And the winner–ahem, winners, are…

For the first time, we have joint winners of the Trinity Schools Book Award! Students in over 20 schools took part in TSBA this year, and their votes have resulted in a tie for Ausländer by Paul Dowswell and Ink by Alice Broadway. Ausländer is a historical novel about a Polish boy in Nazi Germany; whilst Ink is a fantasy set in a world where your life story is tattooed on your skin. Although completely different genres, both books fit this year’s theme of “Secrets and Lies” and captured students’ imagination.

Congratulations also to our other four shortlisted authors, Nicholas Bowling, Frances Hardinge, Muhammad Khan and Kim Slater. We know all of your books were devoured and enjoyed, judging by the wonderful book reviews and truly creative responses they inspired for our student competitions.

We hope that all schools enjoyed taking part, and we hope that you join us again next year!

Secrets and Lies – Trinity School Book Awards 2019!

The TSBA 2019 shortlist has been chosen by the Award’s committee of school librarians, following nominations from the schools which took part last year, and what a great list it is! All chosen around the theme of Secrets and Lies, the books range from historical fiction (Ausländer, The Lie Tree and Witchborn), to the modern day (The Boy Who Lied, Am Thunder) and fantasy (Ink). In all of these books you will find someone who is forced to live a lie, and has to confront it before they can live fully.

We also have a great mix of authors this year, from debut novelists Muhammad Khan and Alice Broadway to the award-winning Paul Dowswell and Frances Hardinge. As always, all of these authors will be invited to the final Ceremony next March, and it will be exciting to see how many of them we will get to meet!

The Trinity Plus list, which are the books we recommend on the same theme for extension and/or for older readers, is also very diverse. Featured authors include Will Hill, whose After the Fire was shortlisted for a Carnegie Medal and won the YA Book Prize 2018 and Tom Pollock who has appeared on Trinity Plus before, as well as six thrilling titles by other accomplished authors.

We hope you enjoy reading this selection of books as much as we did!

 

 

Student winners of TSBA 2018!

This year we had a very strong response to our Best Creative Response category, as well as Best Book Reviews.
If you haven’t had a look at the Creative Responses yet, do have a look now!

Our winners for the TSBA 2018 Creative Responses are:

  1. Our winner is Henry H from Kingston Grammar School for his response to The Arrival – look at his Wildlife Identification Guide
  2. Second is Thomas C from Emanuel School for his response to Welcome to Nowhere – look at his Escape from Syria model
  3. Third is Joe D from Kingston Grammar School for his response to The Arrival – look at his Suitcase Scene

Our winners for the TSBA 2018 Book Reviews of our shortlists are:

  1. Our winner is Josh McG from Royal Grammar School, Guildford, for his review of The Arrival
  2. Second is Freya M from Emanuel School for her review of Welcome to Nowhere
  3. Third is Hilla S from Emanuel School for her review of Welcome to Nowhere

Congratulations to all of these wonderful student winners. Their prizes will be with them via their librarians soon. We are really disappointed not to have been able to award these in person, but the weather was against us this year.

Rising star novelist Sarah Govett wins Trinity Schools Book Award

Up-and-coming YA author Sarah Govett has grabbed the 2018 Trinity Schools Book Award (TSBA) for the first novel in her critically acclaimed trilogy, The Territory. The Award was meant to be handed to her at the Ceremony at Emanuel School, but this had to be cancelled due to the poor weather conditions.

The Territory, the first in Govett’s dystopian series published by Cardiff-based Firefly Press, beat strong contenders including The Weight of Water (Sarah Crossan), Welcome to Nowhere (Elizabeth Laird) and Railhead (Philip Reeve) to claim the top prize.

Govett said: ‘I’m very honoured to have been chosen for the TSBA amongst such brilliant authors and thrilled that my writing resonates with my readers. I wanted to tell the story of The Territory to highlight the environmental and socio-economic challenges that our teens are likely to face in the future, so I’m delighted that the series is gaining recognition.’

Now in its fourth year, the TSBA was launched in 2014 by librarians from 22 independent senior schools in the Trinity group, with an aim to celebrate quality writing in both new and older fiction. The TSBA Committee determines a theme each year and shortlists books nominated by librarians in the Trinity group. The theme for the 2017-18 TSBA was ‘A New World’ and this year 24 schools signed up to take part, including nine from outside the Trinity group.

Tony Jones, Librarian at Emanuel School and TSBA Committee member, said: ‘We congratulate Sarah Govett on the achievement. Given the current political climate it is not surprising that The Territory, a dystopian thriller, clearly resonated with our students who chose it as their winner. Sarah’s vision of a future in which most of the country is under water is a powerful call to arms to tackle climate change. The brutal, unfair education system takes the intensity of exam pressure to terrifying new levels; this is a world where creativity is not valued, where failure of the dreaded TAA at age 15 results in almost-certain death.’

Secondary school children between the ages of 11 and 14 read the nominated books through the autumn and spring terms and cast their votes in February to determine the winner. Student competitions also run alongside the main book awards for the best book reviews and best creative response to a book, which included original animations, paintings, poetry, sculpture and models. The winners were announced on the blog instead of the Ceremony this year. The Ceremony is a celebration of the shortlisted books, as well as the students’ work, attended by the authors and student groups from the participating schools and was sadly missed this year.

Jones continued: ‘With more than 20 schools taking part this year, the TSBA is helping to nurture the next generation of book lovers and offers vital space for young people to celebrate and engage with their reading, beyond the demands of the curriculum.’

Hailed by a Guardian’s children’s book site critic as ‘the 1984 of our time’, The Territory was shortlisted in the Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition 2014 and named one of The Telegraph’s Best YA Novels of 2015. The Territory and the sequel Escape (2016) are both recommended Book Trust reads. The TSBA accolade follows Govett’s win of the Gateshead Book Award in January 2017.

The much-anticipated finale in The Territory trilogy, Truth, is published on 29 March.

 

 

And the winner is … Stewart Foster for The Bubble Boy!

We were very pleased to announce last night that the students who took part in the Trinity Schools Book Award 2017 had voted for The Bubble Boy as their top read!  Stewart Foster was delighted to receive the prize, and said that for him that was ‘better than 10k hits on Twitter’. There were long queues at his signing desk as well, with students eager to talk to him and to get writing tips.

Author Spotlight: Marcus Sedgwick

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Marcus Sedgwick is the author of our shortlisted book ‘She is not invisible’.  He is a prolific author with his books being shortlisted for the prestigious Carnegie medal no less than six times. She is not Invisible has won four other awards so far, and was shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Book Award.  In order to write She is not Invisible Marcus worked closely with students and their librarian in a school for visually impaired students, so that he could understand more closely what it was like to be his heroine, and the students checked his novel for facts before publishing.His latest, just published book Saint Death is a searingly honest story about life in South America, most particularly about the grinding poverty a rich lifestyle imposes on the poor. We hope you enjoy She is not Invisible, and go on to read Marcus’s other books.