Students from the Year 8 Reading Club have been eagerly reading the six novels nominated for this year’s Hounslow Teen Read : ‘More Than This’ by Patrick Ness, ‘Echo Boy’ by Matt Haag, ‘Hate’ by Alan Gibbons, ‘Hello Darkness’ by Anthony McGowan, ‘Monkey Wars’ by Richard Kurti and ‘Every Day’ by David Levithan.  After much discussion, the students voted for their favourite three : ‘Every Day’, ‘More Than This’ and ‘Echo Boy’. 

Ten boys from the Reading Club were chosen to attend the award ceremony at the Paul Robeson Theatre, where the overall Hounslow winner, ‘Echo Boy’ was announced by last year’s winning author, Rob Lloyd Jones.  Rob admitted that he found reading difficult as a child despite having a librarian and a bookseller as parents. He told the boys how he fell in love with history after discovering ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ and firmly believes that there is a “right” book for every boy. Rob spoke for an hour about how he finds his inspiration, illustrating his talk with the story of The First Crusade.  The audience were spellbound and would have happily stayed listening for longer.