Government cut funding for Booktrust

Today the news was announced that the Government are cutting the 100% of the funding for Booktrust, the organisation who run the Booked Up programme, which has been giving away a free book to all Year 7 students in the country.

When the sample set of books arrives each year and go on display, they're instantly a hit with our students; not just the Year 7s who will get them, but the upper years as well, who all want to borrow them straight away and are annoyed when we tell them they have to stay on display for longer. Then the order forms go out with the leaflets, and the excitement and buzz this creates is wonderful.  Suddenly a whole year group is talking about books, which ones they'll get, organising in groups of friends to get the whole collection between them.  And these aren't just throw away titles.  This year our three most popular titles were Invisible City by M.G. Harris, the first book of the Joshua Files, Fever Crumb by Philip Pullman, which you'll remember was nominated for the Carnegie medal this year, and Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur.  These aren't obscure titles from obscure authors, these are exactly the books that our students wanted to read.  The range is always superb, offering non-fiction, poetry, and picture books for those with serious literacy difficulties too.  There really is something for everyone, not even our most reluctant readers could avoid being enthusiastic about choosing their title.

From the day the order forms were collected in, the library was besieged by Year 7 students asking when their books were arriving.  And when they found out they weren't there yet, we were able to tell them about other titles that they might enjoy, based on their choice, and our loan figures took an immediate jump.  Then they were there, in big purple boxes, complete with stickers and bookmarks.  I didn't get to hand them out.  As soon as the students saw the boxes they begged to be allowed to take them to registration for distribution, and for a whole day, every single Year 7 student in the school walked around the campus with a book in their hand or in their pocket.  No one put them in their bags.

What the Government have failed to grasp is that a large proportion of these students do not own books.  Their parents don't own books.  For many of these students, reading and literacy are not valued at home.  These aren't the students whose parents will take them to the library.  Few of them will visit the school library outside of lessons because it just isn't part of their culture to do that.  But now they have a book.  And it's not one that they're being forced to read, it's one that they chose, and it's theirs to keep.  No overdue reminders, nobody waiting to take it back.  It's a gift.  When I handed them out to my form, a Year 7 group that contains a couple of students with serious literacy difficulties, one boy took his in both hands.

"You mean I get to keep it?" he said.

"Yes, it's yours.  A present."

"Wow.  No one's ever given me a book before."

Our school is not in a low income area.  Our proportion of students on free school meals is ridiculously low, average incomes are huge and there are still students, even here, who live in a world where they have never been given a book.  I hate to think what it's like in more disadvantaged areas.

Let's get the figures straight.  The schemes cost the Government £13m.  Quite a lot of money.  But this is used as a basis to raise sponsorship of over £56m.  So what the Government is doing is waving goodbye to over £43m of support for literacy that doesn't even come out of its own pocket.  And they decided to announce this just as the Christmas holidays began.  Well, Merry Christmas to you too, you [insert insults here].

Local councils are cutting library budgets.  Staff hours in our area have been cut by 40% and there are closures happening right across the country.  School budgets are being cut, and school libraries will be on the line as Headteachers are forced to make difficult decisions.  So at a time like this, when a fundamental aspect of every child's education, reading, is under threat, the Government cuts funding for schemes that we know make a difference.  I don't understand what they're aiming for.  An illiterate public?  An absolute division of the haves and the have nots?  And yet today they announce a consultation on tackling child poverty.  It's been widely accepted that the fastest, most effective and most sustainable way of reducing child poverty is through education, so what on earth are they trying to do?

 

Exciting Times

In January, our school will be transforming into a Trust School, with close links to neighbouring establishments and the University of Hertfordshire. We recently attended a meeting with them about the possibilities of allowing our students and staff access to their well stocked LRCs, and to our delight, they’re in complete agreement about going forward with this. This means that when it’s all set up (hopefully well before the next academic year), we’ll have access to all of their e-resources, journal and database subscriptions, with access to the LRCs for all of our students on a reference basis, and hopefully interlibrary loans, if we can arrange the logistics. What’s so wonderful about this is that this means access to advanced resources that we could never dream of affording. Our Information Literacy course for sixth form can be expanded to include an induction to the University LRCs, so those who go on to study at University will have a huge head start. For more information about the University’s LRCs, please follow this link.

There is also the possibility that the library will start to stock Kindles from next Easter. There’s a lot to look into in terms of licensing, but keep your fingers crossed! At the very least, they’ll be stocked with the freely available classics, and we can look at buying ebooks for requested titles.

And of course, most importantly, it’s nearly Christmas! The library is looking gorgeous, decked out in fairy lights and strewn with snowflakes, so a big thank you to all who have made decorations. Also thank you to the IT support folks who borked Eclipse for a day so that Miss A had to spend a day cutting out paper and sticking it everywhere. Aces.

Snow Joke

We've got just enough here in Herts to make driving interesting, walking around campus treacherous, and roofs pretty. Not enough for a snow day. Clearly our students have not been performing their snow dances adequately. This will have to be remedied.

Victory and Celebrations!

Victory and Celebrations!

Yesterday, twenty of our students crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line and watched their percentage bar change from green to the winning purple.

