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Wednesday 25 January 2012

Big Book Babble


Yesterday saw the launch by Red House and Scholastic of a new book show, Big Book Babble, hosted by children’s comedian James Campbell. The first episode featured Andy Stanton (of Mr Gum fame) and Liz Pichon (Tom Gates author and illustrator). It is aimed at children aged 7-11 - and in case you missed it, is available to watch on-demand here. The show will be streamed live to schools regularly throughout term time and the next author to be featured (7th February) is Jacqueline Wilson. We have books by all of them in stock.

 

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Celebrating Burns

It's Burns Night tomorrow! We still have resources available for you to borrow and I've done a brief document with external links. Some good ones are from:

Education Scotland
Scholastic
TES

Liz Lochhead photo by Norman McBeath

Carry on the celebrations till Thursday 26th with Scottish Book Trust. The latest in their Authors Live series is Celebrate Burns with Liz Lochhead. Liz is the Scottish Makar (like a Poet Laureate) and will be celebrating Burns' poetry and reading some of her own work. Follow the link to find out how to listen live at 11am or to download or stream the broadcast next week. Children from P6-S4 (9-16 years), or any lover of Burns' poetry, should enjoy it. There are resources about both Burns and Lochhead on the same link.

Monday 16 January 2012

Spread the joy of reading (and win prizes?)

Spread the joy of reading in your school - and maybe win prizes! Michael Rosen has teamed up with the Siobhan Dowd Trust in a campaign to build a database of good ideas for buliding a book loving school. The 10 schools who make the best suggestions will win £1000 worth of books.

Michael Rosen needs no introduction; he is a former Children's Laureate and we have large numbers of his books in the Library. Siobhan Dowd is also an author, but she had much less time to write - she died of cancer in 2007 aged just 47. One of her last acts was to set up this trust with the simple aim of bringing the joy of reading to those who need it most: children and young people who are disadvantaged and deprived of access to books. For this reason, one of the things you are asked when entering the competition is the percentage of children in your school who are eligible for free school meals. (Fee-paying schools are not eligible for a prize, though good ideas for encouraging reading are still welcome. Schools in more prosperous areas are eligible for entry if their initiative is very strong, but the Trust exists to favour readers from a disadvantaged background.)

We have three of Siobhan's books and are about to add to stock A monster calls by Patrick Ness, written from an idea she left behind and did not have time to do anything with. This is a great initiative and even if you don't win you could get some good ideas from the other entries to use in your school.

Thursday 12 January 2012

Julia Donaldson to visit Jordanhill

First of all, a Happy New Year and an apology for the lack of posts in 2012 so far. Those of you who have seen the state of the Library after the storms will understand the amount of time that has been spent running around with buckets chasing leaks!

I see from Twitter that Julia Donaldson is visiting the campus to talk to students next Wednesday.  That's really exciting news, so I thought I'd put together a few links in advance. First of all, I have written about her several times before in these blogposts and, as you might expect, the Library has a large selection of her books, listed here. Julia has her own website, as does her most famous character, the Gruffalo. She's also the Children's Laureate for 2011-13 and is a keen supporter of libraries, having spoken out against the type of cuts which are happening in many (mostly English) local authorities. (Read her views on her Children's Laureate blog).

When Julia became Laureate, a vote was taken to see which of her books were readers' favourites, and the results were 1. The Gruffalo. 2. Room on the Broom and 3. Stick Man, shown below.



I'm sure the visit will be really successful.