TSBA 2025 Ceremony: ‘You Are Here’

On the evening of Thursday 27 March, the library team and a handful of students really got to grips with the Trinity School Book Awards (TSBA) 2025 theme of ‘You Are Here’ as they attended the TSBA Ceremony at Emanuel School in Battersea.

Mx Peers, Librarian, who has overseen the TSBA competition at Trinity this year, reports back:

The TSBA competition is a reading contest in which students have the opportunity to read a shortlist of books and write reviews or create artwork inspired by them, with chances to win big prizes! Our five winners, James (2T), Aaron (JM), Ibrahim (1B), Daniy (1S) and Faisal (3P) all read at least five books from the shortlist, submitting reviews or responses for each. This gave them the opportunity to leave school a little early to attend the awards ceremony and meet several of the authors of this year’s TSBA books.

The main draw of the event is to witness the award ceremony itself, with a central competition between students at all of the competing schools. We had the largest number of entries from Trinity this year in the history of the competition, with 25 reviews and 16 creative responses submitted, so the energy was high as we entered the event!

The boys were thrilled to be sitting right behind the authors throughout the presentation and were wowed by some of the brilliant Creative Responses submitted by other schools. First Year Daniy said, “I feel impressed, I feel stunned, seeing the lengths that people go to create art for their favourite books.” JBug Aaron agreed, “It’s really exciting, it’s a real privilege to be here. And we get to meet our favourite authors!”

The students particularly enjoyed watching the Q+A, where each author was given very limited time to answer challenging questions about their writing, and was cut off by a bell if they went over time.

We had a chance for a quick snack in the canteen, and then the students were able to see their reviews and creative responses in a big gallery in the Emanuel School Library. They made friends amongst their fellow book-lovers from other schools while soaking in the atmosphere of being surrounded by such talented authors, including Anthony McGowan, SJ Wills, and Malcolm Duffy!

SJ Wills’s book ‘Bite Risk‘, a thriller about a town full of werewolves, won the TSBA category and it was also one of our internal Trinity Books of the Year, as voted for by our students.

The group were very excited to hear that next year’s category contains more spooky reads, and between them decided that one of the librarians may be a book-werewolf themselves…

First Year Ibrahim said, “When I went to the library at the beginning of the year and saw these TSBA books, I thought it would be a lovely chance to sit down and relax in a quiet place to read. I really didn’t know that I’d end up at Emanuel School listening to talks from the authors! It was a fantastic surprise for me, and I’m so glad that I went.”

All in all it was a fantastic trip, and all five students expressed a desire to take part in next year’s TSBA and continue to read for pleasure.