MCS hosts the 2022 Oxfordshire Book Awards

On Thursday 10^th November, the Oxfordshire Book Awards ceremony was hosted at MCS for the first time. It was also the first in person ceremony that the committee have been able to hold since 2019, and the pupils from 19 local schools who attended the event were warmly welcomed by all.

The OBA Patron, Jo Cotterill, was a magnificent Master of Ceremonies, and kept the audience fully entertained: from author introductions, spot quiz questions, golden tickets, magic, and musical authors, Jo kept the show rolling throughout the afternoon! The OBAs have three categories: Best Picture Book, Best Junior Novel, and Best Secondary Novel and were lucky enough to have several of the award-winning and highly commended authors in attendance this year to talk to the audience about their books.

Charlotte Guillain, winner of the Best Picture Book category with What did the Tree See?, talked about the inspiration behind her wonderful story and how it explores the ever-changing landscape over a period of one thousand years – all written from the perspective of the tree. This book is gloriously illustrated by Sam Usher, and he joined in the celebrations virtually with a draw along session which created much hilarity and amusement as Jo Cotterill ran around the room sporting the roving mic to take suggestions from the audience for flavours of ice cream that Sam could add to his picture – we knew it was time to call it a day when we had broccoli and parrot, separately, suggested as potential flavours!

The winner of the Best Junior Book, Maz Evans with Vi Spy: Licence to Chill, was unable to attend the ceremony in person, but she did send an entertaining video accepting her award that had everybody chuckling. Onjali Rauf was able to attend the awards in person and shared with her readers a thought-proving talk about the stark realities of living on the streets, having befriended a homeless man in her youth for a short time, she had felt compelled to write her Highly Commended title The Night Bus Hero.

The final presentation was to the winner of the Best Secondary Book category, which was Phil Earle’s When the Sky Falls. Phil was unable to attend in person, but after a little tweaking of some IT glitches, he was able to join the event virtually via Teams to talk about the research and events which he drew on to create his moving story. Phil asked the audience to consider what they would have done if they had found themselves pointing a gun at a wild animal during a bombing raid – could they have shot Adonis, the gorilla in his book.

Many local authors also joined us at the event to celebrate the 2022 awards: Hannah Shaw, Kathryn Foxfield, Jess Butterworth, Tim Collins, Vanessa Harbour, Adam Guillain, Sam Pope, John Dougherty, and Tracy Darnton.  The audience watched Hannah Shaw use her ‘Unipiggle’ magical skills to change a pencil into chocolate; Tim Collins taught them how to be ‘Sherlock Bones’ super-sleuths; and John Dougherty entertained everyone playing his guitar and teaching the audience the words to his ‘stink-bomb & ketchup-face’ theme song.

The fun-fill event drew to a close by launching the OBA 2023 shortlists (to make sure that we can do it all again next year), eating cake (lots!) and buying books from the pop-up book shop provided by Blackwell’s which authors in attendance happily signed.

It was an afternoon filled with fun, books and cake: all in the pursuit of celebrating a love of Reading for Pleasure. We would like to thank everyone who attended the ceremony for helping us make it the success that it was.