TSBA 2026 - Announcing the Winners

David Farr’s middle grade adventure thriller The Book of Stolen Dreams and Brianna Bourne’s YA romantasy Meet Me at Midnight won the Trinity Schools Book (TSBA) 2026 at an award ceremony hosted by City of London School on Thursday 19 March.

The Book of Stolen Dreams scooped the TSBA 2026 for Year 7 and 8 reads, while Meet Me At Midnight claimed the Trinity Plus Award for YA fiction.

The winners were chosen by students from 20 participating schools in London and the South-East. The annual award which recognises the best children’s fiction on a given theme, is organised by a committee of school librarians; this year’s theme was ‘Dreams and Nightmares’.

David Rose, Senior Librarian at City of London School, commented: ”CLS has participated in the TSBA since its inception, and the Reading Challenge is now deeply embedded in the culture of the School. The writing in the shortlisted titles is always of the highest quality and it’s fantastic to see our pupils enjoying books by authors who they are unlikely to read otherwise. Our pupils love the thematic connection and their Creative Responses never cease to impress. This year’s theme ‘Dreams and Nightmares’ truly caught the children’s imagination and many were keen to read more from the different series. What better endorsement could there be in the National Year of Reading?”

Over 300 students and staff attended the ceremony in person with additional readers watching the livestream remotely.

Students and authors alike were excited to discover the winners of the TSBA and also the pupil competitions. After the formal ceremony, guests enjoyed meeting the eight shortlisted authors who attended in person and seeing their competition entries in the pop-up TSBA exhibition.

This year’s competition exhibition showcased outstanding pupil talent through book reviews and creative responses to the shortlisted titles. The prize-winning entries included a model windmill, Nineteen Eighty-Four style secret archival documents and a hand-made card game. The audio-visual category included a talking robot, a sophisticated coding game and a TikTok style book trailer. The winning film was a chilling re-enactment of a pivotal scene from YA horror title When Ghosts Call us Home.

David Farr said: “The Book of Stolen Dreams is a big and magical adventure but it is also a deeply personal book for me. It's a great thrill to learn that it has won the Trinity Schools Book Awards for middle-grade fiction. How wonderful that a story inspired by my family can resonate with such a broad and brilliant group of young readers. This is why reading matters. It allows us to share stories, emotions, dreams. If the adventures and heroism of Rachel and Robert Klein have inspired young readers to dream of better worlds, then nothing could make me prouder.”

Brianna Bourne commented: “It’s an absolute dream come true that Meet Me at Midnight was chosen as this year’s Trinity Plus award winner, and it’s doubly special to know that the students themselves made this selection. I’m thrilled that Aria and Strat’s surreal love story resonated with readers, and I’m endlessly grateful to the TSBA librarians and teachers for making this awesome event possible!”

The 2026 shortlists in full:

TSBA shortlist (Year 7+):

• Nicholas Bowling - The Undying of Obedience Wellrest (Chicken House)

• David Farr - The Book of Stolen Dreams (Usborne)

• Yorick Goldewijk - Movies Showing Nowhere (Pushkin Children's Books)

• Donna Barba Higuera - The Last Storyteller (Piccadilly Press)

• J. P. Rose - The Haunting of Tyrese Walker (Andersen)

• Melinda Salisbury – AdelAIDE (Barrington Stoke)

• Neal Shusterman & Andrés Vera Martínez - Courage to Dream: Tales of Hope in the Holocaust (Scholastic)

• Danny Weston - Postcards from Valhalla (Fox & Ink Books)

Trinity Plus shortlist (Year 9+):

• Brianna Bourne - Meet Me At Midnight (Scholastic)

• Katya De Becerra - When Ghosts Call Us Home (Macmillan)

• Megan Freeman - A Better Nightmare (Chicken House)

• Joyce Efia Harmer - How Far We’ve Come (Simon & Schuster)

• Ashley Hickson-Lovence - Wild East (Penguin)

• Shveta Thakrar - The Dream Runners (HarperCollins)

The theme for 2026/7 will be announced in June.