The Game of Thrones conundrum

I love the Song of Ice and Fire series.  I will quite happily sit and talk for many hours about the awesomeness of Tyrion, whether Sansa is a sympathetic character or not (*cough* no *cough* ) and the fates of the various Starks, the Hands of Kings and who Coldhands is.  The series is engrossing, well written, and has some fantastic ties to discussions about morality and power that have fueled some amazing debates around the reading table.  Word of their greatness is spreading, and now some of our higher level readers in Year 9 (aged 13/14) have asked to reserve them.

My gut says yes.  But there's a little voice in my head that says 'hang on, aren't these books a little bit, well, rapey?'  The violence presented in these novels holds no problems for me in terms of loans.  They're massive bricks of books, and they're only being picked up by strong readers who are aware of their own limits in terms of violence tolerance and will return a book if they're uncomfortable with it.  And yes, I know it's a cheap analogy, but the violence that these students can both see and more importantly meter out in computer games matches or exceeds what's in these books*.  But there's an awful lot of rape.  It's not explicit, in fact it's so sparsely written when it happens that there's safely no chance of any charges of it being pornographic.  But it's always there and frequently used as a threat against female characters.

The thing that stops me deciding an instant no to granting these advanced but younger students access to the books though, is that within the context of the story, this rape is entirely not only realistic, but in a horrible sense, true.  In times of war, particularly the sorts of wars that aren't fought by Generals pushing buttons and firing missiles, rape is a weapon.  It's happening today, in The Democratic Republic of Congo.  It's probably happening in other places too.  At various times in our history, it would have happened here too.  The vulnerability of women (and men, please don't think that I dismiss the sexual violence against men too, but in the context of GoT, so far at least, the threat has been focused on women) in times of war is an important subject and not one that should be ignored.  It's the normalising of rape within the story that worries me for younger readers, but I do feel that with a discussion about it first, and the inevitable follow up to reading these books (our advanced readers always sit at lunchtime and discuss what they've read and I know that these books would be discussed to death, as they are already with our older readers) that it would be an important issue to acknowledge, but not one that should prevent them reading them.  

So, what do you think?  GoT for advanced Year 9 readers?  If anyone could point me in the direction of research or guidance in this area I'd be grateful.


*What isn't matched is the intention of violence and cruelty, which is something that George R.R. Martin does really well.  We know that there are battles, we know that it's kill or be killed and that people will get their arms, legs and noses hacked off. But the nasty, little bits of violence that really get to you.  (Theon's fate. Whatever is happening in the deepest dungeons under King's Landing...) and those are the bits that I approve of the most.  Because they do disgust you.  Because they are scary, unglamorised, without honour, and hold present a much truer picture of violence than knights in shining armour fighting for their liege lords.

NaNoWriMo 2011

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur* but we're now seven days into November, and we all know what that means.  NaNoWriMo is GO!

This year we have a staggering 59 students signed up to take part with us, and some added extras too: the younger brothers and sisters of some of our students who are still in Primary school but who have signed up and are working with us in our virtual classroom and visiting the library for the after-school write-ins.  The down side f numbers like this is that we only have 21 computers in the library, and they're heavily over used even when there aren't nearly 60 novelists trying to bash out 50,000 words before the end of the month.  We've been saved though, by Mrs Wilkins in ICT who has allowed our writers to use one of the ICT rooms most lunchtimes, and by Ms Twomey in MFL who has offered us use of their IT room too.

Additional salvation has come in the form of a very generous investment from our dedicated PTA, who have funded the purchase of ten new netbooks for use in the library.  This is a move that we couldn't have hoped to make with our current budget and makes a very significant difference to what we can offer our students. Once lending agreements have been drawn up and signed, there will also be the opportunity for these machines to be loaned out to students who don't have computers of their own, which will be a huge help to them during coursework crunch times.