 

Massive congratulations go those who made it to the massive 50,000 word mark:

 

Nick

Rachel

Kirsty

Abi

Megan

Sophie

Oscar

Lucy

Rachel

Will

Nathan

Jenna

 

And a big well done to those who chose slightly lower word counts on the Young Writers’ Program:

 

Ben

Alex

Lucy

Matt

Pippa

Sophie

Islay

Delphine

 

I’m hoping that most of them will continue writing and finish their stories, but those who finished early have already discovered how much harder it with without the impetus of NaNoWriMo.  But all are planning to send their work away to have a single copy printed and bound by one of the site sponsors so that they can wave their volumes around triumphantly.  We’re been really lucky with the support that we’ve had from staff this year; although none of the teaching staff were able to join us writing, all our novelists were excused from lessons yesterday so that they could spend the day tapping away.  Special thanks go to those who teach Year 11, as they have mocks starting today (good luck Abi and Rachel!).

This morning, all of the 'Warning! Novelling in Progress!' signs came down and the library feels a little empty.  Time to fill it with fairylights I think...

The Finish Line is in Sight

It's the 28th November, two days of NaNoWriMo remaining. Three of our students have crossed the 50,000 word mark, so huge congratulations to Nick, Rachel and Kirsty. What's really impressed me about these three is the way that they started out at a normal pace and then just shot a head as they got more and more involved in their stories. Made me feel very proud and slightly teary!



We have an occasional day on Monday, so there's extra writing time for everyone who is still going, and then most of our Wrimos have been signed out of lessons on Tuesday (thank you, lovely and understanding teachers) so they'll be arriving in the morning armed with snacks and Thermos flasks full of tea. Keep writing everyone!

Passing the Halfway Point

NaNoWriMo continues to rattle along, with some students so frighteningly far ahead that I wonder if they're sleeping or eating.  Others have had to give into the pressures and either drop out (with a promise to try again next year from nearly every single one of them) or adjust their word counts to a more appropriate number, a luxury only afforded to those on the Young Writers' Program.  We celebrated the half way point on Monday, and recalculated possible targets, doubling the number of words already written and adding a couple of thousand to make sure that it's still a challenge.  This has helped many of those who were feeling disheartened to pick up their stories again with renewed energy.  We've also been having great fun at our Plot Clinics, deciding on horrible things to do to our characters if they were starting to bore us.  To Pippa's characters I can only apologise.  It was my idea to have you fall off the mountain.

Students in the KS3 Creative Writing group, led by Holly and Megan in Year 12, will soon be starting work on their entries for the Red House Young Writers' Yearbook competition.  We'll also be opening up the competition to GCSE English students, who may be able to double up and submit a piece of their GCSE coursework.  Good luck to all who enter!

The news for schools and budgets is horrifically doom and gloomy at the moment, and we're all being asked to make cut-backs wherever humanly (and sometimes inhumanly) possible.  Chances are we'll have less to spend on books next year, but we're already plotting ways to make sure that all our students get access to what they need, be it fiction, websites or good old-fashioned information printed on paper. Signing up to free book schemes and strengthening our connections with other local schools should mean that we can share our resources and make the most of what we've got.  The biggest risk is to our staffing and hours, which could have a huge and instantly detrimental impact on what we can do.  Though I know that there are people within the school who will fight for us, there are also staff (worryingly) who don't see why we need a library like the one we have.  Please keep your fingers crossed for us! With the local public libraries looking at a staffing hours cut of almost 40% and potentially disastrous spending budgets for next year, the role we play in providing our students with essential services is only going to increase in importance.  There will be no alternatives.

Promoting LGBT Literature

My read of last week was Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan.  It’s an absolutely wonderful, touching and at times painfully well observed tale of friendship and young love; I laughed so hard it hurt, and bawled my eyes out at the end. It also features two gay characters, one, Tiny Cooper, who is openly gay (and fabulously so, if he does say so himself) right from the start, and one of the Will Graysons, who comes out in the course of the novel.  And here in lies the conundrum.  This is a book that I know so many of my students would enjoy.  The writing styles and the way that the characters talk to each other is so perfectly tuned to the way that teenagers speak to each other that they’d laugh with recognition at it all the way through.  But if I pass this book to a male student and tell him that he might enjoy it, chances are he’ll jump to the conclusion that I think he’s gay. 

One of my first missions when I took over this job was to increase the number of LGBT books we stocked.  There was one.  A whole one.  And it wasn’t keyworded ‘gay’ on the system, because the previous librarian feared that this would attract the wrong sort of attention.  And the Stonewall guide to LBGT friendly employers was hidden in the office for the same reason.  This counter-intuitive approach to shielding LGBT teens from negative attention was clearly not the way I wanted this library to be.  We now stock many titles, both fiction and non-fiction, that are securely keyworded and clearly available.  So far only one of them has been taken out. 

On the face of it, this is a friendly, open school where we’ve had extensive work done in combating homosexual bullying.  The word ‘gay’ when used as an insult or with negative connotations, is treated as seriously as a term of racial abuse.  And yet there are very, very few openly gay students.  In fact, I think I could only name one and he left last year.  Statistically, we can estimate 1% of students in this school are gay or lesbian,  0.5% are bi, and 3% are unsure*.

So what’s the best way to promote LGBT literature without making it seem exclusive, and without potentially upsetting students? The English department are planning to use an LGBT text as a class reader at some point in the near future, which will open up the subject, and I’m going to be putting together a display of relevant books that will be out for a couple of weeks just to make it clear that we do have books that would appeal to anyone who is curious. 

I would really appreciate hearing how you or anyone else have handled this in your libraries, or if you’re a student here at RPS, what do you think would be a sensible and sensitive way of promoting these books?

*These statistics are based on adult respondents, so I’d expect our ‘unsure’ numbers to be higher.

Congratulations!

