The Scottish Children's Book Awards: The Final Countdown!

This is an exciting week for Scottish Book Trust's children's team. It's the final week before the voting deadline for the Scottish Children's Book Awards.

Since September when we launched the 2011 shortlist for the Scottish Children's Book Awards, over 40,000 children around Scotland have signed up to read the three books in their age category and vote for their favourite.

You can watch interviews with the shortlisted authors and see the picturebook authors shortlisted in the 0-7 category reading their books in full in our Bookbug section.

We know that as well as reading the books lots of schools and library book groups use the book awards to do a variety of creative activities that help to make reading even more enjoyable. We were lucky enough to get out into a few schools to film some of the interesting work going on. The video will be shown at the awards ceremony on 23rd February.

That's the other thing we're excited about - the ceremony itself. It's always all hands on deck when it comes to this event which is taking place at The Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh this year.

We'll have an audience of 500 children who travel from all over the country to be amongst the first to find out the winners in each age category. There's lots to sort out - musicians, props, performers, special guest appearances, book sales, gold envelopes, seating plans. It's safe to say we are BUSY!

It's hard to get all this work done when we're all glued to the online report which shows us how many votes have come in. It's addictive watching the numbers go up. By the time it gets to Friday afternoon we'll be refreshing every few seconds. The voting deadline is 5.30pm - we can't wait!

If you're registered to vote but think you've not received your voting link please email heather.collins@scottishbooktrust.com. Please also contact Heather if you've been reading the books and are ready to vote but are not registered.

Other News

Have you entered our Book of the Month competition yet? This month you could win a copy of Torn by the brilliant Cat Clarke.

Have you entered our current Meet Our Authors competition on Facebook? You could win a year's family membership to The National Trust for Scotland worth £80.

Faber and Faber has launched THE SPARK, a place for 13 - 16 year olds who have an interest in creativity and reading. During 2012 THE SPARK, hosted on Facebook, will invite young people to take part in some exciting projects around acting, film-making, writing and music, each linked to and inspired by a Faber Young Adult title.