I had a great time at the recent Tees Valley Education Book Awards in Middlesbrough. It was an honour to be on a shortlist that included some of my favourite authors, who are also all fab people (yes, authors are people too!).

Catching up with Gabrielle Kent, Em Lynas and Dan Smith is always a pleasure, but it was a shame Sophie Anderson couldn’t make it (as she was adventuring in Canada!). I also got to meet Tom Palmer for the first time, which was brilliant.

It was a pleasure spending the morning in a local school and getting to meet lots of the keen readers involved in the process. An awards scheme like this is all about the readers – we just come along at the end and steal the glory! The teaching staff and all the pupils had put huge amounts of work into it and had obviously had fun. The awards ceremony itself was wonderful entertainment. A choir sang (thankfully not including the authors), awards were given out to the outstanding readers contributions and there was a quiz too! Although my book didn’t win (and you can see by the photo that I wasn’t upset by that!), I think the children chose very well as Tom’s Armistice Runner is an amazing book and a worthy winner.

Hugest of thanks to everyone involved, especially to Dan Mount, who came up with the idea and organised the event. Good luck with next year!