BOOK JUDGES

The Royal Society's Aventis Prizes for Science Books, the world's most prestigious awards for popular science writing, has handed the judging of the Junior Prize 2006 winner to UK children.

In an innovative judging process, Dyffryn Taf School in Whitland is one of over 90 groups of young people all over the UK who will be choosing their favourite book this month. Over 1,000 children will be selecting the eventual winner, to be announced at a prestigious ceremony at the Royal Society.

For the fifth year running, the Aventis Prizes has teamed up with Ecsite-uk, the UK network of science centres and museums to run the judging process. Each junior judging panel, including Dyffryn Taf School, will choose a winner from six shortlisted books and submit their vote. The votes are then collated by Ecsite-uk and the book with the most votes will win the prize.

Harry Kind, age 13, chair of Dyffryn Taf Young Engineers Group, said: "The six books on the shortlist are all brilliant and we are really enjoying judging each of them. There are 12 people in our group and everyone will have a chance to air their view, so I expect there will be a lot of lively debates when it comes to choosing our winning entry!"

A diverse range of books, covering topics as broad as teenage mood swings and mind reading using mathematics, are competing for the £10,000 prize money for the winning author.

A panel of five adult judges, chaired by Anne Fine (multi-award winning author and children's laureate from 2001-2003), chose the shortlist of six books.