Racecourse Rocks the DBA Finale

Fun and celebration were the order of the day at Doncaster Racecourse when this year’s Doncaster Book Award reached its triumphant conclusion on Friday 25 March 2011. The excitement was mounting as the 400 or so students and teachers took their seats ready for starters' orders!

Lesley Hurworth, DBA Chair, opened proceedings by welcoming everyone and thanking everyone for coming, in particular our visiting authors, Doncaster’s Civic Mayor and his Consort and the other distinguished guests. We were very fortunate this year to have three great authors present, the wonderful ‘2Steves’, Barlow and Skidmore, and the fantastic Tommy Donbavand, whose book Zombie has been so popular on this year’s shortlist. We then got underway with another energetic and enthusiastic joint sing-a-long to ‘Gotta Keep Reading!’

With the audience suitably pumped up, our events host, Dave Cryer, was next on stage, to introduce Phil Shepherd, with his new poem, ‘Mean and Green’, an environmentally friendly monster poem. (You had to be there!) This was illustrated by fantastic posters made by children at Hexthorpe Primary, and required all the audience to perform a noisy maniacal laugh at the end of every chorus, something we all enjoyed!

Then the two Steves took to the stage, and in their own inimitable way they soon reduced the audience to tears of laughter. They absolutely define the idea that books and authors are fun, and they had the audience in stitches throughout. (My own students at Don Valley have since been re-enacting some of their routine, about a visit to an infant school, in our library!) The Steves then took audience questions, and, as ever, a forest of hands went shooting up. They were able via their answers to talk about all aspects of their writing and really encourage the children there both to read as widely as they can to get ideas, and to try writing themselves.

They were definitely a hard act to follow, but our next author, Tommy Donbavand, was more than up to the challenge. Tommy’s previous careers as a clown, and then an actor, no doubt helped with that! Tommy spoke about the book that first turned him on to reading, a story about killer crabs, whose influence caused insomnia and the accidental burning down of the family tent, bringing a holiday to an abrupt end! He continued in a dramatic vein, demonstrating the idea of building empathy with characters by re-enacting William Tell with balloons, and encouraging some of our front-row guests to turn children into mummies on stage using toilet roll! It was all great fun, and again, there were loads of questions from the students in the audience.

The unenviable task of following Tommy was given to Yvonne Warren, representing our Public Library partners. Yvonne took the opportunity to launch the Summer Reading Challenge, ‘Circus Stars’, and encouraged the audience to take part this year. Then it was on to the prizes. Paul from Waterstones announced the winner of the ‘Best Review’ prize: Ryan, a student from Hall Cross student won the bag of goodies. Then Richard Hanks, a representative from the charity ‘Reading Matters’, presented the prizes for creative writing to a student from Montague Primary and to Charlotte from Ridgewood Secondary School.

Finally it was the moment of truth! Lesley took to the stage with the golden envelope and announced this year’s winner, The Thornthwaite Inheritance by Gareth P Jones. To judge from the audience reaction, it was a popular choice with most of those present.

This was one of the DBA’s best ever events, the atmosphere was amazing and the whole afternoon was a complete celebration of the joy of books and reading. We all left on a high and are already planning for next year. We really hope you can join us!

Lyn Hopson,
Secretary, Doncaster Book Awards Ltd.

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