Afternoon to all you lovely Amazing Book Awards people! We hope that you are staying well and safe in all this pandemic horribleness.

We are really pleased to share news of the #ABA2021 award longlists with you- yes, I did say long LISTS! As we had a fallow year last year we have a long list for both 2020 titles as well as 2021 titles. You will find images of the long lists for each of these attached, and we have recorded a loom video introducing all of these that you are free to use at your setting.

Due to covid current restrictions and awareness that our usual award ceremony may well be impacted by social distancing policies, we have taken the decision to run this year’s events entirely online. We will be streaming the awards announcements along with author interviews and students introductions online on Award Night (Friday 18^th June) so everyone can participate regardless of what the covid situation may be by then.

We will still produce all the resources/labels/activities that we usually do, and we will look to you to help connect your readers to the ABA books too and get them engaged with the usual competitions and events. We are aware that everyone’s situation is strange right now, with many of us having very limited ways to connect with our readers, so initial long to shortlist voting will be done via our social media sites.

#ABA2020 titles will be voted on in the week beginning 15^th February

#ABA2021 titles will be voted on the follow week, beginning 22^nd February

Once all the votes have been collated, we will announce the 2 shortlists on World Book Day, Thursday 4^th March. We are currently looking into how we can get students who have read all the shortlist books to vote via a more controllable system than social media! We will ask you to help encourage those readers to use the voting system when we get there.

One final bit of good news for all you wonderful people, we feel that – due to how this year’s events are going to mean working and celebrating in a different way – we are offering all those subscribed to this year’s awards free membership to next year’s awards. We wanted to say thank you to you all for sticking with us through the pandemic and continuing all the hard work to keep your readers engaged with their reading, not just the ABA’s but across the board.

Looking forward to catching up soon, do get in touch with any of us for more clarity, or if you need anything ABA related!

Ladies and gentlemen,

We are delighted to announce that the Amazing Book Awards are back!! Almost as if we had predicted what a poopstorm 2020 was going to be, we have spent our well imposed fallow year regrouping, planning, priming and preparing for 2021. It’s going to be epic! It’s going to be awesome!! It’s going to be the BEST year ever!!! And we really hope you want to join us for our 10^th Birthday next summer. Sadly, we can’t give you an exact date for the awards night just yet, until we find out what’s occurring with them pesky GCSEs. But pencil in a Friday in late June, early July and you’ll be about right.

BIG NEWS – We are now open for subscriptions. Follow this link to our new fancy-pants subscription form: ABA 2021 Or if you’re feeling even more fancy you can follow the quick code on the shoutout you should have received in the post last week. As soon as you are subscribed we will send you a new and improved Amazing Welcome Pack ^TM Our subscription fees remain unchanged at £50 per school. Further information on the form.

We’d also like you to send us your Long List suggestions. Remembering we are looking at the June 2018 to May 2020 publishing window. Please could you send these to Sally asap SBaker@durring.com As soon as we have the Long Long List ready we’ll arrange a skypey-zoomy-type call (as getting together face-to-face isn’t really an option yet) to get the Long List ready for launch in late October. You’ll then have until January to contemplate and vote for the books you would like to see on the Shortlist, which will be announced on Monday 1^st Feb. 2021.

Lastly, thank you so much for all your support over the last 10 years! We are so grateful for everything your patronage and friendships.

Take care everyone, and looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Love

Join us today: ABA 2021

You may be wondering why you haven’t heard from us yet this year, well, with various commitments and changes at ABA headquarters, we have decided to have a fallow year and to take a year off. A lot goes into running the ABAs and we have great plans for the future. All our social media feeds will be active and we’d love to hear about your (and your students) reading choices and recommendations. Let’s keep the conversation going.

However, this is not the end of the ABAs, we will be back BIGGER and BETTER than ever in September 2020. In what will be our 10 birthday year! [P.A.R.T.Y] We’re going to have some AMAZING authors for you, and some even more AMAZING competitions for your students, and (of course) a few Brucie Bonus’ for you too. It’s going to be huge! EPIC even, and we really hope that you will want to be part of it again. We’ll be sending a shout-out for book recommendations next July, so make sure you keep notes on any books that stand out for you as the year goes on.  

If you have any questions or queries about the ABAs now please email me at this address, Sally Baker sbaker@durring.com or our info@amazingbookawards.co.uk address and we will be more than happy to help.

Thank you once again for all your support and positivity, we wouldn’t have the ABAs without you.

Much love,