TSBA Ceremony 2025
Just before Easter we were delighted to host the eleventh Trinity School Book Award (TSBA) which attracted 200 pupils from fifteen schools and a large online audience from a further ten schools. Over forty Emanuel pupils, those who had entered our internal competitions, also attended this exciting event which had the Hampden Hall buzzing with book lovers.
Our special guests were six of the authors who had books nominated on the TSBA and TSBA+ lists, with many of the selected titles being incredibly popular with our readers. Our own library had twelve copies of a few of the books and in the lead up to the ceremony every copy was constantly on loan. Our online review system has also been bombarded with five-star reviews.
Our VIP authors on the night were:
Sarah Daniels – ‘Stranded’ (TSBA+)
Malcolm Duffy – ‘Seven Million Sunflowers’ (TSBA+) WINNER
Candy Gourlay – ‘Wild Song’ (TSBA)
Anthony McGowan – ‘Dogs of the Deadlands’ (TSBA)
Tess James-Mackey – ‘You Wouldn’t Catch Me Dead’ (TSBA+)
SJ Wills – ‘Bite Risk’ (TSBA) WINNER
Oliver (Year 11) opened the ceremony with a thoughtful reminiscence of his time competing in the TSBA when he was in Year 7 and 8, also introducing a lovely film from OE actress Sadie Soverall who nostalgically recalled her win in the 2015 inaugural TSBA event and the opportunity to meet Michael Morpurgo and the late Judith Kerr. SJ Wills (‘Bite Risk’) and Malcolm Duffy (‘Seven Million Sunflowers’) were delighted to pick up the author awards and Livia (Year 7) was equally thrilled to win a prize for her review of ‘Leila and the Blue Fox’.
Another highlight of the event was the fast-moving Q&A with the authors, in which our librarian Ms Wakeford asked our six authors a series of three questions, which they only had a limited time to answer. The audience loved the fact that we used a bell as a timer to silence the speaker if they went over their allotted time.
The standard of entries into the Creative Response competition was incredibly high and the visiting authors were blown away by the quality of much of the work. The winning entry was a boardgame based on ‘Bite Risk’ and SJ Wills was overwhelmed to be gifted the game on the night by the winning team from Reeds Grammar School! Another lovely moment was author Candy Gorlay giving a pupil a huge hug for her amazing full-size costume design inspired by the traditional tribal dress in ‘Wild Song’ which is set in the Philippines.
All the creative work looked fantastic in the library and the authors thoroughly enjoyed their time meeting pupils, signing programmes and books. Anthony McGowan (‘Dogs of the Deadlands’) was hugely popular and had a massive scrum of pupils around his desk and continued to sign books long after our official finishing time, kindly spending a moment to chat with as many pupils as possible.
Next year the TSBA heads to City of London School (boys), with the theme being ‘Dreams and Nightmares’. We hope to release the shortlisted titles (which will be our ‘8 Book Challenge’ for next year) in June so pupils can start reading them over the summer holidays.
-Mr Jones, Senior Librarian
