Carnegie Shortlist 2012

It's that time of year again and our Shadowers are fully geared up to shadow the Carnegie award again.  It's a brilliant shortlist this year, featuring some debut novels, as well as some from established favourites.  I was delighted to see A Monster Calls on both the Greenaway and Carnegie list, and am really hoping for a Greenaway win for it!  Of the eight shortlisted novels, I have read only three this year, so I'm looking forward to reading the rest.  I'm starting with Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys which already has me completely hooked only a few pages in.  


Our Shadowers will have a tough job choosing only one of these to win! 

The shortlist is:
 

David Almond MY NAME IS MINA 


Mina writes and writes in an empty notebook, and through her stories, thoughts, lessons and dreams, her journal grows into something extraordinary. A prequel to the author's CILIP Carnegie Medal-winning novel, "Skellig". 


 

Lissa Evans SMALL CHANGE FOR STUART

Ten years old and small for his age, Stuart Horten moves to the dreary town of Beeton, away from all his friends. But before long he is swept up in a quest to find his great-uncle's lost workshop, a place stuffed with trickery, magic – and danger.

Sonya Hartnett THE MIDNIGHT ZOO


Under cover of darkness, two brothers cross a war-ravaged country carrying a secret bundle. One night they stumble across a town that has been reduced to smouldering ruins. Amidst the wreckage is a zoo, filled with animals in need of hope.

 



Ali Lewis EVERYBODY JAM


Danny lives in middle of the outback. His older brother Jonny was killed in an accident last year, but no-one ever talks about it. Meanwhile his sister is pregnant, the rains haven't come and it's time for the annual cattle muster, during which Danny is determined to prove he can fill his brother's shoes.

 


Andy Mulligan TRASH


Three friends, Raphael, Gardo and Rat live on a heap of trash and spend their days sifting through other people's rubbish. One day they find something extraordinary – a deadly secret. From that moment onwards, they are hunted without mercy, and their lives will never be the same again.

Patrick Ness A MONSTER CALLS The monster shows up after midnight. It isn't the one Conor has been expecting; the one from his nightmare; the one he has had nearly every night since his mother started her treatment. But this new monster is ancient, and wild, and it wants something just as dangerous from Conor: the truth. Annabel Pitcher MY SISTER LIVES ON THE MANTELPIECE Ten year old Jamie hasn't cried since his sister's death five years before. Though everyone kept saying they would get better with time; things are now worse than ever. Dad drinks, Mum's gone and Jamie still has a whole heap of unanswered questions.

 


Ruta Septys BETWEEN SHADES OF GREY


One night, fifteen-year old Lina, her mother and brother are hauled from their home by Soviet guards, thrown into cattle cars and sent away. They are being deported to Siberia. An unimaginable and harrowing journey has begun, but Lina refuses to give up hope of seeing home and loved ones again.


Details from the Carnegie website.


As last year, we'll be posting our reviews both on our student blog, and over on the CILIP Shadowing site.  This year I'm hoping for more fan art, fan fic and the launch of a themed cake baking competition!  Fingers crossed for some author involvement too - watch this space... 

Reading Blanket Relay!

As the passion for crafting and making seems to spread (wooo!) some of our knitters are moving on to crochet.  We're working on a Reading Blanket to live on the comfy seats in the library, so that chilly readers can snuggle up underneath.  It'll be built over the course of the next few weeks in a relay, with the aim being to have someone working on it all break and lunch time, every day.

This was our day 1 progress, expertly modeled by top knitter and crocheter, Louise.  

Let's see how long it takes to grow! 

RPS on Pinterest!

Pinterest, an online pin board that can also act as a link library, has really caught our attention!  I've been pinning stuff to my own like a madwoman over the last few weeks, and now we've signed up an account for the library too.  Please follow our boards to see what we're adding to the library, what we're reading, and what we dream of having!

It seems as though Pinterest is going to be an incredibly useful tool for collecting visuals.  This should be particularly useful for Arts students who are collecting inspiration from around the internet.

If you'd like an account, please email me and I'll forward an invite to you as soon as I can.

Tools for the EPQ

Students in sixth form are working on their EPQs (Extended Project Qualification) and have been gathering research from books and the internet in their relevant areas.  Here are a few tools that they've been finding useful:

Evernote
Evernote is a free subscription service which serves as an online notebook.  Information can be categorised and the format encourages the recording of important bibliographic information. Evernote can be used to store notes, images, articles, anything.  Useful extensions are available for most browsers.

Watch this video for a quick tutorial:

Diigo
Diigo is a social bookmarking tool that quickly and easily stores all of your online bookmarks.  Specially useful for sharing your sources, keeping track of what you've been reading, and also getting access to collections of sites that others have already collected.

Zotero
Zotero takes these things a step further and formats your references into your choice of system.  We recommend that all students taking the EPQ at advanced level make use of a standard referencing system, in preparation for similar work at University.  The most commonly used is Harvard, but if students are already sure of where they're going to be studying next, they can chose to use the format of that particular institution.  The Firefox add-on is superb and I'd recommend it for anyone who is doing large scale research.  It not only formats website details for you, but can be used to track down the bibliographic information for books, journals and papers too.  Genius tool.

Reader Feedback Fun

Our active reading groups are always looking for something to get their teeth into and were recently asked to take part on a survey by author Neil Arksey, looking at the opening chapters of his new book, Intelligent Life.  Our students read the sample chapters and gave feedback online.  They were very impressed with the opening and have demanded copies for here, and continued to talk about what they'd read right up past the end of lunch bell (apologies to form tutors!)

Their names were put into a draw to win a signed copy of Intelligent Life, and the winner was Molly in Year 8. Congratulations Molly!  

To take part in the feedback gathering, please read the sample chapters and complete the survey.