Pupils celebrate World Book Day 2025
Pupils in both the Junior and Senior Schools enjoyed taking part in a wide range of activities to mark this year’s World Book Day.
Junior School
Children in the Junior School had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day.
Choosing a book for free from a variety of titles created much excitement and the children had the opportunity to dress as an adjective, which resulted in some very creative outfits!
The pupils’ work was based around the book ‘Barnaby Unboxed’, with the message that you don’t have to be perfect to find your place in the world and be loved.
The girls and boys were encouraged to bring in a photograph or drawing of their favourite characters and were able to create a remarkable display with their work in the reception area!
Senior School
World Book Day may just be one day (Thursday 6th March) but the Library staff in the Senior School were keen to extend the celebrations to run all week!
They started off the week by welcoming author, filmmaker and mountaineer Matt Dickinson to speak to First Year pupils.
Book one in the ‘Everest Files’ trilogy was a recommended title on the Library’s Summer Reading Challenge for incoming First Years last summer, so it was a wonderful opportunity for our readers to find out more about the context of the book.
Matt gave pupils a taste of the challenges involved in trekking to Base Camp and making a summit attempt, as well as those faced by the locals living in the shadow of Everest. He also explained how his great grandfather’s copy of ‘The Ascent Of Everest’ by John Hunt, published in 1953, first seeded his fascination with the mountain that he would later climb, and emphasised how reading adventurously widens horizons and ambitions and brings countless benefits and pleasure.
On the Wednesday, author, animator and illustrator Curtis Jobling gave an interactive talk to Second Years.
The designer of Bob The Builder and Ra Ra The Noisy Lion talked about how hobbies and passions can become rewarding jobs and how his love of reading led him to fulfil his dream of becoming a writer.
The success of his debut novel ‘Rise Of The Wolf’, shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, became a six-book series, the first three of which have just been made into an animated series – ‘Wolf King’ will be showing on Netflix from 20th March. Pupils will be able to enjoy his work in both formats!
In the run up to World Book Day, the Charity Prefects organised a book collection for The Children’s Book Project.
The SGS community were asked to donate children’s and teen’s books that they no longer needed and these will be handed over to the national charity who will distribute them to children and young people who have limited access to books to address book poverty.
The Library and Charity Prefects were delighted with the range of books that were handed in and they enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane seeing the covers of some of their childhood favourites.
On the day itself, pupils were invited to complete the ‘Who’s Coming To Dinner?’ quiz, dress up at the ‘photo booth’ and take part in a workshop where they created bookmarks out of origami paper.
The House Reading Competition was also launched. Shelfie Reads encourages pupils to read as many books as they can between 6th March and 24th April. When the pupils have finished a book, they let the staff know and a book spine will be added to ‘shelves’ on the Library’s windows.
The competition is organised to provide extra inspiration to pupils to find their next read and motivation to keep reading around all of their many activities and commitments.
