The library elves have been busy building a Christmas tree with books, making Christmas trees from books and crafting 3D snowflakes from old magazines. It’s feeling very festive indeed in the school library! 🎄
It’s official – OLS is a ‘well read’ school! Marie Bishop, Caitlin Evoy, Roisín Evoy and Ms Harte were delighted to accept the PDST Wellread National Award on behalf of Our Lady’s School at a ceremony in Dublin yesterday. The award aims to create heightened awareness about the importance of creating a culture of reading in school communities for our young people as part of their personal and academic development. It recognises schools that actively foster a reading culture through a variety of activities and initiatives and our portfolio can be viewed here: https://padlet.com/librarian17/fh1his78cah0
Our main goal at OLS library is to encourage reading for pleasure and to instil good reading habits that enhance the intellectual and emotional development of our students. To support and further the vision and goals of the library, we have appointed 10 student Library Assistants. The team promotes the role and services of the library to the school community and makes a valuable contribution to the running of the library. Their duties include issuing, returning and shelving books, helping library users find books and information, recommending books to their fellow students, writing reviews for the library website and ensuring the library is tidy, well organised and welcoming.
The final week before the midterm break was Reading Week here at OLS. Our One Book One School pick this year was ‘Star By Star’ by Sheena Wilkinson, a timely read as 2018 marks the centenary of Irish women gaining the right to vote. The week was filled with brilliant bookish activities, including The Great Book Bake-Off, the Wonder Woman exhibition of inspirational women, blackout poetry sessions inspired by Sarah Crossan‘s #WeAreThePoets campaign, and scavenger hunts in the school library. Students and staff alike read Star By Star during DEAR time each day and we rounded off the week with a visit from the author herself, Sheena Wilkinson.
The first team to crack the Library Scavenger Hunt. This clever pair used their library skills and book knowledge to solve all the clues within the time limit of 15 minutes. Future librarians, perhaps?
Tasty creations.
Kaylin won a prize for this inspired piece of blackout poetry.
The brilliant Sheena Wilkson!
A rapt audience as Sheena reads from Star By Star.
Happy readers 🙂
Last week I attended the Children’s Books Ireland Awards ceremony where the Shadowing video featuring our Book Club was shown for the first time! I was so proud to see them up on the big screen and all of the authors were raving about how great they were afterwards! You can see the video below.
Marie Bishop B5 and I were judges for this years awards and it was such a wonderful experience to be there yesterday as the winners were announced.
Well done to all the featured students!
Marie Bishop, Sarah Hyland, Catherine Galvin, Rachel O’Connell, Roisin O’ Neill, Roisin Evoy, Aimee Moran, Karen Waters, Roisin Doheny, Rebecca Harper, Caitlin Evoy, and Sarah Moore.
The winners of the CBI Book of the Year Award were Deirdre Sullivan and Karen Vaughan for Tangleweed and Brine. During the ceremony students from King’s Hospital presented Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan with the Children’s Choice Award for Moonrise. The Judges’ Special Award: Eoin Colfer for Illegal. The Eilís Dillon Award for a first children’s book: Meg Grehan for The Space Between. Honour Award for Fiction: Sheena Wilkinson for Star by Star. Honour Award for Illustration: Kevin Waldron for Chocolate Cake.
See link below for more info on the winners
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Just announced today Sarah Crossan, the author who visited us in November is the new Laureate na nÓg!
Watch her video below where she talks about her plans for her Laureateship #WeAreThePoets
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We have an author in first year! Casey Anne in B1 has posted her first Fan Fiction online! If you haven’t guessed by the quote above, it’s Doctor Who fan fiction and you can read it here https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12916508/1/Tales-of-the-TARDIS
#DoctorWho #FanFiction #writing #creativewriting #libraries #SchoolLibrary #AreYouAHariboJellyBeanBaby
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Without fail every year at least one new favourite book of mine comes from reading books from the longlist of the Women’s Prize for fiction.
This year’s longlist is looking just as promising, you can see the whole list here:
Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist 2018
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig
Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Sight by Jessie Greengrass
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
So far I have only read one on the list, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and I would highly recommend it to seniors! Two more sound particularly interesting to me, The Idiot by Elif Batuman, and H(a)ppy by Nicola Barker (this one because it sounds dystopian and I have a soft spot for dystopian fiction!)
Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life. Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely anything is better than…fine?
Selin, a tall, highly strung Turkish-American from New Jersey turns up at Harvard and finds herself dangerously overwhelmed by the challenges and possibilities of adulthood. She studies linguistics and literature, teaches ESL and spends a lot of time thinking about what language – and languages – can do.
Along the way, she befriends Svetlana, a cosmopolitan Serb, and obsesses over Ivan, a mathematician from Hungary. The two conduct a hilarious relationship that culminates with Selin spending the summer teaching English in a Hungarian village and enduring a series of surprising excursions. Throughout her journeys, Selin ponders profound questions about how culture and language shape who we are, how difficult it is to be a writer, and how baffling love is.
Imagine a perfect world where everything is known, where everything is open, where there can be no doubt, no hatred, no poverty, no greed. Imagine a System which both nurtures and protects. A Community which nourishes and sustains. An infinite world. A world without sickness, without death. A world without God. A world without fear.
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The shortlist was compiled by a group of judges, two of whom were Marie Bishop B5 as the young judge, and Ms. Lundon the librarian. The shortlist represents the best in Irish Children’s Literature each year. All titles can be seen on the poster below and are available for loan.
The Shadowing Scheme allows reading groups all over Ireland to read and vote on their favourite titles. The winner of this receives the coveted Children’s Choice Award. Last year’s winner was our favourite The Call by Peadar O’Guilin! We can’t wait to see what the reader favourite will be this year! The award ceremony will be held in May so all will be revealed then. 🤔📚❤
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Shortlisted Titles:
A Dangerous Crossing by Jane Mitchell
A Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea written by Sarah Webb and illustrated by Steve McCarthy
Chocolate Cake written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Kevin Waldron
Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers
Illegal written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin and illustrated by Giovanni Rigano
Moonrise by Sarah Crossan
Rabbit and Bear: The Pest in the Nest written by Julian Gough and illustrated by Jim Field
Star by Star by Sheena Wilkinson
Tangleweed and Brine written by Deirdre Sullivan and illustrated by Karen Vaughan
The Space Between by Meg Grehan
THE CHOICE BY EDITH EDGER
In The Choice, Dr Edith Eger shares her experience of the Holocaust and the remarkable stories of those she has helped ever since. Today, she is an internationally acclaimed psychologist whose patients include survivors of abuse and soldiers suffering from PTSD. She explains how many of us live within a mind that has become a prison, and shows how freedom becomes possible once we confront our suffering.
Like Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, but exceptional in its own right, The Choice is life changing. Warm, compassionate and infinitely wise, it is a profound examination of the human spirit, and our capacity to heal.
Previous Book Club picks:
Senior Book Club January Edition📚📚📚
Senior Book Club December Edition 🎄❄☃📚
November Book Club Sarah Crossan Special!
September Senior Book Club Picks
📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚
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