Special Needs Book Prize Awarded
Last updated: 03/10/2006 - 10:38
University of Cambridge education lecturer, Colleen McLaughlin, is amongst the winners of this year's Special Educational Needs Book Awards.
These annual awards were set up in 1992, to encourage the publishing of high quality books for children, and for teachers working in the field.
Other winners included Jack Gantos, for children's book Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a book that successfully provides a positive image of children with special needs. Linda Sigurdsson, the chair of the judges said: "This book is lively, funny, riveting and very readable. It's a wonderful mix of humour, emotions, highs and lows. Joey's story is definitely different; life has not been easy but in the end, things are definitely looking better for him."
The Highly Commended awards went to The Night Garden, by Jenny Marlowe, and Stuck in Neutral, by Terry Trueman. The Academic Book Award (which celebrates the work of authors, and editors, who have made an outstanding contribution to the theory and practice of special education) went to Positive Alternatives to Exclusion, by Paul Cooper, Mary Jane Drummond, Susan Hart, Jane Lovey, and Colleen McLaughlin.
Professor Alan Dyson, chair of the academic judges said: "This is an intensely liberating book, at a time when teachers are increasingly asked to implement centrally devised programmes, this book asks them to act again as sensitive, concerned, committed people.''
A prize of £500 was awarded to each of the winners.
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