It’s been a fun start to the year in the library at John Paul Academy.  The library is open again for pupils to borrow books after months of lockdowns and restrictions.  The new S1 cohort have loved coming to the library to check out books, with hundreds of books borrowed since we returned to school after the summer holidays!

We have lots of very enthusiastic readers in the new S1 group and it’s great to see them in the library every day picking out new books to read.  They are especially fond of our manga collection, and have put in several requests for more – keep your eyes peeled for new titles coming soon!

Our S3 EAL Book Club, every Wednesday at lunchtime, has just begun Project Cinderella!  Every week our club will read a different version of the Cinderella story, taken from different times and places.  Once we’ve finished, we’re going to write our own version of the story!  We started this month with Charles Perrault’s classic version of the story, famous for the Disney animation.  Watch this space to see the club progress, and ideas for our own version of the story!  [This project is supported by the Scottish Government School Library Improvement Fund].

The library has also started up a new Comic Club, for fans of comics, graphic novels and especially manga!  Our new comic club members have had a library takeover, helping to choose new comics, graphic novels and manga to buy for the library, and have created this fantastic display with some of their favourite options for their fellow pupils to borrow!  Some of their notes included “This book is really interesting” and “Join our comic club for awesome books like these!”. Our club meets every Monday at lunchtime, and is open for more members to join in! 

Pupils have also been getting creative with our new Craft Cart!  So far pupils have tried their hand at paper cranes and origami bookmarks, as well as creating and drawing their own posters and characters.

If you want to see what’s coming up in October, then check out Bookmarked, the JPA Library newsletter, at this link.

Thanks for reading, and watch this space for future updates!