BiblioBuzz 2025

On Friday 14^th March, our Year 7 Book Club had the exciting opportunity to attend Biblio-Buzz, the Alexandra Palace Children’s Book Award. Every year, this event brings together young readers from local schools to celebrate reading and connect with authors. Throughout this school term, HWS’s Year 7 Book Club has engaged enthusiastically with this year’s shortlisted books, sparking lively conversations about them during our meetings; you could tell the stories were really close to their hearts.

We walked to the venue and were assigned fantastic seats near the front – giving us the perfect view of the stage, which would soon be populated with writers. While we waited for the event to start, we all marveled at the theatre’s Victorian charm, as it was bathed in a purple glow from the show lights. Everyone was buzzing with excitement – our pupils soaked up the book party atmosphere by singing along to the songs playing on the speakers, or devotedly reading the books they brought along. The event kicked off with a fun welcome by the six shortlisted authors and the host. After that, it was time for a workshop with author Lucy Strange, who focused on spooky stories set on islands and the importance of connecting with others. Lucy also encouraged us to build our own stories using pictures and our book club group participated enthusiastically to the challenge. Thanks to her book The Island at the End of the Night, Lucy Strange was voted the winner by school libraries at the Award Ceremony – in fact, she got the majority of votes from our HWS book club as well.

Lunchtime arrived, and it was mostly spent chatting about the event and the books, hanging out at the booksellers’ stalls and queuing to get books signed by the authors. The afternoon was filled with even more excitement, culminating in the award ceremony and a stunning performance by very special guest John Agard, whose spoken poetry act confirmed to us how witty and clever his renowned works are. We all appreciated the presence of a BSL interpreter which made the event feel even more inclusive. As the event wrapped up, there was still time for more book signings, making it an inspiring and fun-filled experience, which definitely refuelled up our love for reading!

Alessandra Bortolato, LRC Manager HWS.