local community through the Merchants in the Community Project and School-wide fundraisers led by the School Council.
r with all the junior school boys, Tom came to the library where all year 7 boys were looking forward to meeting a real live author. He told them how important magazines and newspapers had been when he was a reluctant reader as a teenager. He loved reading match reports, which then inspired him to try books. He was 21 before he did A-Levels, then became a mature student at Reading University. He finds celebrity magazines essential when he is researching the background to his stories, as they shed light on footballers’ lifestyles. He also does research by travelling to the countries where his books are set, and by reading biographies.
publishers for editing and typesetting. Book covers are not selected by the author. His latest book, D-Day Dog, out in May, originated in the true story of German Shepherd dogs being parachuted into Europe, to sniff out soldiers who were hiding, and to detect mines. They were trained to detect the differences in smell of the uniforms of American, German and British soldiers. He is working on another Second World War book about German children who were rescued from a concentration camp and sent to Windermere.
n war, inspired some excellent ideas. The groups set their ideas in the Vietnam War, where dogs were used as lookouts, the English Civil War, using King Charles spaniels as metaphors for the character of the King, cats bringing food to a besieged town, and dogs being trained to work with the military police. The Year 10 group set their story in an African war. Tom was very impressed by the standard of the writing, and told the boys to turn their good ideas into stories.
