A STOURBRIDGE school has been named runner-up in the third annual World Book Day Award announced today (Thursday March 2) on World Book Day.

Greenfield Primary School in Hill Street was chosen as one of three runners-up for the award, each winning £3,000 worth of books for their libraries.

For this year's award - picture book giant Oliver Jeffers and acclaimed fine artist Sam Winston asked schools to create their own ‘world of stories’ inspired by their new children’s book, A Child of Books, published by Walker Books, who have funded the award for 2017.

Children at Greenfield responded to the challenge with a series of literary projects and events to promote reading for pleasure and give pupils the chance to celebrate their favourite stories.

They created a 3D portrait gallery of famous authors and characters from Jacqueline Wilson to Matilda and Harry Potter, invited poets and authors to give talks at their school, and named classes in each year group after famous authors such as J.K Rowling and Michael Morpurgo.

Their entry was selected as a runner-up by a panel of judges comprising Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston, arts editor for The Times Alex O’Connell and World Book Day director Kirsten Grant who said: "Each year I am blown away by the fantastic entries we receive for the World Book Day Award, and this year has been no different.

"World Book Day is all about celebrating books and finding fun ways to encourage children to read for pleasure."

Peter Bravo, headteacher at Greenfield Primary School, said: “At Greenfield we value not only reading but the love of books and the celebration of stories, so it really is an honour to have been awarded second prize for our entry to the World Book Day Award.

"The children and staff team here at Greenfield worked brilliantly together and really enjoyed designing and creating their 3-D portraits.

"Their work was inspired by their reading and the experience of meeting and working with real-life authors and poets, who have visited our school.

"At Greenfield we believe reading for pleasure is essential to children’s development.

"The addition of £3,000 of beautiful new books to our school and class libraries will further develop our children’s pleasure in reading, improve their general knowledge and lead to an even better understanding of other cultures, people and places.”

World Book Day is the biggest annual celebration of reading for children. For more information and to see this year's entries for the World Book Day Award go to www.worldbookday.com.