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Library News and Events

Miss McAtamney is very keen to hear what you've all been reading over the summer! Junior Book Club is held on Thursdays during lunch in the library. First year pupils and any new pupils are most welcome. This a fantastic way of making friends and settling into school life.

Book Club pupils were extremely excited to recently meet virtually with children’s author Elle McNicholl. Elle is a neurodivergent writer and is very open about her own experiences with autism. Her first novel 'A Kind of Spark' was winner of the annual Waterstone Children's Book Prize in 2021. Book Club have just finished reading Elle’s new book 'Like a Charm' and it has been one of the most popular Book Club reads in a long time. The Book Club also enjoyed a Zoom meeting with Oxplore at Oxford University for a Q&A session with the author. The Club are eagerly awaiting Elle’s next novel in the series “Like a Curse” which is due for release in February!

Pupils had a great time at our recent Welcome Event, creating bookmarks, button pin badges, blackout poetry and ink drawings using recycled materials. This ties in well with our recycling theme for this year's National Poetry Day in October.

The Library will be hosting origami workshops and other upcycling craft events over the coming weeks. We are delighted so many pupils took part in our first workshop and seemed to all have great fun!

Junior Book Club members can take part in a book shadowing scheme run by colleagues and librarians in local schools. Various events such as author visits, workshops and collaboration with other schools take place over a number of weeks. This is usually in the Spring term – date to be confirmed.

Our Book Club was delighted to meet author, Nikki Sheehan at the most recent Oxplore "virtual visit". She discussed her book "Who Framed Klaris Cliff?", and even answered two questions from our Book Club members. Thank you to Oxplore for organising the visit and for sending us a copy of Nikki's book - our pupils all greatly enjoyed it and the live Zoom meeting.

Eight pupils were delighted to receive certificates from Oxford University celebrating another term of great success at the Oxplore Book Club. Each pupil also received a copy of 'Run Rebel' by Manjeet Mann. Last term, the pupils had met with Manjeet at a virtual Oxplore meeting and had read her book 'Crossing' as part of the club. They are all now very excited to be reading another of her books. Well done to the eight pupils on such great reading success.

Well done and thank you to all pupils and staff for making our Autumn Book Fair such a huge success. The library has been awarded almost £500 worth of free books from Scholastic as a result. Also a big congratulations to all who took part in our National Poetry Day Scavenger hunt. The winners were delighted with their book fair vouchers.

Well done to all the winners of our various World Book Day competitions. We had an incredible amount of fun celebrating in the School Library. Jack Martin (Form 1) won our 6-word short story competition with his fabulous entry - "I caught pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis whilst in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch".

Eleanor Murphy and Rose Keenan (both Form 3) won our anagrams quiz. Christian Schilling (Form 1) and Vismithaa Pandiaraj (Form 1) both proved themselves to be a super sleuths by winning our Library Scavenger Hunt. Nathaniel McCracken (Form 3) won our Wondrous Wonka Golden Ticket competition. Evie Drake (Form 1) won the Fictional Characters competition.

Four of our millionaire readers were awarded with book vouchers to spend at our book fair. Well done to Peter Rowan (form 1), Neil McAuley (form 1), Hubert Dabrowski (form 1) and Joshua Gao (form 1).

We are very proud of you all!

The School Library and Art Department have teamed and introduced a new lunchtime activity called 'Imagination Club.' The club meets on Monday lunchtimes in the Library and a different art project is completed each week. All projects are book related in some way and imagination is the core concept of the group. The sky is the limit with how far pupils stretch their imaginations and they are encouraged to think outside the box and unleash their full creativity! To date the club have made book tracking bookmarks to keep track of their reading goals, they have also reimagined and created their own dust covers of famous books. The group have also been making bookworms from air dry clay. There are lots more exciting new projects in the coming months!

We are delighted that Oxplore Book Club at Oxford University have selected two of our pupils for best book review submissions. Rachel Warnock (Form 1) has been awarded for her January book review on 'Like a Charm' by Elle McNicholl. Lorcan McCusker (Form 2) has been awarded for his February book review on 'Nisha's War' by Dan Smith. Both pupils are delighted with their prizes, and we are very proud of them both. Book Club members are currently reading 'A Skinful of Shadows' by Frances Hardinge. We're all very much looking forward to our virtual meeting with the author later this month.

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Our office is open 8:15am - 4:15pm Monday to Friday.