Thursday, June 23, 2011

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.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

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.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

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!

Friday, June 10, 2011

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!

Monday, June 06, 2011

Free books!

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

Friday, June 03, 2011

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.