So far our novelist have written a staggering 264,314 words, and we're beating the US school who challenged us to a Word War by 19% to 17%, which may seem like a small margin, but their target wordcounts are significantly lower than ours!  The level of ambition shown by our students is truly remarkable.  Almost as remarkable as the sheer numbers of snacks they can get through...



*This is not an exaggeration, have been ill and everything has been distinctly fuzzy...

They're Heeerrreeee

Our new Kindles have arrived! I spent much of yesterday unboxing them and playing around setting them up for use. These are the new models, priced at £89, significantly cheaper than the old style keyboard Kindle we trialed over the summer.

The first thing that struck me was the size.  With teeny tiny hands, I can hold the old Kindle in one hand, but not without stretching my fingers uncomfortably wide.

Plastic buttons a-plenty

Whereas with the new Kindle, it's narrow enough that my fingers wrap around it in a secure hold and I can even turn the pages without it being too uncomfortable.  This is excellent news.  As a librariany type this enables me to drink gin coffee, play with cats and organise things while reading.

Hmmm...

What's interesting about this is that since there is less space taken up with the sides of the device, the screen looks larger.  It isn't (I checked, with a ruler) but still. All the things that bugged me about our original Kindle have gone.  The horrible feel of the black textured plastic has been replaced with a sleek metallic finish, which also give you sense that it can stand up to knocks and bumps more securely.  The grippy effect plastic on the back has been made more tactile, though I worry that this is a surface that fiddling students will be able to scrape off with a fingernail.  Feels lovely though and removed the fear that the device is going to slip from your fingers. 

The hideous clicky keyboard buttons have gone! Using the cursor and the keyboard button is a little fiddly, but not bad.  My one criticism of this is that the keyboard layout is now alphabetical.  Why Amazon, why?  Querty works for a reason, and is all the more important when you're using a cursor to move from letter to letter.  It's worth is, for the lack of crap buttons, but it wouldn't have taken a massive leap of logic to at least give an option of keyboard layouts in the settings. 

And the sceensavers are nicer!

The page turn is faster, removing the need to blink slowly every time you click.  And the page turn buttons themselves have retained the pleasant directionality that the old model had, which minimises accidental page turns, but has lost the cheap, wobbly feel those buttons had.  It's now a secure, affirmative action which is far preferable.  So, what's missing?  The battery life is shorter, but still a month, which is fantastic.  There's less storage space, but still plenty and the reading aloud function has been removed.  Though this is surely a harsh blow for those with severe eyesight problems, the few times I used it, I found the harsh American accents hard to stomach and disliked the way that it tended to ignore clear punctuation markers for pauses and effect.  Luckily within school, our students with eyesight problems manage fine with enlargements, so the Kindle will still be useful to them, but in terms of accessibly, I think this is a step backward. 

We have ordered cases, but they're out of stock at the moment.  I'm wondering what sort of fixing they will use.  The old style Kindle had slots positioned in the side where the case attached, but the new model has nothing like this.  I'm really hoping that they haven't copped out with an elastic at the corners style fixing.  Will let you know when they arrive.  

These Kindles will be available for student use, based on which books they would like to read, i.e., if we only have an ebook version of a book, they will be offered that, with a Kindle, once a parental agreement form has been completed.  We'll need this to ensure that parents will be happy to replace any Kindles that are damaged or lost. Our budget won't stretch to any more!  We'll also be offering ebook loans to student's own devices.  This will be possible with some registering and de-registering, thoguh students will need to return at the end of their loan to 'return' the ebook and have it deleted, as DRM allows.   With the budget restrictions that we have, this I feel will be the true test of whether ebooks take off here.  With Christmas coming, dozens of students have said that they're requesting Kindles. Hopefully we will be able to have enough eventually that those who can't afford them can still have access to the full range of resources. 

Bridging the digital divide*.  Oh yeah. 

*In a predominantly middle-class school in a wealthy area where the school has valued libraries enough to fund the staffing and resources to run one.  I know.  We're like a tiny tributary of the larger dividing river. 

