Category Archives: All

April 2022 Roundup – Shawlands Academy School Library

Pop-Up Library

The Pop-Up Library stall is back in lieu of the library space being used throughout the exam period. Here, pupils can browse handpicked goodies selected by the Librarian, request specific titles, or return their books. Our Pupil Library Committee members will be helping at the stall too, we couldn’t run it without them.

Challenges and Contests

We’ll also continue to promote our range of challenges and contests, including Bookopoly, Ask Me What I’m Reading, and our Heartstopper colouring contest to celebrate the series release on Netflix.

The deadline for the Heartstopper colouring contest is Friday, May 20^th. One submission per pupil and each submission will be included into the prize draw where there are three Heartstopper prizes up for grabs. All submissions will also be included into the monthly School Library prize draw. There are even more ways to be included into the monthly prize draw, including returning a completed book review or Shelf Shouter, completing a genre on the Bookopoly board, or submitting a completed Ask me What I’m Reading sheet.

April/May Booklists

May 22 Booklists – Book Trust

Best new Children’s Books – Toppsta

Bookbug’s Books of the Month – Scottish Book Trust

Books of the Month – Love Reading 4 Kids

April Roundup – Love Reading

Book of the Month – Scholastic

Books of the Month – Waterstones

Children’s Book Roundup – Guardian

Upcoming Events (May)

National Share a Story Month

International Young Adult Literature Month

Local and Community History Month

1^st – 7^th: The FOLD (Festival of Literary Diversity) (Brampton, ON, Canada)

2^nd – 8^th: Children’s Book Week

3^rd – 8^th: Stratford Literary Festival (Stratford-upon-Avon, England)

4^th: Star Wars Day

6^th – 8^th: Ullapool Book Festival (Ullapool, Scotland)

6^th – 8^th: Cromarty Crime and Thrillers Weekend (Cromarty, Scotland)

6^th – 22^nd: Aye Write (Glasgow, Scotland)

7^th – 8^th: Bay Area Book Festival (Berkeley, CA, USA)

10^th – 22^nd: The Chalfont St Giles and Jordans Literary Festival (Chalfont Saint Giles, England)

11^th-14^th: PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature (New York, NY, USA)

12^th: National Limerick Day

13^th-15^th: Boswell Book Festival (Cumnock, Scotland)

13^th – 15^th: Franschhoek Literary Festival (Franschhoek, South Africa)

13^th– 29^th: Norfolk and Norwich Festival (Norwich, England)

16^th – 22^nd: Sydney Writers’ Festival (Sydney, Australia)

17^th: International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia

20^th– 28^th: Derby Book Festival (Derby, England)

21^st: World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development

21^st: Neurodiversity Celebration Week

21^st – TBC: San Antonio Book Festival (San Antonio, TX, USA)

21^st – 22^nd: The Northern YA Literary Festival (Preston, England)

26^th: Dracula Day

26^th – Jun 5^th: Hay Festival (Hay-on-Wye, Wales)

27^th – 29^th: Calabash International Literary Festival (Treasure Beach, Jamacia)

TBC: Open the Door Festival at the Women’s Library (Glasgow, Scotland)

Literary Awards & Prizes

Winners

Edward Stanford Travel Writing Children’s Book of the Year

Shortlists

Branford Boase Award

English Association 4-11 Picture Book Award

Jhalak Prize

Women’s Prize

Longlists

SLA Information Book Awards

Literature & Culture News:

Press & websites

Interesting articles

Charlotte Brontë early Book of Rhymes sold for £1m – BBC

A Gallery of Fantastical Alchemical Drawings – Open Culture

The Library of Esoterica: Taschen’s Visual History of Tarot, Astrology & Witchcraft – Open Culture

The Literary Film and TV you need to steam in May – Literary Hub

The New York Public Library provides free online access to banned books – Open Culture

Wee Write Author Visit

Leave a reply

We had a brilliant, thought-provoking Wee Write session with Tamsin Winter. Some interesting themes were discussed and some mesmerised faces in the audience :-).