Two of our Year 8 Reading Group members, Louise and Ben, have been chosen to be part of the panel involved with the forthcoming Young Guardian Books site. 

Followed a small mention on the main Guardian Books site, both students submitted an email detailing why they'd like to be involved and what they'd want to see from the site.  Really looking forward to seeing what happens with this.

Edit: A third student has now also been accepted! Well done to Elle!

Frantic Scribbling

It's now Day 12 of NaNoWriMo and the target wordcount for the end of the day is 20,000.  We've had eleven days of hard-working, excited students hammering away at the keyboards, churning out words at a rate of knots.  The progress they've made has been absolutely stunning, with many of them putting in extra time at break, lunch and for an hour and a half after school.  It's the after school sessions that have been making the most significant difference, when they all gather in the computer area and we go for twenty and ten minute word sprints.  All you can hear is the clacking of keys, until the alarm goes and the sighs of relief, shrieks of frustration or pent up giggles escape.  They're making good use of our virtual classroom and have been posting discussions on the forum, sharing ideas and working collaboratively when they need to. 

I think it's starting to dawn on them quite how much hard work NaNoWriMo is.  They're starting to realise what writing is when it becomes a job and how very, very easy it is to get up and do something else.  A couple of them have developed the shakes and several are well on their way to yelling out seemingly irrelevant words in class as their novels start to take over their minds.  I feel slightly as though I'm creating an army of vaguely confused mini-mes.  Today, we'll celebrate the end of the second school NaNo week with plenty of snacks and some mammoth word sprints as they all get a head start at the weekend rush.  They're making excellent use of Write or Die.

For the first time ever, I'm ahead!  Having switched my home computer over to mac a while ago, I've been working this time using Scrivener, which is making a frightening amount of difference to how difficult the process of writing can seem.  Annoyingly, the things that it's doing that make it seem so much easier are things that I could quite easily have done myself before: proper outlining, breaking up the text into manageable chunks.  I don't know about you, but when I'm in the midst of trying to make a piece of writing sound the way I think it's supposed to, I utterly lose sight of such things as logic and organisation.  Scrivener puts the logic in front of you, pats you on the head and tells you that everything will be fine. 

They've just released the Windows version in Beta, so I'm trying that out on the office computer.  No hiccoughs yet, and my home file from the mac seems fully compatible.  Hoping that for next year we'll be able to consider buying it for the library machines, to return to our novelists the logic that seems to be fleeing from many of them, screaming.

It begins!

Day 1 of NaNoWriMo. At lunchtime, the novelling hoards should descend and start work on their masterpieces. Then they'll be here after school too, hammering away at their keyboards with me until half four.

Sadly the writing cafe is not to be - it seems that Health and Safety will not allow it. The big no-no, I'm told, is the possibility of students carrying hot drinks across the library. Drinking them is fine, spilling them on books and computers is not a concern, but clearly carrying is a risky business. The irritation here is that we're expecting these students to act as young adults, but we deny them the responsibilities of it and treat them like children. This doesn't make any sense. And no, apparently it is not enough to gather parental consent forms for tea carrying and offer special training. Nor is it relevant that they do this every week in food tech, and take hot dishes out of ovens with their bare hands*. But I'm allowing them to bring snacks and drinks, and, y'know, flasks. Of tea.  *subtle wink*

*This is not entirely true.

NaNo Plans

The NaNoWriMo work books have been printed and are ready for collection!  Big thank you to Su in Reprographics for doing them so quickly.  They're going to be really useful for those students who would like to do a mass of planning and research for their novels over the half term.  I'm getting really excited about this year.

The difficulty that I think we're going to have is that there just aren't enough computers available for all of our writers to write together, and having spoken to the ICT department, I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell of us getting the use of any of the school laptops. The plan then, is to do something new.  For all of November, the library will become the Writers' Cafe from 3.30 until 4.30 every day.  An hour-long writing session, with tea, coffee and biscuits available to all who require sustenance! It'll be self-service, and though we will have to ask for a donation for drinks and things, and we'll be doing this through an honesty box over by the kettle. *  This should give our writers the extra time that they'll need to really get a hold on their wordcounts, while surrounded by others doing the same.  I'll be in the corner with my laptop, clutching my coffee and rocking gently back and forth...

*Which probably won't last the month - does anyone have a spare they could donate to a worthy cause?

Preparations

Two weeks until National Novel Writing Month and we're counting down the days.  Twenty eight students have signed up for NaNoWriMo this year.  Twenty eight!* And about a dozen more said that they couldn't make the meeting but would very much like to write.  This is absolutely wonderful!  We're taking full advantage of the Young Writers' Program this year and have already set up the RPS Library virtual classroom, and we've offered participating students a spiral bound copy of the workbook to keep them going.  All students in uniform are signing up for the YWP, while those in sixth form are overage and will be taking part in the full-on, hardcore that is NaNoWriMo.  The timings are wonderful this year: we'll return from half term on the 1st November, just in time for it all to kick off.  Then we have an occasional day on the 29th before finishing on a Tuesday.

Looking forward to seeing how everyone gets on! If anyone knows of any UK secondary schools taking part, please let me know.

And as for me, yes, I'll be taking part again this year.  Quite how it will fit with work, roller derby and studying I have no idea, but I'll make it work somehow. Some of my research material arrived today and I'm very excited about it all.

 

*Yes, I know we only have twenty one computers and a handful of them fail to work even on a good day. And no, I haven't figured out how we'll all fit in.

