World Book Night 2024
On Thursday, 25th April, several schools from around Ljubljana joined us for a special event to mark World Book Night.
This international celebration of books and reading has been an important part of our English department’s calendar since 2011 and is our way of looking at some important anniversaries in 2024 which are linked to literature and culture.
The presentation itself involved both readings and musical performances. The themes were incredibly broad in nature covering topics as diverse as Ireland at Eurovision, the Braille alphabet, weather forecasts, and Shakespeare’s sonnets.
The event concluded with a special presentation of this year’s winning entries from the Gimnazija Vič Short Story Competition. This competition took place right through the school year and always proves a popular way for young writers to demonstrate their abilities in the area of creative writing in the English language. From the hundreds of stories sent in at both primary and secondary level, around eighty were selected to be published in our annual booklet, with the very best getting special commendations and prizes at this event.
For this competition, young writers had to write an original story in one hundred words or fewer based on a theme selected by our school’s book club mentors. This year, the theme words were taken from the chapter titles of The Railway Children by E. Nesbit. This book was selected as the focus text for the year as 2024 marks one hundred years since the death of this popular author. The judges were incredibly impressed by the standard of work on display at both levels of the competition. Remarks were made about the writers’ skill with the English language and the variety of topics chosen as the basis for their work.
We would like to thank the pupils and mentors from the following primary schools for both joining us at our World Book Night event and for putting their stories forward for our writing competition:
- OŠ dr. Ivana Korošca Borovnica
- OŠ Brezovica pri Ljubljani
- OŠ Dobrova
- OŠ Kolezija
- OŠ Škofljica, PŠ Lavrica
- OŠ Šmartno pod Šmarno goro
Congratulations must go to the young writers who received special commendations for their work. These were judged to be the stories which stood out as having some special qualities, even in such a strong year. At the primary school level, special commendations went to:
- Ksenija Merela
- Taja Mevec
- Liza Lampič
- Terezija Avšič
- Arne Petek
- Dora Lukan
- Nika Jelen
- Matjaž Jordan
- Iza Marn
- Ela Tarabič
- Ben Tonge
At the secondary school level, special commendations went to:
- Jan Rac
- Mina-Kora Moritoki Škof
- Anej Košorok
- Kaja Rudolf
- Zala Tomažin
- Kim Dominko Slak
- Lara Gerbič
- Maja Mivšek
- Anteja Puš
- Ela Podlesek
- Sara Pirnat
We must also thank all those who performed at the World Book Night event and who made it such a memorable occasion. The final thanks must go to the Gimnazija Vič Book Club mentors, Blanka Klobučar and Tim Gallagher, who both coordinated everything linked to the writing competition through the year and worked with our students to organise the event for World Book Night. We all look forward to many more such projects and events in the future.