After a busy month and a half following the Spring break, the School Library is now currently closed throughout May to accommodate exams. Here is a recap of what we got up to over the past few weeks.

Spring Edition of Swatch Magazine: Our Spring issue of Swatch, the Glasgow School Libraries’ eMagazine is out now! It’s loaded with tons of goodies such as an ‘Egg-cellent’ origami gift box craft, a (very) badly drawn book cover quiz, loads of booklists, and an interview with yours truly about all the things we do at Shawlands Academy School Library. It also features interviews with our three shortlist YA-ldi Book Award authors, Maisie Chan, Ann Sei Lin, and Victoria Williamson.

Display: Members of our Pupil Library Committee are always very on the ball with our monthly displays, drawing inspiration from our literary and cultural calendar. Over March, they’ve featured books to promote a wide range of events such as International Women’s Day / Women’s History Month (March 8^th), Neurodiversity Celebration Week (March 13^th), Anti-Racism Day (March 20^th), Ramadan (March 22^nd), and Trans Day of Visibility (March 31^st),

Creative Writing Workshop with Victoria Williamson: Author Victoria Williamson hosted a workshop with Shawlands Academy Creative Writing group during a Friday lunchtime session. Victoria chatted about the foundations of storytelling and offered some excellent tips and fun activities.

Spring Quiz: Our senior quiz leaders hosted their final quiz in the library before study leave. A big thank you to “B” and “I” for their dedication and enthusiasm in creating, promoting, and delivering our seasonal quizzes this year. They’ve been more popular than ever and it’s all down to their hard work and effort.

Nowruz: Another member of our Pupil Library Committee created and hosted Shawlands Academy’s first Nowruz, which is Persian New Year. Pupils learned about Nowruz, Persian traditions, and participated in a goldfish hunt around the library. We also ‘jumped over the fire’ to bring in the new year.

Literary Egg Hunt: For Easter, we invited pupils to search for the ‘golden eggs’ hidden in amongst the books. Pupils were tasked to find the eggs based on literary clues to get their prize.

Eid Crafternoon: Lastly, another member of Pupil Library Committee hosted and delivered a paper lantern activity as part of Eid celebrations.

Trending: May Booklists

Best New Children’s Books – Topptsa

Bookbug’s Book of the Month – Scottish Book Trust

Books of the Month – Love Reading For Kids

Books of the Month – Scholastic

Books of the Month – Waterstones

Children’s Books Roundup – Guardian

New Releases – Epic Reads

Literary and Cultural Events – March

5^th – 6^th: Ullapool Book Festival (Ross-shire, Highlands, Scotland)

12^th – 14^th: Boswell Book Festival (Dumfries, Ayrshire, Scotland)

19^th – 28^th: Aye Write Glasgow’s Book Festival (Glasgow, Scotland)

15th – 2^nd April Glasgow International Film Festival (Glasgow, Scotland)

25^th – 4^th June: Hay Festival (Hay-on-Wye, Wales)

Awards

Information Book Award Longlist

Branford Boase Award Shortlist

Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist

Jhalak Prize Shortlist

Waterstone’s Children’s Book Award Winner

Book Buzz

BBC

Book Riot

Buzzfeed

Epic Reads

The Evening Standard

The Globe and Mail

The Guardian

Huffpost

The New York Times

The Scotsman

The Telegraph

The Times

Times of India

We’ve been rushed off our feet issuing 2000+ books to our pupils visits throughout January and February after a long hiatus to accommodate prelim exams. In amongst it all, we still managed to squeeze in some excellent programmes for our pupils – it’s good to be back!

LGBT+ History Month – Heartstopper Party: We threw a huge Heartstopper soiree to coincide with LGBT+ History Month and Valentine’s/Palentine’s days. Pupils enjoyed a Heartstopper themed quiz created and delivered by one of our amazing Pupil Library Committee members. Every attendee got a chance to win three prizes: A package of skittles, a Heartstopper bookmark, and a Heartstopper colouring book.

Author Visit with Carrie Marshall: We were so fortunate to have musician, author and BBC tech journalist Carrie Marshall visit us to discuss her new book and what it is like to become an author.

Participatory Selection Sessions:  Hosting participatory selection sessions ensure our school library stock remains relevant and useful to our readers. Participatory Budgeting enable the library to represent the reading needs and interests of the school community. This term, we’ve focused on books for struggling and reluctant readers. Non-fiction is a big hit with some of our S1/2 participants, reflecting a recent study conducted by the National Literacy Trust as part of National Non-Fiction November. Key findings of the report are on the National Literacy Trust’s website).

Pathways to the Profession: Our first Pathways to the Profession talk was a success! We invited a Community Librarian from Glasgow Libraries, a Membership Officer from the Chartered Institute of Library and  Information Professionals Scotland (CILIPS), and a Library Assistant from Glasgow Caledonian University Library to chat with members of Pupil Library Committee and other pupils interested in a LIS career. The speakers chatted about their backgrounds and experiences, what their current roles involve, and answered several questions from the audience. A big thank you to CILIPS, Glasgow Libraries, and Glasgow Caledonian University Library for presenting!

Creative Writing Workshop: To coincide with World Book Day, we invited author Victoria Williamson to deliver a lunchtime workshop to members of our creative writing club. Victoria shared some helpful advice and techniques that will be very useful in our White Water Writers project in June, funded by the Scottish Government and administered by the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC). The group will work with the White Water Writers team to write and publish a novel collectively within a week. We’re really looking forward to this amazing opportunity.

Creative Writing competition: We’ve extending the deadline on our World Book Day creative writing competition. This year’s theme is Big Dreams.

Trending: March Booklists

Best New Children’s Books – Topptsa

Bookbug’s Book of the Month – Scottish Book Trust

Books of the Month – Love Reading For Kids

Books of the Month – Scholastic

Books of the Month – Waterstones

Children’s Books Roundup – Guardian

New Releases – Epic Reads

Literary and Cultural Events – March

9^th – 12^th StAnza Poetry Festival – Scotland’s International Poetry Festival (St Andrews, Scotland)

15th – 2^nd April Glasgow International Film Festival (Glasgow, Scotland)

15^th – 19^th Govan Music Festival (Glasgow, Scotland)

Book Buzz

BBC

Book Riot

Buzzfeed

Epic Reads

The Evening Standard

The Globe and Mail

The Guardian

Huffpost

The New York Times

The Scotsman

The Telegraph

The Times

Times of India