Newly Added

New arrivals this week included the following:

The Big Book of Brain Games

Recommended by the Maths department when we had the Happy Puzzle Company in to school last week (which my Year 7s absolutely adored - fantastic work with the dominoes guys), this is one of the most frustrating books in the world.  Ever.  Not being hugely mathsy, I look at these puzzles and can either get them straight away or battle at them for hours without any progress AT ALL.  Anyone studying maths who fancies helping me out with these, please do.  It's already been thrown across the office once.

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot  (Books 6-10)

Yes, Becky in Year 8, I agree, if we're going to have the first five, it's only fair that we get you the rest.  Here you are.

The Black Stallion Adventures, by Walter Farley

As requested by Ryan. I've been promised adventure, violence, and ponies. My kinda stuff. Of course, Ryan sadly can't borrow these until he returns his overdue books (mwahahaha!) so perhaps this will provide an incentive ;)

Halo, by Zizou Corder; Unhooking the Moon, by Gregory Hughes; and The Enemy, by Charlie Higson.

Completing our collection of the Booktrust Teenage Prize shortlist, I'm quite excited about The Enemy, but have failed to read The Dead yet, so it may have to wait.  Zombie fans might have to jump in there before the Book Group get their hands on these...

Scott Pilgrim, volumes 1-3, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Hoping these will popular enough that I can justify getting volumes 4-6 as well... (she says, sneaking 1-3 out of the library.)

We've also added some more graphic novels, including some more Horowitz adaptations for those of you who like the pictures, the new Cathy Cassidy, more copies of Shadow Wave because you all seem to want it at once, and we couldn't resist the new Louise Rennison, even if Mrs Martin and I are already gritting our teeth at the title.

Enjoy!

Jumping in at the Middle

The new term has started and flown by.  We’ve welcomed the new Year 7s, who are already making good use of the library and have become lovely additions to our lunch and breaktime regulars. This year group includes my new form, the first ever librarian form!  Woohoo!  It’s wonderful having a form again and good to see so many of them popping up during their free time.

This term we’re hoping to start loaning out DVDs, most of which were kindly donated by the parents and carers of the last year’s Year 11s and 13s.  It would be great if we could start stocking films as well, so if any of you fancy doing any fundraising…?

Apologies to any students who have been struggling to get their colour prints through the queue: there have been problems with the software that controls the printing, but hopefully that’ll be fixed soon. 

The main mission of the term so far has been running Information Literacy sessions with the new Year 12s.  These hour long sessions have introduced them to the need to evaluate websites when conducting research, and tools to do it.  They’ve also been taught about the importance of referencing and citation.  The most exciting element of these lessons has been introducing them to the idea of a PLN and suggesting ways that they can start their own.  The idea of using Facebook for study groups has come as a minor revelation, and I’ve been assured that there are now active study groups for nearly all of the A level subjects being taught in the school, and they’re just starting to open these up to include friends in different institutions, so hopefully they’ll all quickly be gaining something new from these groups. 

The biggest struggle with all of this has been the battle we face every day with the county internet filter.  Facebook, Twitter, all blocked, which you can understand in schools.  But Tumblr?  Tagxedo? I know that this isn’t a new problem (how the psychology department have managed to teach Freudian theory when every useful website is automatically blocked as pornography, I have no idea) but it’s becoming much more of a barrier to the way that our students learn.  This isn’t just about throwing new fangled things at them, as some of the more traditional teachers in the school seem to think.  It’s about giving them the tools and frameworks to teach themselves, become truly independent learners with a network of their own creation there to support them.

The End is in Sight

After a week of minimal students but maximum paperwork, it’s good to have more of a balance this week as the groups return from Activities Week and settle into the apathetic and vaguely resentful state that characterises the last few weeks of term. The end of year reports have been written and submitted, the new blurb for the currently awful webpage is finished, my most recent campaign has been transferred into a twelve page report (it includes graphs and screen shots of student feedback, all very impressive) and there’s just the policy rewrite and various articles to complete.  Multi-joy! 

One of the other tasks to complete before we break up is a huge display of the Carnegie award trip, with photographs, signatures and information about each of the shortlisted books.  The English department are delighted to get rid of kindly donating a display board so I’ll be spending a happy couple of days playing with glue, scissors and staples.  The photos I’ve collected so far look great, though one unfortunate novelist has been caught out by their cameras and appears either very tired or very drunk in all of them so far.  I’m hoping that a better one will come to light, otherwise there’ll be questions asked… 

Year 13 students are drifting in and out, bringing their leaving forms up to be stamped and signed.  It’s sad to say goodbye to them, particularly my old top set GCSE class who worked their socks off for two years and produced some of the most fabulous work I’ve ever seen from students their age. Several have laughed over the highlights of the course; some of these seemed to revolve around the films they studied in the media unit but a refreshing number also had fond memories of suddenly discovering implied meanings and innuendos in the Lit poetry.  Apparently they’ve forgiven me for making them read Wuthering Heights, and some now confess to loving it.  Score one to me.

Carnegie Day!

Erg, it's taken a week to get this posted, sorry!  Review Days, Activities Week... Things are supposed to wind down for the end of term but it seems that the opposite happens up here.

On Thursday 24^th June, ten very overexcited, hyperactive Reading Ninjas and two members of staff travelled into London to attend the Carnegie Award ceremony.  We’d been expecting a nightmare with the Tube as there was a strike that day, but with a little assertive platform management and some inventive squeezing (our students had clearly been practising playing Sardines) we managed to get everyone on to the same train and made it from Kings Cross to Green Park in time for a gorgeous sunny brunch in the park, without losing anyone. 