Kindles

Over the summer I test drove a Kindle on behalf of the library (I know, sometimes you've gotta just take one for the team) with a view to buying a small set for the library.  To my surprise, I didn't hate it.  My only interraction with them previously was a quick, 'Ooh, can I have a look?' when my brother got one, and I confess I didn't like it then at all.  The plastic felt horribly plasticy, the buttons were clicky and it made my eyes hurt when it flashed up the next page in negative before it 'turned'.  But when it was my only readng option, I quickly found that I forgot about the device and concentrated on the words.  Within about a week, I found myself saying that I was going to read my book.  Then after three weeks travelling and not breaking my back lugging around all of A Song of Ice and Fire, I realised that I loved it.

The decision to purchase a set for the library though required more than that.  Three things happened within the space of a week that made up our minds.

1. Amazon joined up with Overdrive to offer Kindle lending through US libraries.
I think this will spread to the UK pretty quickly and Kindle's position as the dominant e-reader is a lot stronger.

2. A fellow school librarian recommended an e-book management app called Calibre, which means that it would not only possible, but also relatively easy to transfer single books to clean Kindles.   One concern was that if we were issuing full Kindles with our full collections on them, we'd have a) no way of noting down which books were being borrowed and b) no way of checking suitability.  Game of Thrones is not suitable for Year 7s, but Year 10 will LOVE it.

3. The new Kindles were released.  Smaller, simpler, with fewer clicky buttons and a lower price tag.

Sold.

So our first five Kindles are on the way.  We'll trial them, see how the students react and go from there.

Staff CPD

There has been increasing interest from staff about information literacy, research skills and use of the internet to promote and engage. An introductory lesson last year sparked a lot of attention, particularly from the Science department, who made great use of research skills in their coursework modules last year and noticed an increase in marks in this area, and also MFL, who launched a student blog.

This year we've been asked to expand on this and have designed a CPD course based on the Cambridge Librarians '23 Things' that I followed with great interest through Twitter and their blog posts. Staff are being asked to attend an initial introductory session, but following that, the course will be completed at their convenience, looking at one Thing per week and blogging their progress. If we can get a group of teachers and support staff who are committed to using these tools and passing on these skills, I think this stands a very good chance of making a significant difference. Having seen how much of an impact tools like blogging, Twitter and use of Google docs has had on my own work, the potential here is huge.

 If you'd like to follow along, the whole process will be blogged through the RPS 23 Things blog. Anyone working in a similar field would be more than welcome to join us.

Research Skills and Information Literacy

After the successful information literacy session run for Year 12 last year, we've been running similar and focusing much more on establishing and maintaining effective PLNs (Personal Learning Networks).  This was the area that really caught students' attention last year, and we saw a huge increase in the use of Twitter and also reported use of more Facebook study groups springing up, which was fantastic.

Research Skills and Information Literacy

View more presentations from rpslibrary

This is the presentation we've been giving.  If you'd like a copy of the notes that go with it, please email us at librarianATroundwoodparkDOThertsschDotuk

Guardian Young Critics

Today is the deadline for the Guardian Young Critics competition, which has kept our reviewers busy over the summer!  They've had a great time working their way through the longlist and discussing their opinions.  So far My Name is Mina and My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece have emerged as the favourites, so they were surprised to find one of these off the shortlist.  The shortlist has caused quite a stir and some interesting discussions.  The conclusion that they came to was that a shortlist for children's fiction that is chosen by adults will fall short.  They were reminded that the Carnegie shortlist is chosen by adults too, but was shouted down when they recalled that the Carnegie shortlist is chosen by librarians, predominantly children's librarians, who they felt would have a must more accurate view of what young readers want.

So, what do you think?  Are we putting too much emphasis on prizes for children's fiction judged by adults?

Read our readers' fantastic reviews on their blog.