Copies of Tamsin’s books are available in the school library and also in community libraries.

Langfaulds Primary 7 visit

Leave a reply

The S2 Drumchapel High School Library Captains had their first meeting with the Langfaulds Primary 7 class on Thursday 28th April. They introduced them to Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant series and read an extract from the first book. Before they left they gave every pupil a box set of the first three books, courtesy of Harper Collins.

Poetry Workshop With Charles Lang

Leave a reply

In March we had a visit from the Belfast-based Glaswegian poet Charles Lang. The S1 and S2 classes who took part in the workshops with Charles had a great time composing their own poems based on the theme of ‘home’. See below for Kaspian’s fantastic effort.

Fireplace Encouragement

by Kaspian Mazerski S1 All Saints Secondary

Sitting by the fireplace

So warm and so very bright.

Every time it crackles,

It gives me a fright.

My dog sleeping near in a curled position, 

Watching my brother run along the carpet, 

Making fiction.

“I love my family” I say,

Eating bread

I should get ahead, and be early to bed, 

Fall asleep quick…laying in bed

Hearing a tick,

The clock going off,

The day is over.

No need to scoff,

There is always tomorrow

Go get that book you wanted to borrow,

Go, do the thing you wanted to do.

Don’t imagine.

It’s all up to you.

April in St Roch’s

Leave a reply

Spring is in full swing this month and Glasgow schools have been busy bees. We started a new term, said goodbye to some senior pupils and this week we kicked off exam season. Well done to everyone for all the studying and best of luck!

There was also lots of things happening in the UK and beyond for St Roch’s library to join in.

World Autism Acceptance Week: 28 March – 3 April 2022

April 2nd was World Autism Awareness Day, but did you know the whole of April is World Autism Month?

Books are a great way to raise awareness and help us to understand each other-so we’ve listed some books about or by people with autism that are available from the school library.

You’ll find some on display in school and on the Libby by Overdrive app.

World Book Night: 23 April

Work Book Night is run by The Reading Agency and brings people from all backgrounds together for one reason – to inspire others to read more. You can do anything you want related to books: read alone, read with or to someone, or even call a friend to chat about books and share recommendations.

There are lots of great book suggestions listed this year with previous lists also available on their website. We collected some of the recommended books for a display in the library, to help students choose something new to read.

Keep the heid and read!

To celebrate the power of reading, libraries and good mental health, people are being asked to pledge SIX minutes on Wednesday 11th May 2022 and devote it to reading.

Why? Because taking some time for yourself to relax and do things you enjoy like reading is important to help look after your mental health and wellbeing.

Students in St Roch’s have signed up this month with their English class and will visit the library to join in the 6-minute-read on May 11th. We’re really looking forward to it!

It’s simple to pledge on the Keep the Heid website, and you can enter a prize draw for £100 book token. Young Scot card holders can also earn reward points for pledging! Take the pledge now and see how many minutes people all over Scotland will be reading for on 11th May 2022.

Wee Write Festival: Metaphrog

Lastly, the Wee Write book festival for children and young people runs this year from 25th –30th April. This year’s Wee Write Family Day is on Saturday 30 April and is jam-packed with exciting authors, illustrators and much more. Visit the Glasgow Life website to see what’s on.

As part of the Wee Write programme for schools, award-winning graphic novelists Metaphrog will be visiting St Roch’s this month. Their latest graphic novels are fairy tale adaptations including The Red Shoes and Other Tales, The Little Mermaid and Bluebeard: A Feminist Fairy Tale, all published by Papercutz. Sandra and John will be sharing their creative process and the secrets of making comics in what promises to be a very fun session- we can’t wait!!

S.M Wilson meets St Mungo’s S1 pupils

Leave a reply

As the part of the “Wee write festival” St Mungo’s library had the chance to receive the author S.M Wilson. She writes romance and young adult fiction.

