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Award winning author celebrates the end of our reading challenge

An award winning author visited our Academy this week to mark the end of our Transition Reading Challenge.

An award winning author visited our Academy this week to mark the end of our Transition Reading Challenge.

During the summer holidays students who were getting ready to join us in Year 7 in September all received a copy of Dave Cousins’ book Charlie Merrick’s Misfits in I’m a Nobody Get Me Out of Here!

The students were challenged to read the book and at the start of this term they arrived with activity sheets relating to the story.

Yesterday Mr Cousins visited our Academy to give a talk to all our Year 7 students and a group of 60 of our Year 8 students.

CBA Librarian Amy McKay said: “The take up for the reading challenge this summer was stunning. At the start of term we were inundated with students bringing in their activity sheets.

“The book was perfect – it was funny, accessible and had a broad appeal.

“It was so popular that all the rest of Dave’s books have been checked out of the Library all term.

“Dave was the perfect author to visit us. The students really engaged with him and they asked him lots of fantastic questions.

“During his visit he talked about how he became a writer and the things that had inspired some of his books.

“He also talked to them about some of his very successful books for slightly older readers which was great because we are looking at progressing our Year 7 students’ reading.”

Mr Cousins also signed copies of his books for our students and chose the winner and runners-up of our activity sheet competition.

The winner was Zofia Pilus who received a signed copy of one of his books and will have her name used for a character in Mr Cousins’s next book.

The runners-up were Rosie Milner, Maiya Dennison and Cuba Aves-Walker.

(Author Dave Cousins is pictured with our students during his visit to CBA)