Just before the Christmas holidays Jayne Davidson our school librarian heard we’d been successful in a competition to win signed copies of a new series of Teen Reads published by Badger Learning. The company had responded to feedback in the past and we were quite excited to see these new books and, more importantly, to find out what pupils thought of them. So this week a focus group of Year 7 and 9 pupils met with the publishers in order to take part in some market research.

Pupils had to comment on the content, the genres, the cover and the style of presentation of two new series so the publishers could make further adjustments in capturing the attention of teen readers. The company was also interested in finding out what sort of content pupils would like to see in future books.

The pupils were very thorough and honest in their critique and the company donated extra books for the pupils to comment on. Marian Reid (Year 9) mentioned that she likes books about things she likes doing out of school and Ted Mason (also Year 9) commented that he preferred books that were more realistic and captured the stories of real life heroes. The company spokespeople were immensely impressed with the courtesy that the pupils showed and the maturity in their approach and some pupils were selected by Badger Learning to complete a more detailed scrutiny of books.