Nerdfighter Projects

With Project Rollercoaster nearing completion, our Nerdfighters have started to think about what they'd like to do next.  The main area of interest seems to be craft related, so the knitters have taken off their work again.  They've been training up our new Year 7 library regulars and the knitting box is a horrific mess, I mean, productive and creative hotbed of activity.  Yeah.

Our more experienced knitters are launching a range of mittens, knitted in our new house colours, to be sold to students across the school.  They start at £4 but can be customised with buttons and crochet flowers (thank you to Nicole in Year 10 for teaching me how to make these) for an extra couple of pounds.  The original plan was to raise money for charity, but they took me quietly aside and asked if instead they might be allowed to fund an author visit, which we'd had to cancel plans for after budget restrictions were felt a little too tightly.  After a brief moment of eye dabbing and awwwing, I of course agreed and they're now working on raising money to have Patrick Ness come and visit later in the year.  They really enjoyed his Twitter chat with us during Carnegie, so they would love to have him come and speak about his work.  His name is scrawled on the money box and the double entry book-keeping sheets they're keeping (yes, they're really doing it properly) is titled accordingly.

So if anyone wants any mittens, I know where you can get some great ones.

Welcome Back!

Term has begun and I'm delighted to report that we already have a fantastically enthusiastic new intake of Year 7s who have begun to colonise the library and make it their own. 

There's a lot coming up this term. 

• Open Evening.  Eugh.  Clean all the things! 
• Booked Up.  I'm so glad that the funding for Booked Up is still there.  Those in charge of grants and awards must be aware of how absolutely wonderful this is for our students, many of whom don't own books of their own, as well as how important a message this is.  Literacy is important.  Important enough that they want ALL students to own books.  
• Project Rollercoaster!  The research is well underway and we've set a deadline of 21st October, just before half term, for projects to be completed.  We're hoping to have a presentation afternoon, inviting parents and staff to share in the work that our Nerdfighters have been doing.  And then...  ALTON TOWERS. 
• NaNoWriMo - Project Rollercoaster wraps up just in time for us to launch this year's event!  It looks as though the uptake this year is going to be particularly impressive, in fact I'm quite worried that we just won't have enough computers.  The achievements of last year will be hard to top, but I think we can do it. 
• Christmas!  Yes, I may be getting a little ahead of myself, but still.  

There are also the inductions for the new Year 7s of course, and information literacy sessions with the new Year 12s. 

This year we're also running a school wide CPD course based on the Cambridge librarians 23 Things programme.  Over the course of 23 weeks, we'll look at research skills and new media, with a direct focus on how these things can be integrated into teaching and learning. 

Exciting times. 

Student Blog update

Following our very sucessful use of our student blog for Carnegie this year, we're not going to stop!  We'll now be shadowing the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, which is a fantastic set of eight books:

My Name is Mina by David Almond

Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout by Andy Stanton

Small Change for Stuart by Lissa Evans

Twilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge

Return to Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan

Moon Pie by Simon Mason

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher

Momentum by Saci Lloyd

This will be a much more independent project than the Carnegie, but we have a dedicated team who are already gathering their books together and reviewing! With the award stretching over the summer, there will also be the challenge of getting books to each other over the break, so we're going to trial use of an enbedded forum.  I'm still sorting through the security settings, but I'm hopeful that this will give them an ongoing point of contact during the break.  

Last Day of Term

Phew, we're finally here!  *flails, falls down*

It's been an exhausting last couple of days and I think we've all hit the burn out stage.  The rush on summer loans hasn't let up and there are huge gaps on all the shelves, but some of the faster readers who took out their stacks last week have already returned handfuls of books that they've finished, so if your book wasn't here earlier in the week, it may be here now!

