Last year at the end of summer term the organisers of the Northern Ireland Book Awards invited our Year 9 and 10 bookclub to repeat the presentation we had previously done at their Finale Event. This time it was to be for the delegates at the Library Conference in the Hilton Hotel, Belfast. It was the first time in many years that librarians from all over the UK had come to Northern Ireland for the Annual Library Conference and we took it as a huge compliment that our school was the only one asked to perform.

In front of an audience of librarians from school libraries all around the UK, we did a scene from one of the nominated titles “Twelve Minutes to Midnight” by Christopher Edge.  It tells the story of Penelope Tredwell, the teenage owner of  “The Penny Dreadful” a bestselling magazine full of stories of mystery and the macabre. (We have copies in the library if anyone would like to find out how it ends- Mrs Cullen) Our scene depicted Penelope’s visit to the local asylum when she is asked to investigate why the patients are suddenly arising ng from their beds each night at exactly twelve minutes to midnight and madly scratching/ writing strange messages over anything they can find.

We had great fun performing and afterwards were rewarded with lots of “freebies” -books, pens, chicken wings (!) sweets, tea , keyrings, bookmarks, posters, and post-its. The audience were very appreciative – many remarked on how they particularly liked our use of  the music track “The Omen” from the Prodigy and the very first speaker, Stephen Abrams, tweeted afterwards how good it was to have a local school participate as it reminded all the librarians there of  what their job is all about.

Cast :  Abishek Cherukara, Ben Haighton, Greta Kelly, Gerard Mac Allister, Shane Mc Brien, Rachel Mc Evoy, Nandhu Ponsailapathy, Noah Shively-Blinn, Aine Wills, Medb Wills