During this very interactive session, the author talked about her books as well as her love for dinosaurs and space.

S1 pupils especially discovered the inspiration behind S. M. Wilson’s The Extinction Trials and The Infinity Files series and tested their knowledge on all
things dinosaur and space, followed by Q&A.

The library helpers, Helena, Julia and Jack even interviewed her for the monthly Glasgow School libraries eMagazine!

Holyrood Library, Spring Update

Leave a reply

Welcome to the Library blog for March and April !

Our Rights Respecting School book display showcases books on diversity, inclusion and well-being. This display was organised by one of our S6 Volunteers, who has also worked on cataloguing hundreds of books this year, a great example of our Pupil Voice and Caritas volunteering in action, thank you.

World Book Day : our S1 ‘Design a Book Token’ competition was a great success. The entries were superb, showing both a love of reading and excellent design skills. Our prize-winners enjoyed a lunchtime celebration. Special thanks to Head Girl, Maryam for presenting prizes and giving an inspiring speech to S1.

Our S3 lunchtime readers have been busy creating beautiful art, including flowers and bees to decorate our Science week Display, and bookmarks for Miss Melville’s wonderful Coffee Morning for Ukraine

We love sharing book reviews and recommendations

We even get replies from fantastic authors! “I’m so happy that Boy 87 was your book of the day. Thank you S1 helpers!”, Ele Fountain, author of Boy 87

Here is the Numeracy Wall created by Miss Blackburn’s Sumdog Club. We look forward to holding more numeracy activities in the library throughout the year.

Our S6 contribution to the library has been immense. Their helpfulness and enthusiasm, has made the library a joyful place. Thank you S6 for the Book-Tok idea, now under-way. I will continue to add new titles. Special thanks to Aaminah.

Our S6 held an amazing Culture Day in the Assembly Hall. Seeing the joy and pride in our wonderful, diverse Holyrood community has inspired me to look out for more diverse books by indigenous authors in future.

Some S1 recommendations showing different cultures, (these are set in Nigeria, and the Himalayas).

Thanks also to S6 for completing the online Library Survey, all your helpful suggestions will go towards making improvements for the coming year.

This lovely manga style drawing, (by Kieran and Demi), sums up our ethos – Everyone is WELCOME in this Library, so please DO look in and say hello next time you are passing. A warm welcome awaits.

Library Newsletter – spring issue

Leave a reply

Hello Readers,

Please check out what we have been doing in the library on our Library Newsletter, at this link:

Editing ‘Library Newsletter – Spring 2022’ – Book Creator

Happy Reading!

KSS Library Newsletter - spring edition with Avatars of the library team

JPA Library – March Update

Leave a reply

In the final push to the Easter Break, March has been a busy and exciting month, filled with fun activities from start to finish – enjoy!

World Book Day

The month started off with our World Book Day activities! All our pupils were given their £1 book tokens to spend on free World Book Day books, but pupils also had the chance to win these books in our competitions and games for World Book Day! Pupils were invited to write 50-word short stories on the theme of ‘World’, and came along to our annual WBD Mystery Game in the library!

This year, while doing its World Tour for World Book Day, the Best Book in the World was stolen! The thief hid clues in books around the library that pupils had to find and solve to discover where the book had been taken. The pupils transformed into detectives and were immediately on the case! In one lunch break, pupils were able to find all the clues, solve all the puzzles, and discover that the Best Book in the World had been taken to Peru! Everyone who took part received a free World Book Day book!

Our Clubs:

Find out what our clubs got up to this month:

Comic Club

We’ve been practicing our comic skills this month with some Quick Comic sessions. Pupils needed to draw in under 2 minutes a randomly generated character and scene. Highlights include the confused robots in ballgowns in a castle, happy alien clowns at bus stops, and angry people in library (the most unrealistic IMO).