Today is also a sad day as I'm saying goodbye to my form.  7NAd are no more!  I'd really hoped to carry on with them right up through the school,  but sadly this hasn't been possible (ggrrrr...) so it's quite upsetting.  But I hope they know that I will be their unofficial form tutor for as long as they're here.  Next year they'll become 8RWa, with Miss Way taking over.  She's a wonderful form tutor so I know they'll be well looked after, but I'll miss them horribly.

So, what's happening over the summer?

Those students who are taking part in shadowing The Guardian award will be posting their reviews over the summer on our student blog, so do take a look at what they think.

The Nerdfighters will continue their projects and continue the amazing research that they've already put so much time and energy into.  Some of the things they've discovered and learned about already has been really impressive.  Year 8 students have been putting the sixth form to shame with their knowledge of psychology.  We're going to have a fantastic collection of rollercoaster experts by the time this is all finished, and some of the ideas for their final pieces sound absolutely brilliant and so exciting!  

Some lucky folk are off to the Edinburgh book festival over the break, which I'm very jealous off, but I'm running away to the other side of the world to play with hobbits*, so I'm hoping that they will all bring back signed books and interesting news for us all.

Hope you all have a fantastic summer!  Read a lot, then come straight back up to the library when we're all back in September.



*I might not find hobbits but I will look carefully! Will also keep  my eyes open for worryingly attractive dwarves, though I do think Thorin looks a bit like a Klingon.

Counting Down the Days

Five to go.  Then summer.

All around the school, things have been winding down.  Not in the library though...  Here, spurred on by the extended loan period and increased allowances, students have been flocking to the issue desk with armfuls of books to take out over the summer. It's aces.  Friday was a particularly crazy one, with over 260 issues going out over the course of the day.  There are huge gaps on the shelves now, and it's not just the most popular reads that have been going out; there's been a lot of interest in the hidden gems too.

News of the new Cherub book by Robert Muchamore has been drawing a lot of attention, but I'm sorry folks, you'll have a bit of a wait for that yet!  We'll be getting a few copies in, but probably not as many as folks who've been asking for it.

And of course it's been a huge week for Harry Potter fans, with the release of HP7b.  There were some interesting discussions about spoilers on Twitter and other sites, resulting in a determination that you can't claim to have had a plot spoiled if the narrative came straight from a best selling book that's been out for several years and that if you haven't read it, then you're not a big enough fan to justify your irritation.  Fair play.  

The other exciting news of this week is that we've taken receipt of our first library Kindle! Now, I must confess that I'm not a fan of them.  I don't like the lack of a touch screen, the buttons are clunky, it's made of plastic for heaven's sake.  But I've been trialling it and I think it's starting to grow on me.  The key thing is when you stop noticing the device and your attention goes back to what you're reading.  

The trial book of choice is Holly Black's Red Glove, sequel to White Cat which I adored earlier in the year.  The happy point has been reached where I'm no longer thinking of the Kindle, but of the book.  The advantages of this thing are starting to present themselves.  You can read one handed, lay the book (not book!) on your lap while you eat and turn the pages by hitting the button with a chopstick*, it's lighter than a book of double the thickness if you take it out of the case** and it's right - the strain on your eyes that I've come to expect when reading off a screen just isn't there.  The electronic ink is quite fab.  But the flash up of the next page in negative is horribly off-putting and I do keep coming back to the fact that it's plastic and for me, that just feels a bit wrong.  I reserve the right to change my mind when I'm tired and it reads to me.  

With a bit of luck we'll get the eBook management system up and running and over the next few months request either some additional funding or some donations so that we can get a couple more and start loaning them out.  Exciting times! 

Speaking of exciting times, thank you to all the students who have helped me out this week while I hobbled around the library and shouted at you all from the comfy chairs.  After pulling a tendon in my knee (not recommended) I've been very grateful to you all for being so fab!



* Please do not hit library loans with chopsticks.
** Which weighs almost as much as the Kindle!  Daft, but also detracts from the overwhelming plastic-ness of it.

Stock-take Challenge!

