BA (Hons) Illustration students from Arts University Bournemouth (AUB) have been creating illustrations for four stories, all winners and runners-up of the ISEB and IAPS Time to Write 2025 creative writing competition.
Time to Write 2025 is a competition organised by ISEB, the Independent Schools Examinations Board, and IAPS, the Independent Association of Prep Schools. This is open to all schools, with four different categories for pupils aged 7–16. This year, writers were asked to produce stories based on the prompt ‘light’.
The competition was judged in two parts, completed via the RM Compare online platform. This allowed a pool of judges, including students from AUB's BA (Hons) Creative Writing course, to take part in the shortlisting process.
The final top 10 in each category reviewed by a panel of judges in person at St Swithun’s School in Winchester, including children’s authors and editors, senior university lecturers and English teachers.
The eight runners-up have had their stories brought to life by talented third-year students at AUB, creating illustrated concept pages alongside words, characters and settings transformed into stunning visuals. The four winning stories – Arcade Lights in the Years 5 and 6 category, illustrated by Sezen Munir, as well as Her Current Light, Hero and Mooncussers – are now fully illustrated books.
Hero, written by Harry Spence in the Years 3 and 4 category, was illustrated by Rachel Ng, who comments: “I really loved illustrating the story as I felt the curiosity of the child writer, a nine-year-old boy, and his imaginative world in Hero with strong moral values. My favourite line is ‘the blazing sun shining down upon him like a fire cooking a steak back home.’
“My drawings were created digitally with Adobe Photoshop, with texture brushes. It was challenging to decide which adventurous scene to visualise in the story, while delivering the plot and the most exciting scene. I’m looking forward to creating more imaginative children's books in the future while collaborating with local schools and charities.”
Mooncussers, written by Florence Hayman in the Years 7, 8 and 9 category, was illustrated by Libby Hyde.
“Florence's story was so easy to feel inspired by, to the point that it was difficult to narrow down the moments to illustrate," says Libby. "In the end, I could tell that the moments of bold lighting were important to the narrative, so I chose to illustrate the glow of a bedside candle, the luminous flames from the torch and the shimmer of the sunrise on the beach and the treasures washed up on the shore.
On the creative process behind her work, Libby adds: “I used Procreate and Photoshop to draw these images and add text to the title cover. My practice is usually tailored for visual development for animation, so I always aim to capture a lot of dynamism and movement into my images; in this case, I used a blur effect on the flames of the fire to illustrate the storminess of the night.
“I'm so happy with the result of the images and I hope Florence feels they suit what she had in mind when she wrote her beautiful story!”
Juno Frenzel, who illustrated Her Current Light, written by Kei-Lisa Botes in the Years 10 and 11 category, also comments: “Working with ISEB was a great experience. It was good practice working with a client and art director, but also really nice to know that at the end of the project a kid would get an illustrated book of a story they'd written. Her Current Light is a beautiful story and Kei-Lisa's descriptive writing made it super easy for me to illustrate.”
The complete illustrations for each book can be found on the ISEB website.
