World Book Night 2025
On Thursday, 24th April, several schools from around Ljubljana joined together for a special event to mark World Book Night 2025.
This international celebration of books and reading has been an important part of our English department’s calendar for well over a decade now and acts as a wonderful opportunity to mark different anniversaries in the literary world while also allowing students to broaden their horizons when it comes to the world of books.
For 2025, there was a typically diverse range of readings and performances. These included references to the Eurovision Song Contest, The Carnival of the Animals, Tove Jansson and the Moomins, Carol Ann Duffy, Roald Dahl, Countee Cullen, and quite a few more.
The event included the chance to celebrate the winners of our school’s annual micro-story competition which had been running in schools around Ljubljana since the beginning of the school year.
For 2025, Gerald Durrell’s “My Family and other Animals” was chosen as the focus text for this project. This meant that words from the chapter titles were used as the general writing themes for the competition while teachers were also able to use the book as a reference in other areas of study such as social history and natural sciences. It was selected as 2025 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the writer’s birth.
From the hundreds of short stories, which had to follow the themes set out and which could be no longer than one hundred words in length, a shortlist was created and all these were put together in a special publication handed out at the event. From that shortlist, our judges selected the pieces to receive special commendations due to the stories standing out in ways linked to the use of language, the originality of ideas, and the general writing skills.
At the primary school level, special commendations were awarded to:
- Klara Zver
- Gal Novak
- Monika Jagoda Konda Požek
- Julija Bajec
- Lea Marn
- Ema Mioč
- Nina Dular
- Marina Lisac
- Ajda Dernovšek
- Tara Lazarević
At the secondary school level, special commendations were awarded to:
- Julija Gorišek
- Filip Bračić
- Izak Roderik Štemberger
- Ondina Puš
- Ela Hržič
- Katarina Adam
- Lara Gerbič
- Žiga Kovačič
- Katja Dobrišek
- Ela Podlesek
Such a project requires a great deal of hard work and enthusiasm from those at our partner schools around Ljubljana. We would like to thank the teachers and pupils from these schools for their dedication to the project:
- OŠ dr. Ivana Korošca Borovnica
- OŠ Brezovica pri Ljubljani
- OŠ Dobrova
- OŠ Kolezija
- OŠ Škofljica, PŠ Lavrica
- OŠ Šmartno pod Šmarno goro
Finally, congratulations must go to the students who put together such a fantastic range of performances and readings which made the event such a success. Special thanks must go to our school’s Book Club mentors from the English department, Blanka Klobučar and Tim Gallagher, who organised the event and who were also the coordinators for the creative writing competition.