[caption id="attachment_64" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Green Park Brunch"][/caption]

Finding BAFTA was another matter!  Clearly the shops along Piccadilly have been employing cunning psychological techniques designed to ensnare the minds of teenagers, as suddenly it was impossible to walk more than ten paces without someone stopping to look at shiny things.  We made it along the road, only to have Will, our official map reader, inform us that we were on the wrong side.  It was at this point that we realised none of us knew what BAFTA looked like, and that if it were even slightly inconspicuous or placed side by side with shiny shops, we’d probably miss it and walk straight on by.  Fortunately, Marcus Sedgwick, who had already met some of my students at an SLS event on Tuesday, appeared behind us at the crossing and kindly showed us the way!  He was a perfect gentleman and put us all at ease, greeting those he knew and asking how they were.

Once inside and clutching CILIP bags and name badges, our students were a little nervous about setting off to accost their favourite authors.  They’d been passing round a printout of their photos* and knew who was who, but took a little encouragement to take their autograph booklets out.  After their first successes, they were soon whizzing around the room in rather alarming manner, taking photos, collecting autographs and having their books signed.  Every couple of minutes a star-struck figure in school uniform would appear in front of me, waving a signature or a digital camera to show me who they’d just met.  

[caption id="attachment_65" align="aligncenter" width="211" caption="Elle's autograph collection"][/caption]

The event was organised really well, we were given a minder who helped us out, told where things were and when the time came for the ceremony, guided the students to their seats near the front.  James Naughtie hosted the presentation, speaking to an enthusiastic audience in comfortable theatre seats.  I hear his voice on the Today programme nearly every morning, and to see him speak in real life was surprisingly strange!

Freya Blackwood won the Kate Greenaway medal for her work on Harry & Hopper and Neil Gaiman won the Carnegie for The Graveyard Book.  I think I heard Tegan mutter “Yes!” from down at the front!  Gaiman’s speech centred on the importance of libraries and the personal significance of the Carnegie medal.  For an audience of people who were predominantly from a library background, this was exactly what we needed to hear, following several weeks of dismal projections of library spending, cuts, and a dismissal of the role of a trained librarian.  There were several members of the audience dabbing at their eyes before he finished speaking. You can watch a video of his acceptance speech here, and Freya Blackwood’s here. 

Drinks and nibbles followed, with the students collecting their remaining signatures while they waited for Neil Gaiman to be released from a round of interviews.  As the time edged on, Miss C and I were increasingly worried that we’d have to leave and head back to Herts before he emerged, but luckily he appeared just in time, only to be swamped by a crowd of excited people.  What struck me about him, indeed what struck me about all of the authors present, was their fantastic generosity in dealing with their readers.  Though it must have been a tense day for all of them, they were without fail kind, receptive and charming with everyone, spending time talking with all of their fans, drawing them pictures, posing for photographs. 

[caption id="attachment_66" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Posing at BAFTA"][/caption]

The highlight of the day was seeing map-reader Will meet his new hero, Patrick Ness.  Will enjoyed the Chaos Walking trilogy as much as I did and spent a long time shyly hiding before he was propelled forward to get his book signed.  His absolute excitement and delight on meeting Ness was only compounded the following day when he saw that he’d said hello to him on his blog.  A screenshot was immediately taken, enlarged, printed and passed around for all to admire. 

I’d like to pass on a huge thank you to all of the short listed authors and illustrators, who were just wonderful, and also to CILIP for inviting us to go.  If we weren’t exempt from entering for the next million** years, I know my lot would already be planning how to win again.  And how to kidnap authors.

[caption id="attachment_67" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="We won!"][/caption]

*Overhearing discussions at the station, I learned that this was part of an elaborate kidnap plan on the part of the students, whereby their favourite authors would be lured into returning to the school with us, then shut in a room with nothing but food, water and a computer (but not one connected to the internet as they might request rescuing). They’d be forced to write new and exciting novels, dedicated to their captors.  I asked them if any of them had been reading Stephen King and they all said no and looked confused.  

**Three.

Images courtesy of Abi and Elle.

On Why Arranging School Trips is a Nightmare*

1. Paperwork

Permissions slips. Risk assessments for walking, trains and tubes, attending an event and being alive. Budget statements. Approval forms. Cover requirements. Medical forms. Insurance. Parental letters.

2. Cover

My accompanying teacher will need cover for two lessons, but we were told we’d have to pay for a cover teacher for a whole day. £180. This would more than double the cost of the trip for the students. Luckily, our teachers are heroes and have rallied round to offer internal cover; massive thanks to Mrs B who has agreed to come in on her day off and help us, and Mrs P who will cover the first ten minutes. Crisis averted.

3. Travel arrangements

Can the train companies tell you how much it will cost to get ten kids and two adults to London? No. National Rail Enquiries went through ten minutes of questions then told me they could only calculate the rail part of the journey, not the additional Tube travel. The booking website took all of our details then told us the group was too large and threw us out. The Group Bookings website told us that it would cost £204, which was insane. They recalculated and estimated £160. Then recalculated again and suggested £64. That’s more like it. Total of two hours spent on the phone.

4. And just when you think it’s all sorted…

…they announce a Tube strike for that day. Hiring a mini-bus and driver (all three of the school ones are already being used for a PE trip) would cost us £300. Looks like we’re going to be taking a little hike across London.

*facepalm*

What gets me is that we have a fantastic finance department who take on a huge portion of the sorting out on our behalf.  I hate to think how staff in schools without this level of support manage. 

