Juniper Book Awards - Designed to inspire reading for pleasure

HELPING CHILDREN LOVE READINg

As part of our commitment to helping children love reading for pleasure, we invite you to take part in our Juniper Education Book Awards. The Awards are designed to improve literacy, facilitate debate and encourage reading for pleasure among pupils at upper Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3.

Pupils are invited to read the six shortlisted books and judge which one they consider to be the best. Use this site to find out more about the books, talk and share your thoughts and opinions with other readers across the country, and write reviews.

The Juniper Book Awards are open to all primary schools (Years 5 and 6) and secondary schools (Years 7 to 9).

All participating schools will gain access to our Juniper Book Award forum where pupils can write comments and reviews about the books, and interact with pupils from other participating schools as well as the authors*. If you would like your school to take part in this year’s Juniper Book Awards please sign up below or scroll down this page for further details of what is included.

Nomination Categories

Book of the Year

We will compile a shortlist of six titles from newly published fiction for young people. The Winner will be selected via a voting system where the participating pupils select their favourite book.

Best Pupil Reviews

All pupil book reviews on the forum will be reviewed by our team of librarians to find this year’s best review.

Best Creative Award

Awarded to an individual/group of pupils for the best creative idea linked to one of the shortlisted books.

Entries into this category can include for example music, dance, live-action drama video, poetry or art. The winner is to be decided by Juniper Education Resources Service.

Most Innovative School

Schools can submit a statement describing innovative ways that your school has implemented the Juniper Book Awards. The winner is to be decided by Juniper Education.

Best Book Trailer

Schools create a video trailer for the book of their choice. Juniper Education Resources work closely with IntoFilm who decide on the winning entries.

Why sign up for the Juniper Book Awards?

Sign up for just £104 per school and receive:

a copy of each of the 6 shortlisted titles
publicity material
hints and tips for running the Award in school
access to the Juniper Forum for posting reviews and voting
drama scripts to launch the Awards
access to a selection of Sonar Awards Digital Badges
book trailer workshop in January
an invitation to the Virtual Award/Live Streamed/In-person Ceremony in March. Invitation to all participating schools and shortlisted authors to attend*

*Unfortunately, the format of the Award ceremony will be subject to current COVID restrictions and we cannot guarantee the participation of the book authors, but we do invite them to join in with the forum discussions and attend the award ceremony, and in previous years a number of them have done so.

SIGN UP FOR THE JUNIPER BOOK AWARDS

DIGITAL BADGES

Adventure

Criteria – Read an Adventure book

Fantasy

Criteria – Read a Fantasy book

Historical

Criteria – Read a Historical book

Humour

Criteria – Read a Humour book

Mystery

Criteria – Read a Mystery book

Juniper Book Award - Science Fiction Badge

Sci-Fi

Criteria – Read a Sci-Fi book

Set in Another Country

Criteria – Read a book set in another country

Juniper Book Awards - Bronze Award - Digital Badge

Criteria – Read 2 shortlisted books from the Juniper Book Awards

Juniper Book Awards - Silver Award - Digital Badge

Criteria – Read 4 shortlisted books from the Juniper Book Awards

Juniper Book Awards - Gold Award - Digital Badge

Criteria – Read all of the Juniper Book Award books

To receive the digital badges, pupils will need access to an email address; they will also need to create a password, see the link to our privacy policy here.

2021 Winners

Book of the Year

The Soup Movement by Ben Davis

Best Book Trailer

Anastasia from Hockerill Anglo-European College