Doon Writes!

Doon Reads now has a sister blog Doon Writes. The purpose of Doon Writes is for pupils to show off their creative writing and to enable other pupils to comment on the work. At present it is only available on Glow, but once it is up and running, with some pupil entries, then we will go public.

My new blog

From the start of Autumn term 2011, I am going to migrate my blog to Doon Library

Carnegie Winners Announced

The winner of the Carnegie Medal 2011 is Patrick Ness for Monsters of Men - a book we didn't rate at all!

The winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal is Graham Barek-Smith for Farther, which was also not liked by our group, but it is a beautiful book.

To see the judges comments click here.

Carnegie Medal Shadowing

Yesterday afternoon we had a small tea party in the Library for the Carnegie Medal judges while we decide which books should make it to the top of your reading barometer. Mrs Bax provided homemade cakes and tea and we went through the shortlist discussing each title one by one. In order of preference we came up with:

1. White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick
2. Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace
   
3. Prisoner of the Inquisition by Theresa Breslin

Click here to see our barometer and read our reviews.

Funny books

As the same time I spotted Don Calame's Top Ten Funny Teen Boy Books.
Again I do have some of them, if you are interested.
A very subversive list.

Unsuitable books for teens

Patrick Ness, author of The knife of never letting go, has produced a list for The Guardian of his Top Ten Unsuitable Books for Teens
Have a look at the list and see what you think.
As they are unsuitable I only have a few in the Library!

Readers' Cup Final

Friday 10th June saw 4 keen pupils travel to Auchinleck Academy with Ms Borthwick and Mrs Bax and their supporters to compete in the East Ayrshire Readers' Cup Final. The team of Halle Fitzsimmons, John Anderson, Katie Burrell and Keiran Madden tried very hard but were let down by their lack of Knowledge in the Battle of the Books round. The winners were St Joseph's Academy with a fantastic 42.5 points out of 50.
The audience had fun answering the questions for little prizes in between rounds.
Better luck next year!

Free books!

Huge long list of free books online at 391 Places for Free books

Reader of the Month

Reader of the Month for May is Rory Parker from S1. He has a fantastic record of 22 passes out of 22 Accelerated Reader quizzes over the last year and he has read 368.000 words.

Well done Rory!

May Book

The staff book for May was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. We all really enjoyed a change from our normal reading fare. The mixture of popular science and social history was fascinating and we felt it followed on very well fron The Help by Kathry Stockett which we had read recently.

Kate Greenaway Medal Storytime

Taylor, Robert and Aaron reading from Ernest.
Marina and Terry-Ann reading Heart in a bottle.
Iain and John reading Jim, a Cautionary Tale.
Kalvin and Brandon reading Me and YOu.
Marina and Terry-Ann reading Heart in a bottle to another group.
Some S2 pupils looked at the Kate Greenaway shortlist and picked 5 titles which they felt were suitable for reading to Primary 1 and 2. After practising their presentations they invited the P1/2 class from Dalmellington Primary School to visit the Library and hear the stories. The pupils came and listened to all the stories very carefully and Ernest was the winner by a clear margin from Jim.
The winning team with Mrs Gormanley and some P1/2s.
The winning team being presented with their prizes by Mrs Gormanley.

Reading Week 2

S1 reading in Maths
S1 caught reading in Maths.
S2 reading in Maths.
May 16th - 20th was our second Reading Week where the whoile school spent 20 minutes first thing in the morning reading quietly. It is very popular with pupils and staff alike.

Carnegie Medal Videos

If you want to see video interviews of the authors on the Shortlist, click on the names below.
Theresa Breslin
Meg Rosoff
Marcus Sedgwick
Geraldine McCaughrean
Patrick Ness
Jason Wallace

The most popular titles so far seem to be White Crow and The Bride's Farewell.

I enjoyed The Bride's Farewell, it was a really good story with lots of things happening during the book.
I had already read The Death-Defying Pepper Roux before the shortlist came out and I loved the way it played around with the truth and how the loose ends tied themselves up nicely in the end, but other people who have read it didn't like it.
I liked Marcus Sedgwick's other books so I was looking forward to White Crow. Gothic supernatural isn't really my thing, so it was still a good read.
Prisoner of the Inquisition is a terrific historical yarn and we made a video of the beginning last year with some of the then S2.

I am about half way through Out of Shadows and really enjoying it so far, and lastly I still have to tackle Monsters of Men. It seems a bit unfair to put the last part of such a fat trilogy on the list!

The Little Stranger

The Little Stranger by Sara Waters was the Staff Book for April. Some people found it a compelling read and some who hadn't had time to finish it due to work pressures wanted to extend it so that they could. It's a gripping supernatural tale set during and after World War 2.

Carnegie Shadowing

The 2011 Carnegie Medal shortlist is out.
Here are the titles.
BRESLIN, THERESA PRISONER OF THE INQUISITION
McCAUGHREAN GERALDINE THE DEATH DEFYING PEPPER ROUX
NESS, PATRICK MONSTERS OF MEN
ROSOFF, MEG THE BRIDE'S FAREWELL
SEDGWICK, MARCUS WHITE CROW
WALLACE, JASON OUT OF SHADOWS

We have two copies of each and extras of a few titles in stock.

Here is a link to our Shadowing page, where you can add reviews and post comments.

Reader of the month for March

Reader of the month for March is Robyn McCluskey in S1. She has been working hard and passed 3 quizzes this month with 100% correct and earned a total of 11 points.

Well done Robyn!