*Of course I may have shot myself in the foot rather by planning two trips in one week, but that is beside the point.

Carnegie Reading: The Story So Far...

I’m getting near the end of my Carnegie reading journey, with only one and a half books left to read.  Thought it might be time to share my thoughts on what I’ve read so far. 

The Ask and The Answer

It’s quite hard to explain quite how much I love this book.  The writing is superb, and the voices of the narrating characters so clear and unique.  It’s original, exciting, and very clever.  So why don’t I thnk it’ll win?  I can’t separate my reactions to this book from my reactions to The Knife of Never Letting Go or Monsters of Men.  In my mind they are all integral to each other, the story of Viola and Todd though told through three volumes, is one story and I don’t have any sense of The Ask and the Answer as a stand alone book.  I don’t think this is to its detriment at all – to have a story maintain its momentum so perfectly, to never loose sight of its true core, to continue and carry us with it through so many pages and then not to leave us feeling short changed through its ending is a massive and unusual achievement. 

The Graveyard Book

I really enjoyed this book when I first read it and was happy to re-read it when the shortlist was announced.  The graveyard setting and Bod’s interactions with its inhabitants are absolutely wonderful, and the contrast between the light and freely given love that the graveyard folk offer Bod and the seam of darkness that runs through his life with the presence of the Jacks works so well, almost in a (dare I say it?) Harry Potter way.  There are areas of grey in this novel though, with characters who you might expect to be evil proving to be champions.  The criticism that I’ve heard of this book is also my own; that in many ways it is episodic and this made it (though I love Neil Gaiman dearly) at times easy to put down.  This must be quite a common response though, as I found a chapter lifted entirely from it and published under the guise of a stand alone story in Dark Alchemy, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

Chains

I really enjoyed this historical novel and learned a lot about American history!  Much of the subject matter was very challenging and the sheer powerlessness suffered by those in slavery is never far from a reader’s consciousness.  The tyranny of those who felt that they owned them was sometimes difficult to read about.  Isabel was easy to identify with and her inner strength and love for her sister was both touching and heartbreaking as the events of the novel unfolded.  Her sense of determination was tinged with the apparent futility of her struggle, though the reader is always aware that slavery was in the end abolished, and the hope that she would have a chance at freedom.

Revolver

The sense of intense cold and danger lace through this book like taut, thin wires that could trip and cut if you fell.  Though I have two books to finish, this is my favourite to win.  The apparent simplicity of the main narrative is set against flashbacks to the protagonist’s father’s experiences and the events that set the current situation in motion.  What I really enjoyed was the complex weaving of the types of danger faced by the man character, Sig.  There’s the danger of the situation: the stranger who arrives at the cabin.  There’s the danger of the climate: the intense cold of the winter and the very real possibility of freezing to death. There’s the psychological danger of loss and disintegration, symbolised by the presence of his father’s corpse on the table, and there’s the personal danger, the choice that Sig has to make: the tension between the fascination of an object, the revolver, and the horror of what it can do if used for its sole purpose.  Love it.

Fever Crumb

This was my first foray into Reeve’s writing, and the world of Mortal Engines.  I’m always a little cautious about entering a world that’s already long established, but it wasn’t long before the narrative had me rattling along with full acceptance of Scriven and land ships!  I grew quiclly attached to the characters and know that I’ll return to read about them again, and have added the original Mortal Engines books to my TBR pile.  What I particularly loved about this novel was the humour in the names of things, the way that Reeve played with words was lovely, for example the Orbital Moat Way, and the way that he integrated elements of our everyday technology into this possible future.  A lovely book on which to base discussions about fantasy vs science fiction!

Nation

I must confess that I’m not a Terry Pratchett fan at all.  Though I grew up in a family of Pratites, there’s always been something about his writing that just didn’t agree with me.  Book blogger friends who read Nation swore that I would love it, then students who started it declared that they hated it.  I was all set to smugly plough through it and revel in my inevitable dislike, but alas, I loved it.  I do fear though that it’s a little complex for the majority of its target audience.  The narrative appeals to younger readers, while the style suits older ones.  I have constructed a Venn diagram to illustrate the problem.

[caption id="attachment_56" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Nation enjoyment diagram"][/caption]

 See, I'm a technical wizard.  Ahem.

 I'm three quarters of the way through The Vanishing of Katherina Linden and enjoying it, but have been told I have to wait for the wonderful ending!  Rowan the Strange  has been largely left behind so far, but I'm really looking forward to it.  From what I've read so far, I'd love it if The Ask and the Answer won, I'd be almost equally happy with Revolver.  Though Nation may do well, I doubt it will be the Shadowers' choice.  What do you think?

News of our competition winning were very well received by the Shadowing group!  There were squeals, jumps and quite a lot of 'OMG OMG!'s.  Very gratifying.  Usually to arrange a school trip, we have to give six weeks notice, so I was a little wary when I took the pieces of paper over to the Bursar's office to start trying to make arrangments.  The lovely lovely trips organiser is being an absolute star and helping me to get everything sorted, so we will go to the ball! Phew.  Gold stars and thumbs up to school support staff everywhere (but particularly here).

VICTORY!

We won the Carnegie Shadowing Site competition! We're going to the awards ceremony on the 24th June! Looking through the list of authors on the shortlist makes my knees go wobbly, imagining them all in the same room... The powers of awesome will not be contained in mere walls! Will have to let Miss C (who I'm hoping will be coming along as member of staff #2) know that if I suffer a massive fan-girl attack and fall over, she must take care of the students and go on without me.