It's Activities Week so there are no classes booked into the library.  This was our best and only chance to get a stock take done, something that I haven't done since I took over the post.  The difficulty is my contract - term time only, so instead of doing such things that require an empty library in the holidays, I have to try to squeeze them in around manic numbers of students.

Our catalogue lists over nearly eleven thousand, which used to take two and a half weeks to stock-take.  Our challenge was to do it in one!  This required careful planning and a cut-throat system.

1. Acquire wireless netbook and a spare scanner. 

Then the computer can be put on the reshelving trolley and wheeled around.  I'm pretty sure that three days of the old time was spent just carrying books to the desk. Nightmare waste of time!

2. Instigate system. 

Pick up a book, scan it.  Then PUT IT BACK.  No stopping and checking it through, no thinking 'gosh, this looks interesting,' and flicking through the pages.  Such things were FORBIDDEN.  If the book was in the wrong place, never mind.  Parent volunteers can help us to check the order another week.  If the book fell apart in my hands, a small green PostIt would be stuck in the top, then it was to go straight back on the shelf. Barcode unrecognised?  Add it to the pile on the trolley and LEAVE IT THERE.  No investigation, no 'Oh, I'll just check the title on the catalogue...' No.

3. Keep going.

On Monday I worked alone, annoying the rest of the staff using the library for their Review Day, and took one half hour break to eat lunch.  Coffee was drunk at the trolley, toilet breaks were limited. On Tuesday, Mrs Sweet helped to keep everyone else away from me while I carried on.  And when Mrs Clarke arrived on Wednesday, she was shown how it all worked and since then, the sound of beeping has not paused for more than a minute.  We've staggered breaks and lunchtimes, had one of us working though constantly.

Of these I think that the portability of the computer probably made the most difference, but The System is the one that I'm most proud of.  It took guts and it took discipline, but it's really worked.

And you know what?  We've done it.  10.30 am on Friday morning, and the stock-take that used to take two and a half weeks is complete.

The 'Missing' list is quite long - about 200 items, but this is less than 2% of our stock, and in the two years since the last one, we've migrated the catalogue to our new system, moved a lot around, and been fantastically busy!  Over the next two weeks we'll spend time mopping up - Mrs Sweet is the finding stuff queen and I'm sure will get that number down to under 100 before we break up for the summer.

WIN.

Student Blog update

Following our very sucessful use of our student blog for Carnegie this year, we're not going to stop!  We'll now be shadowing the Guardian Children's Fiction Award, which is a fantastic set of eight books:

My Name is Mina by David Almond

Mr Gum and the Secret Hideout by Andy Stanton

Small Change for Stuart by Lissa Evans

Twilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge

Return to Ribblestrop by Andy Mulligan

Moon Pie by Simon Mason

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher

Momentum by Saci Lloyd

This will be a much more independent project than the Carnegie, but we have a dedicated team who are already gathering their books together and reviewing! With the award stretching over the summer, there will also be the challenge of getting books to each other over the break, so we're going to trial use of an enbedded forum.  I'm still sorting through the security settings, but I'm hopeful that this will give them an ongoing point of contact during the break.  

Making the Move

Yup, we've shifted over to Blogger.  Wordpress was pretty, but with the Roundwood Readers blog running so well on here, it seemed to daft to continue in a different place.  So we're back to where the embedding is easy and Miss A can remember her sign in...

Carnegie Blog

Just realised how silent this blog is in comparison to our new Readers' blog!  Take a look here to see why this one had tumbleweeds all over it.

#busy

Carnegie Day

 

It’s all coming to an end!

Yes, it’s Carnegie announcement day, which means that all of this joy is coming to an end.  But there’s been so much wonderful stuff happening this year!

Last Wednesday we were visited by the Shadowers at Sir John Lawes school across town.  It was fantastic to hear some new opinions on the books, and though some of the discussions were heated, we made some excellent new friends and are really looking forward to doing more with them in the future.  Hopefully they will join us in becoming Nerdfighters! Many thanks to Ms Warman for arranging their visit and piling them all into the minibus.

