Book Week Scotland 2024
Book Week is an annual celebration of books and reading that takes place every November across Scotland. Book Week Scotland 2024 took place on 18–24 November- here’s how we celebrated in St Roch’s School Library.
Book Hunting
Our first years took part in a book scavenger hunt! First everyone played a quick Blooket quiz to refresh our learning about how the library is organised. Then we split into teams and got mission cards. The challenge was to find the books on your mission card and be the quickest to complete all 14. All the teams were fantastic, they all finished the challenge and we were very impressed by how speedy some were!
How to choose a book
We held a session on book choosing for second and third year classes. Sometimes pupils struggle to find the ‘right’ book for them when they visit the library and it can be a bit stressful. We want to make sure that everyone can leave the library with something they’ll enjoy for their class personal reading time.
For this session, pupils learned some simple strategies to help with choosing a book. Then we split into groups to complete a’ reading personality’ quiz which helped pupils to narrow down a couple of genres/library sections that might suit them. It was a good bit of fun which gave pupils some helpful pointers (some people were definitely surprised by their ‘personality’ result!). Want to find your reading personality? The quiz is available here as part of Scottish Book Trust’s Reading Schools resources .
Guiding Lights
Lastly, library volunteers lead by chief display planner Iman, did a great job on a lovely Book Week Display.
This year’s theme is hope and the volunteers chose to focus their display on Guiding Lights – a celebration of characters who give us strength, guidance and inspire us to keep us going. Volunteers made some great choices of books, including The sad ghost club by Lize Meddings, Punching the air by Ibi Zoboi & Yusef Salaam, and When stars are scattered by Victoria Jamieson & Omar Mohamed.
Well done volunteers! And a big thank you for all your help with the activities this week.
Lastly every year, people accross the country share stories as part of the ‘Scotland’s Stories’ campaign. Scottish Book trust include a handful of favourites in a free book for Book Week Scotland. You can order a free copy of this year’s collection ‘Hope’ now from the SBT website.
Welcome back to school Eastbank ! It has been a lonely library without you all. Can you believe our library actually looks this big? Isn’t it weird looking at it without any pupils in?
But what if your best friend starts doing things they shouldn’t really be doing? And it’s serious. Combined with trouble at home, the Final Year is a great read and one you can identify with concerning your first year at a new school.
What an amazing reader request has just come in to Eastbank. The graphic novel of Unfamiliar and it’s follow up have arrived. An adorable wee witch – Planchette – moves into a haunted house together with her familiar Marlow. Not a problem for a witch you’d think ! But a bargain haunted house throws up some funny problems for the young witch and her familiar. A cosy read about insiders, outsiders and all those in-between, there’s not much you can’t love about Unfamiliar. Ask Mrs Marshall to reserve both copies if you want double the fun.
Fabia & Hunnah in S3 are keen readers of new and trending fiction and popped in after school to chat about books.
“A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” is such a thrilling book! It’s about a high school girl named Pip who decides to investigate a murder case for a school project. As she delves deeper, she uncovers secrets and twists that keep you on the edge of your seat. The book is full of suspense and unexpected turns. It’s a real page-turner! If you enjoy mysteries, you’ll love this one! Fabia, S3
“The Inheritance Games” 
For World Book Day, I recommend ‘A Song of Wraith and Ruin’ by Roseanne A. Brown. I rated this book five stars. It is a fast paced, action-packed story about two people who experience love, loss, betrayal and it is very bingeable! It honestly felt almost like watching a movie (I even bought my own copy after reading it).
I loved that this book doesn’t portray black people as the negative stereotype seen in films, but instead portrays us as exactly what we are. Human. Chantelle, S6
The display is looking far more contemporary and the addition of the new stock has really brightened the place up.
participate in the entirely voluntary book dare scheme ! It’s a great example for the pupils to see how many staff, across all different subject areas in the school, love reading too. And the staff really enjoy showing off their, “Ask me what I’m reading?” badges as well.And that’s not all. Also, we’re really looking forward to World Book Day in March. The tokens have just arrived ! Watch this space and we’ll tell you what we get up to all through next month.