Ridiculously pleased and excited! This will make studying very difficult today.

Half Term? Now? Are you sure?

Wow.  I do feel tired enough for it to be half term next week but I hadn't actually thought that it would be.  Where did this half term go?  Carnegie I guess, various staff illnesses, closures, technology fails and any number of other things that have kept us on our toes.

This half term marks an important anniversary though.  I've been back at the school and in the library for a whole year!  This time last year I'd just got the job and was preparing to start the crossover period with our previous librarian, working with her until the summer when the crown* would be passed over to me, a crown which I wear with pride.  I can honestly say that it's been the best working year of my life and I've never been happier in a job than I am here.  The students are great, the staff are largely lovely, and the library is a gorgeous place to be.  Our two library assistants have been patient stars, merrily going along with daft plans and adjusting their own work when I've suddenly decided to put events on.

Sometimes I have to take a step back and realise what this job is.  I get to work with some wonderful people, in a lovely place where everything is focused towards something positive.  Our managers are lovely and happy for us to work relatively unrestricted, we're supported and encouraged to do new things.  There are battles to be fought of course, but they're not ones to hurt your head beyond the end of the day most of the time. I'm being paid to have fun setting up new things, encouraging students to read, talking about books.  Teaching students how to play card games and do a riffle shuffle properly is laughingly called work. So much of it feels like playing half the time.  I'm lucky.

We've done a whole lot over  the year:

• Placed fiction books in every tutor room under the 'Spread the Word' scheme that we stared in September.


• Hosted (and some won!) NaNoWriMo.


• Introduced a system of student librarians, with dozens applying to help out where previously no one wanted to.


• Stocked games for break and lunch times.


• Added hugely to the graphic novels available and altered their status within the school to that of 'proper books'.


• Adjusted proceedures and habits to make the library more accessible and welcoming.


• Hosted Book Week, with school wide events and readings at lunchtimes.


• Made small but significant alterations to the physical space, adding plants, beanbags, new signage.


• Adjusted our stock buying habits to ensure value for money


• Started the Reading Group on creating their own Wiki page to record their reviews and thoughts.  This'll be going school wide at the end of the year.


• Hosted KS4 and 5 Creative Writing Club.


• Started to offer staff INSET on research skills.


• Had a jolly nice time!  The library biscuit intake has gone through the roof, and I've gently encouraged the average consumption of one cup of tea a day to a more comfortable four or five, with the addition of Cecil the coffee machine making caffeine more accessible and tasty.

I know there was more too, but I can't quite remember it all!  Book swaps, competitions, lunchtime events. etc.  And next year there'll be even more.

Big huge thank yous to all of my student librarians and library helpers, and of course to Mrs S and Mrs C, who keep me in check and hide the sweets when I've had too many.  Ladies, you rock.

*I joked about the crown to some of the prospective new head teachers when they were touring round the school.  He didn't even smile.  I'm quite glad he didn't get the job - the one who laughed did.

Technology Fail

The servers hosting our library software, the rather impressive Eclipse.net, are having communication problems today, so we’re slowly issuing everything manually and writing down every user who takes out every book. It’s a rather time consuming process but at least it means we can keep the whole library functioning as usual. It’s also an excellent test of whether I know where each and every subject can be found; so far today I have found cars, dinosaurs, psychology and vast numbers of fiction books. This confirmation that I know the collection so well is very comforting, as I’ve been here less than a year and I’m having to resist feeling slightly smug. Oh, I’m allowed to feel smug? Well, that’s alright then.

The Year 11 students who abandoned us two weeks ago (*sob!*) have been making good use of the library as a study space, and they’re quickly picking up the habit of maintaining peace and quiet and using the whole range of resources available, which will be great practise for them when they’re in sixth form.  Hopefully by mid-September we’ll be chock a block with people studying all the time. A full library is a happy library!

The Carnegie Shadowing scheme is going really well, and we’ve been able to get through an awful lot of reading already. Two of our students are rattling through the books at quite an alarming pace, but their enthusiasm is completely infectious and the reading habit and buzz about books in Year 7 is almost entirely down to their personal marketing techniques! The reservation queue for The Knife of Never Letting Go is getting ridiculous. Our Shadowing Site is looking good, and as you can see, they’re all being superb about posting their reviews, and the early discussions about a possible winner are already getting quite heated. We also made a video of their favourites so far. CILIP have announced a competition for the best use of the Shadowing Site, and we’re hoping hoping hoping that we’ll be in the running, as the prize is a chance to take 12 students to the Carnegie Awards ceremony, which would be amazing...

Busy Busy Busy

Phew!  With the Carnegie shortlist reading well underway, saying goodbye to Year 12 and Year 11 as they go on study leave, preparing to wave farewell to Year 13 next week, it’s all been a bit of a whirlwind!  But I am determined to take a few minutes of quiet and calm to talk about Monsters of Men, part three of Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy.

Any discussion about this book usually begins with ‘ZOMG it’s sooo good, what about that bit where…. ARG! I can’t tell you, you haven’t read it yet!’ and there’s really no way to remedy this situation but to encourage everyone to read it.  As soon as possible.  I was worried when I first snatched it from the hands of the postman first received my copy (several days early – oh yes) that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations, that at some point over the course of the novel it would suddenly drop the tension and explain too much, or get too silly, or loose its confidence in presenting such complex characters.  I’m pleased to say that it didn’t at all.  I’ve never read a conclusion to a series that stayed so true to itself, that did all of its characters such justice or rattled along with such gripping pace.  At the same time, the writing was so stunningly suited, flawlessly absorbed into the narrative in such a way that I really couldn’t appreciate at the time just how good it is; I was too wrapped up and involved with the action to really take stock of just how darned good these books are.  There’s a lot more I’d like to day, but I won’t be able to put it as eloquently as Nymeth over at Things Mean A Lot, so scoot over there and read her review!

