70 Years of the Carnegie Medal

This is the 70th anniversary year of the Carnegie Medal, the most important award for children’s books in the UK. There is currently a display of many of the winning books in the LRC. You might be surprised what is and isn’t there –no Harry Potter!

As well as choosing one of these classic books to read you can vote online for your favourite by going to http://www.ckg.org.uk/toptens. Poll closes 12noon 14 June.

My all time favourite is Granny was a Buffer Girl by Berlie Doherty. It won the prize back in the 1980's -which of course I am far too young to remember!!

Staff Book Group

Our Staff Book Group met today to discuss our latest read, Louise Welsh's The Bullet Trick. We all enjoyed it, finding it quite dark in places. There was a general agreement that if we had not known that the author was a woman we would have thought it was a man. But this was a good thing as it worked perfectly for the story, and made the main, male character very believable. We also reckoned that if we had seen the book in a library or shop there's a good chance we wouldn't have picked it up thinking it wasn't our style, but in fact it proved hard to put down.

We chose The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney to read next.

Carnegie Shadowing

The Shortlist has been announced.
The Books have arrived.
It's time to get reading!!!

It's that time of year again when we get the chance not only to read some of the best books of the past year, but we get to tell the world what we think of them. Using our very own space on the Carnegie Shadowing website (see the link in the grey box on the right) we can post our thoughts, praise and criticism about each book. There is already one review posted!! You can also check out the views of hundreds of other schools in the UK.

We will be kicking off this year's shadowing with a chance to choose your first book and to get more information at 1.10pm in the LRC on Tuesday 1st May. I'll look forward to seeing you!!

Pictures of the shorlisted books are below. Find out more about them at http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/carnegie/current_shortlist.php

The winner will be announced at the end of June.

Wee Review of Month

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy is a book that you dream about reading but rarely get the chance to. It is a mix of fantasy, horror, violence and comedy; just enough to make it seem real. The main Character is twelve-year-old Stephanie, who turns out to be more than the great Skulduggery bargained for. Stephanie forces him to take her on his adventures, and over time she gets to know him as an ace detective, mighty mage and master of dirty tricks and burglary (in the name of the greater good, of course).

Oh yes. I forgot to mention that Skulduggery Pleasant is a living Skeleton!

Scott Holland, S3

Do you have a short review you would like to share? If so either bring it to me in the LRC or post via the comments link.

East Ayrshire Reader's Cup

The last week of term saw us host the year group finals of the EAC Reader's Cup. After thrilling competitions on both Tuesday and Wednesday, we now have a team who will compete against the other schools in East Ayrshire at Loudon Academy in May.

Our S1 finalists are Korin Vallance and Holly Cameron and S2 are represented by Louisa McCaffrey and Jenna Dickson. Our reserves are Brenna McCulloch and Ruth McKay.

Well done to everybody who took part and Good Luck to our team.