The Coventry Schools Library Service have now finished their two stage competition which was launched in January of this year to celebrate their 75 years of service to Coventry schools.

The first stage of the competition was to ask people throughout Coventry and local schools, either as a group or an individual basis to nominate their top 5 favourite children’s books from the past 75 years. The results from the votes were tallied and over 335 different books has been nominated.

Coventry’s top 5 books are:

• Matilda, Roald Dahl – 1988

• Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl – 1964

• The Lion, The Witch & The wardrobe, CS Lewis – 1950

• Dr Doolittle, Hugh Lofting – 1923

• The Twits, Roald Dahl – 1980

The second stage of the competition was to ask schools in Coventry to predict the winning top 5. The winning school was Stivichall Primary who came closest with 4 out of 5 and won £200 worth of books for their schools library. The individuals whose votes were the closest to the top 5 were all entered into a draw and the lucky winner of a £20 book token was Ian Roberts, aged 10 from Stanton Bridge Primary School. Representatives from Stivichall Primary School and Ian Roberts were presented with their prizes at the Schools Library Service 75^th birthday party on Wednesday 24 March.

Councillor Gillian Darby, Chair of the Arts and Culture Policy Team said:

"In the National Year of Reading, it was encouraging to see so much interest in books and reading as shown by the number of entries to this competition. The Schools Library Service has done much to encourage this interest by providing quality books to support school libraries over the past 75 years."