Having said goodbye to the upper years, the library seems strangely quiet – tumble weeds are blowing their way across the carpet…  Hopefully the rest of the school will fill in the gaps. I miss them all already!  *sob*

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Noticed anything different in the library this week?  You may have seen the shiny new interface for the catalogue!  Oooooo.....

[caption id="attachment_27" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Eclipse.net Interface, from www.microlib.co.uk"][/caption]

It's lovely to use, much less clunky than the old one, which would take forever to load Searchstar and take forever to even attempt advanced searches.  It's all so much easier now! Clicking on the newspaper opens the news in ebook form, so you can flick through the pages and find out what's going on. 

The one down side of the new interface is the lack of hamster.  Yes folks, Cesario no longer has a home on our front page.  I've emailed the good folks at MLS, but alas, as yet I have no solution.   I shall persevere!

The Carnegie Shadowing group, the Book Ninjas, are doing well.  We'll miss our Monday meeting as it's a bank holiday, but hopefully they'll keep reading.  I'm ending the week by eating a whole packet of foam bananas.  It has to be done, it's for charity you know...

The Carnegie Shortlist 2010

The list has been published, and what a list it is! 

[caption id="attachment_20" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Shortlisted titles"][/caption]

 I'm very glad I don't have to judge this award, as they'll have some very difficult decisions ahead of them!  Though I haven't read all of the books on the list yet, those I have have been utterly wonderful. 

The Graveyard Book 

One of the most lovely, life affirming stories I've ever read, even though most of its characters are dead! This book tells the story of Bod (short for Nobody) who is raised by the inhabitants of a graveyard after his parents are brutally murdered.  Under the watchful eyes of his mysterious guardian, Silas, he grows up with a strange education from several hundred years of history.  But the threat to his life didn't end with his parents' death, and the man who killed them has never stopped looking for him...  

The Ask and The Answer 

This is a book I find difficult to write about without shrieking such 'OMG, nonono YES!  Woooo! OMG!' etc.  Utterly gripping, heart breaking, gut wrenching novel from a writer who had the power to involve you so utterly that it can be impossible to step back and appreciate just how good it is until you've finished, had several cups of tea, and rested for a couple of days.  The pacing of this novel and its prequel, The Knife of Never Letting Go, is stunning, sending the story rattling forward with such momentum that it is nigh on impossible to find a place to pause. 

My concern with TAATA's nomination is that I'm not sure it stands alone.  The members of our Shadowing group who are tackling TAATA have also requested to read TKONLG (which reminds me, I was supposed to bring in my copy for a Year 11 boy - shoot), partly because I've been raving about it, and partly to make sure that they appreciate it fully.  In hindsight, I should have asked at least one of them to go for it without reading the first in the trilogy, to test its stand-aloney-ability.  

If you'd like to follow the progress of our Shadowing group, you can find us here.  Please vote on our poll!  We're going to be entering our group page into a competition at the beginning of June, the prize of which is tickets to the awards' ceremony for all the group, which would be a fine prize indeed!

Staff Shortages Force Closure

Hi folks, I'm afraid we're having to close for half an hour at 3.30 today. Miss A's off to scrutinise the prospective Heads and Mrs C isn't back from far away abroad yet! We'll open back up at 4pm for anyone who still needs it.

Sorry!

The Carnegie Shortlist is coming!

This Friday, the Carnegie shortlist will be announced, and the race will be on to read the nominated books and review them all before the winner is announced on the 24th of June.

The KS3 Reading Group will be taking on the task of shadowing the awards, following a very similar process to the one taken by the judges.  Before the winner is announced, this group will come together as Shadowing judges and announce their own winner, based on their readings and opinions on the shortlisted titles.  They'll be recording their progress on their Wiki page and cross-posting to the Carnegie Shadowing site if you'd like to shadow the Shadowers*.

Last year, the judges and Shadowers disagreed on their final choices.  The Shadowers chose Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go as their favourite, while the judges chose Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child as the final winner. 

We'd love to hear what you think of the process, and whether the judges or the Shadowers should be the final decision makers.  Should a prize like this be awarded by the books' target audience?

If you'd be interested in joining them, please see Miss Adkins in the library as soon as possible! 

*Which I imagine is much like watching the Watchmen.

Disaster has struck!

After many months of faithful service, I am sorry to have to announce the death of a beloved friend: our kettle.  Having worked hard for months, merrily boiling away and helping to make tea for staff and Writing Groups, the kettle marked its demise by gushing water all over the place and making a rather disturbing crackling sound.

This may not seem like a particularly tragic occurence, but pplease, never take for granted the essential nature of tea, particularly for librarians.  Many of us have been treated in specialist clinics for addiction when its got out of hand, and to suddenly be left tea-less is nothing less than a disaster.  Never mind earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes.  Tea deprivation is the worst. Every year, three librarians die from lack of tea.  And yes, we do still have Cecil the coffee machine, but Cecil cannot make tea!

Update: We have been saved. There is now a kettle.  Phew!  *wipes brow*

Blog Welcome

Hi blog readers, welcome to the blog for the RPS Library!  Here you can keep track of what's going on, who's been in and what we're planning for the future.  Stay tuned!