HOW THE BORKS BECAME • STEAM Children's Book Prize and Lancashire Science Festival

I'm thrilled to announce that How the Borks Became, An Adventure in Evolution by me and Elys Dolan has won the "Best Early Years Book" category of the inaugural STEAM Children's Book Prize. 

The prize was set up by UCLan Publishing in partnership with the British Interplanetary Society to celebrate children’s books that highlight the importance of science, technology, engineering, arts and maths. The prize is unusual in that both non-fiction and fiction books are eligible for each age category. The combined fact and fiction nature of the prize is a good fit with How the Borks Became as it uses fictional creatures to illustrate the non-fiction principle of evolution.

I went up to the UCLan campus in Preston last Saturday to pick up the award at the Lancashire Science Festival.

My wife Rachel and I decided to make a weekend of it and took the opportunity to visit Antony Gormley's Another Place sculpture on the way. The sculpture consists of one hundred life sized cast iron figures facing towards the sea. The figures have been there since 2007; many are fully submerged at high tide and are covered in barnacles.

I did a couple of How The Borks Became events as part of the science festival and the award was presented to me at the start of my first event by Hazel Holmes of UCLan Publishing.

I was really impressed by how many fantastic events and activities there were to see and do at the Science Festival and how many local families had come along to explore them.

Here's one of the budding young scientists that the Borks and I met.

Local bookseller Tony Higginson of Beyond Books was on hand to sell copies of my books and do a bit of Bork-spotting afterwards. Thanks for letting me use some of your photos on this blog, Tony!

Once the festival was over, Rachel and I popped up the coast to Blackpool and paid a visit to the Tower and its stunning ballroom (as featured in Strictly Come Dancing) before heading home.

I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to festival organiser Stephanie Brayn for making me part of this year's festival, volunteer Charlie for helping out at my events, Hazel Holmes and the rest of the team at UCLan Publishing for organising the wonderful STEAM Prize and the judging panel for choosing How the Borks Became as the prize's very first "Best Early Years Book".

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How the Borks Became An Adventure in Evolution

illustrated by Elys Dolan is published by Otter-Barry Books.

Find out more about this book and
download activity sheets on my website

My How the Borks Became event is suitable for ages 5-9 years.
If you're interested in booking it, you can download an event outline here.