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:
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.
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.
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.
Jordanhill Library closes at 5pm on 23rd December. The University officially opens again on 5th January, but we have 3 open days in between: Thursday-Friday 29th and 30th December and Wednesday 4th January. See our opening hours page for full details.
Behind the Bookshelf is a great new initiative from Books for Keeps which offers a way of bring an author into your classroom virtually. It's not free - it's £99 for a year if you join before 15/1/12, but for that you get unlimited access to over 150 inspirational video clips, with your own
account, plus teachers notes, creative writing courses, and lots of hints and
tips. However, Books for Keeps has a competition to win three free subscriptions.
Of course, for completely free author material, look no further than Scottish Book Trust, especially their Meet our Authors and Teaching Resources sections.
Bali Rai is an author of teenage novels, largely inspired by his working class Punjabi / Sikh background (in Leicester) but accessible to everyone. He recently finished a stint as Writer in Residence at MyVoice, a creative reading and writing programme for young people run by The Reading
Agency, and is now Online Writer in Residence at Booktrust*. Read his last post for MyVoice and his first for Booktrust and you will find a passionate advocate for young people and the roles of reading and literacy (and libraries) in helping them develop their full potential. We have some of his books in stock here.
In The Crew, meet tough and street-smart Ellie, Jas, Della, Will and Billy. They're
the Crew, and they live in what they call the Ghetto - the city centre estates
where everyone is skint and it's important to stick together. One day they find
a fortune in notes and life suddenly becomes very dangerous.
In Dream on Baljit is mad about football and dreams of
playing for Liverpool, much to the disapproval of his parents, so when he is invited to trials at Leicester City, he has
to lie about his whereabouts.
(Un)arranged marriage, set partly in the UK and partly in the Punjab region of India, is a perceptive and up-to-date glimpse into a young man's fight to free
himself from family expectations and an arranged marriage that he rejects.
*PS talking of Booktrust, it has a recently revamped website which is worth looking at, especially the children's books and books for teens sites.
There was a glitzy premiere this week for Martin Scorsese's new film, his first in 3D, Hugo - But did you know it was based on a book we have in the library? The invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznic (Scholastic, 2007) is a beautiful book for the 9+ age group - it might look dauntingly thick, but much of it is taken up with black and white illustrations, so its already quite filmic in quality. It tells the story of Hugo, an orphan and a thief, who lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station. He
desperately believes a broken automation will make his dreams come true, but
when his world collides with an eccentric girl and a bitter old man, Hugo's
undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy.
The movie has its own website where you can watch the trailer, and you can borrow the book from us - find it at J 808.3 SEL.