EAL Book Club

We have started drafting our Cinderella stories! I don’t want to give away any spoilers, because the group is very excited about their stories and keeping them private for now (they may have taken their jotters home over the Easter break to keep working/so I can’t take a peek) but there has been discussion of gender-swapping, murder mysteries, and stories of revenge!

RPG Club

Let the games begin! Our pupils have started playing a Dungeons and Dragons style campaign called A Battle of Bookwyrms (I may have created a book themed game – this is a library club after all!). Their characters were sent invitations to an unknown place, and under the promise of adventure and riches, they all chose to go, meeting for the first time. However, when they arrived at their destination, they were led into an arena and ambushed! The brave party were able to fight their way out and have now been offered a job. What job could it be? Find out next month!

Our Volunteers

Our volunteers have continued working hard to make the library a great space for everyone. Staff and pupils have responded well to their great Genre displays made this month, one for Romance and one for Mystery books, our most popular genres! There’s a big project on the horizon for our volunteers after the holidays, and I’m thrilled with how they have helped to make the library such a fun and exciting space within our school!

Easter Egg Hunt

[I know this one technically happened in April but it’s too fun to leave until next month!]

Our library mascot Bellamy was joined by a couple of mischievous chicks on the last day of school, who then hid Easter Eggs all through the library! Our pupils then got to enjoy an Easter Egg Hunt and the sweet chocolatey taste of success after! A very fun note on which to end the term!

To see everything that April has to offer, check out the latest edition of our newsletter – Bookmarked!

March 2022 Roundup – St Margaret Mary’s Secondary School Library

Leave a reply

World Book Day Week: This year, World Book Day was celebrated on Thursday, March 3rd and the School Library delivered a plethora of fun, bookish activities throughout the week. Our World Book Day programme included the following activities, where participants were entered into a prize draw for a £10 National Book Token:

World Book Day Quiz: A book-themed quiz was delivered during both lunch periods in the School Library for St Margaret Mary’s pupils and in class time for St Oswald’s pupils. All participants were entered into the prize draw and those with the highest points received three entries into the draw.
Bookopoly: Pupils are given a Bookopoly board. They can choose to read two fiction books per genre, one nonfiction book per subject, and/or three ‘chances’ where they can either select a ‘reading dare’ or spin the Wheel of Genre. The completion of each genre/subject/chance grants them an entry into the monthly school library prize draw. Pupils can also earn a certificate for completing the entire board.
Ask Me What I’m Reading: The winning designs from our Ask Me What I’m Reading design competition were circulated alongside a sheet where pupils must ask five people what they’re reading. This is to encourage pupils and staff to have a conversation about books and promoting literature via word of mouth. Submitted forms grants one entry into the monthly school library prize draw.

Pupil Library Committee: Our PLC members were very busy this month with various activities:

Pop-Up Library: Members of our Pupil Library Committee volunteered to host a pop-up library stall in the Fuel Zone during lunches throughout World Book Day week. Members promoted the variety of World Book Day activities and reading challenges as well as selected books to display and promote for borrowing. This initiative was so successful that we’re planning on hosting other Pop-Up Libraries in the future.
Bag A Book: Pupil Library Committee members have been helping the School Librarian for weeks to prepare withdrawn stock for our popular Bag A Book giveaway before the Spring break, held Tuesday and Thursday during lunches.

World Poetry Day Quiz: Pupils and staff were invited to participate in a quiz of Teams, inspired by the Librarian @GrammarLRC. Can you guess whether the passage is a lyric or a title?

Library Publications: Swatch Spring 22

March Booklists

March 22 Booklists – Book Trust

Best New Children’s Books – Toppsta

Bookbug’s Books of the Month – Scottish Book Trust

Books of the Month – LoveReading4Kids

March Roundup – Love Reading

Book of the Month – Scholastic

Books of the Month – Waterstones

Children’s Book Roundup – Guardian

Upcoming Events (April)

BigDog Book Festival (Wigtown, Scotland, 1st – 3rd)