Room

Staff Book Group book for March was Room by Emma Donoghue. This was quite a controversial choice and split the group. Some members were unable to finish the book because of the subject matter and others persevered and loved it. It is written from the point of view of a 5 year old child who is imprisoned in a small room with his mother by "Old Nick". Despite the subject matter it is an uplifting story of the relationship between mother and child.
In the afternoon after the meeting Room came up for discussion in Radio 4's "A Good Read". You can still here the discussion on iPlayer.

For April we are reading The Little Stranger by Sara Waters.

Barry Hutchison

By Guest Bloggers

On Friday the 25th of March a group of children from first year attended a trip to Auchinleck Academy to see the author Barry Hutchison. He was talking to us about some of his books, how he became an author and his childhood.

He told us a few very funny stories from his younger days. One of them was about SQUIRRELS!

Barry said that he is afraid of squirrels, because when he was five or six he was seeing his granny in Aberdeen, he saw a squirrel on the path in the park DEAD..! It was all mashed up with a leg missing and its brain pouring out its eye sockets. So now he hates squirrels!

Another one of his stories was when he was doing falconry, (because he is a bit scared of birds). He had the big glove on and the instructor gave him the bird, and said “throw it hard as you can and it will land on the perch.” So he did and it went flying through the air and kept going …AND GOING … (BY THIS TIME IT WAS WAY PAST THE PERCH)…and going till it hit a tree. It fell and flew back and bit him on the face!

We really enjoyed the trip and we definitely recommend his books to everyone of all ages.

By Kieran Madden Aaron Gilmore and Gareth Kerr


Barry Hutchison signing a book for some of our pupils.

Cathy Forde Visit

The author Cathy Forde came to school and talked to S1 on Tuesday 22nd March. A group of pupils from Auchinleck Academy also came along to the talk.
Cathy talked about where she gets her ideas from and told lots of stories along the way, including one about the scary eyes in the ceiling of the spare room of her old house. She also told the story of a scary ghost walk in Edinburgh, and about her horrible P2 teacher who locked a child in a cupboard and left her there.
Everyone was fascinated by her stories and and asked lots of questions. Afterwards lots of pupils told me they really enjoyed her talk.

S2 Readers' Cup Quiz

S2 Readers' Cup Quiz was held in the Library on Thursday 17th March period 3. the question topics were Lucky dip, Eoin Colfer, Witches & Wizards, Historical Fiction and Books& Films. Unfortunately the questions proved to be rather harder for s2 and the teams didn't score as well as S1.
Again the contest was between Finlas and Raecar with Finlas leading all the way through, until Raecar managed to overtake them in the final round with a very good score of 8 points.
Congratuations to the winning team of Tommy Campbell, Stephanie Carrick, Rachel Murphy and Halle Fitzsimmons, and commiserations to John Anderson, Nicky Fairbairn, Lorelle White and Sandy Napier.

Many thanks to the judges, Heather Dunn, Megan Mccleary, Nathan Gilmore and Paige Collins.

S1 Readers' Cup Quiz

The S1 round of Doon Academy's Readers' Cup Quiz was held in the Assembly Hall, last period on Wednesday 16th March. The categories for the questions were Heroes & Heroines, Jacqueline Wilson, Lucky Dip, Comics and Animal Stories.
After a very hard fought contest between all four teams, Finlas and Raecar edged ahead and the contest ended at the bell in a tie with both teams having a respectable 30.5 points.
The final result was decided with a tiebreaker between Finlas and Raecar the following day. Both teams got 6/10 in the tiebreaker and so it went to sudden death and Finlas just managed to answer the last two questions more quickly so they won.
Congratulations to the winning Finlas team of Alana Murray, Morgan Davis, Shannon Clelland and Keiran Madden. They all received W H Smith vouchers.
Well done to the other teams especially Raecar who were pipped to the post.

A big thank you to the judges, Heather Dunn, Lisa McTaggart, Rosie Coles and Hayley Bone.

Carnegie Medal Shadowing

We will be running a Carnegie Medal Shadowing Group again this year. If you join in you will have a chance to read some really exciting new books and give your opinions on them, plus have some fun along the way.
This is the link to the Carnegie Medal page.
We also have a Doon Academy Shadowing Page.

There are some quizzes and competitions at ReadWriteExcite

World Book Night 2

World Book Night free book giveaway continued..

Lots of pupils came down to the Library during mentoring and chose a copy of one of the three titles we had to give away.
Agent Zigzag was by far the most popular, followed by The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

World Book Day

For World Book Day, we invited P6 and P7 boys from Dalmellington Primary School to join S2 boys in the library to watch Eoin Colfer on BBC Authors Live for World Book Day.

Eoin Colfer was very entertaining and had all the boys in stitches laughing as his stories about his awful little brothers and his sons. He uses their antics in his books especially in the Artemis Fowl series to show how the baddies behave!

World Book Night

We gave away lots of books to the staff at morning break. The most popular title was Agent Zigzag. The others were Case Histories and the Reluctant Fundamentalist.

For more information and to give your opinion on the books go to World Book Night.

Once you have read the book, you can pass it on to someone else. All the books have a Book Crossing number in the back. Book Crossing is a global experiment where people release books "into the wild" and the website allows you to enter the unique number and track where your books ends up - or came from.
Happy Reading!

Digi-Tale

www.digi-tale.co is a new website where you can share your thoughts on books and reading. There is also a story widget which enables you to put yourself or your friends as characters.

Missing People

To complete the missing persons exercise, please go to this link Missing People.

Author visits

S2 pupils who have been enthusiatic participants in Accelerated Reader will be invited to go on the trip to Loudoun Academy to hear the author Gillian Philip talk about her work. The trip is in the morning of 15th March.

We have run a competition for S1 pupils to go to Auchinleck Academy to hear Barry Hutchinson talk about his work on 28th march. They were asked to write up to 200 words on why they wanted to go. We have 20 enthusiatic winners!