 



Then yesterday we had an amazing Shadowing meeting and took part in something very new to us – a Twitter interview with Patrick Ness!  We all settled down with tribute doughnuts, went through the inevitable ICT emergency (why block Twitter school?!  Why?!) but were all set and ready to go at 1.30.  Will and I typed in questions and queries, and Patrick answered them all, giving us an insight into his writing.  The tweets have been archived here, so if you’d like to have a look at our questions, please go ahead!  We’d like to say a huge thank you to Patrick for giving us his time.

 



 

And now, the day is here.  Thursday 23^rd June.  Carnegie Day.

At 12.30, they will announce the winner of this year’s Carnegie medal, and we’ll know if our Shadowing vote matched that of the judges.  So I guess it’s time to announce our own winner.

The RPS Readers Carnegie Shadowing winner for 2011 is…

 

Monsters of Men, by Patrick Ness.



 

This amazing book held us captivated right the way through as the war raged.  Our sympathies were pulled tight across all sides at one time or another and many returned from reading this book with shredding nails!  Those who read it as a stand alone enjoyed it and appreciated the story for what it was enough that some of these readers were among those who voted it their winner.  And those who read the whole trilogy were bowled over by the complexities and involvement that they felt with the characters, all of whom we came to love or admire in some way.  Yes, even the Mayor.  He may be the most wonderful villain ever created.

Awesome.

Review-a-mania

37 Shadowers!   I'm sure this should be greeted with a fanfare every time I say it.  Really fab number.  And since that meeting, and the thirty second demolishing of three double sized packets of biscuits, over a dozen reviews have been posted to our Shadowing Blog, at least one for each of the shortlisted novels.  So if you've had a look at the shortlist and  you're not sure where to start, have a look and see what our students think before you make your choice.

Good work everyone!

First reviews trickling in

We don't have 34 Shadowers anymore.  We have 37.  Aces.

After a slight panic that we wouldn't be able to buy in enough books for them all (a perfectly justified fear, as it turned out) the Shadowers were asked to chose one book from the shortlist and buy their own copy to then share.  Today several books were added to the Carnegie shelf with just a name scribbled inside, so a huge thank you to those students who have already been shopping and are so generously sharing their books.  Makes me a little bit teary to be honest *sniffs*  Ahem.  Anyway...

The first reviews are up on our blog and have been copied over to our official Shadowing site, hosted by CILIP.  Plans are in the pipeline for some very exciting student participation this year, with videos, fan fiction (including some from the POV of the Spackle from Patrick Ness's Monsters of Men - awesome) and animated book trailers on their way.  With any luck there'll be a few surprises before the winner is announced too.

It's an odd week this week, with only two school days before we run away to largely ignore someone's wedding, but that means another gorgeously long weekend with plenty of reading time.  Thumbs up, Royals ;)  We're also celebrating the fact that several of our students were out of school at the University of Hertfordshire Creative Writing Competition Development Day, after having their entries shortlisted. Good luck to them for the next stage too.

Carnegie Shadowing is GO!

This lunchtime saw our first formal meeting of the Carnegie Shadowing group, and they all turned up clutching books and reaching for copies of the shortlist.  All thirty four of them.  Yup.  Thirty four Shadowers this year.  Aces.

Sadly this has caused a bit of a crisis in the book stock department, as although we have 4-5 copies of each of the shortlisted books, some of them have yet to be delivered and even then they are we won't have enough.  Luckily, our Shadowers have agreed that they will all buy one copy of one of the books and swap them around.  Phew.

Our new site is up and running, and there should be reviews trickling through over the next day or two, as those who grabbed books last Friday are already finishing them off.

This and NaNoWriMo are my favourite times of the year.  I think I even like them more than Christmas...