I'm not dead, just floating...

As quoted from a favourite teen-hood Pink song. Yeah, so it's been a whole month, pretty much. Easter has been and gone and the three weeks seem like a glorious memory, now that I've been thrust straight back into both work and volunteering all at once again. I've also decided to get it over and done with and take my grade eight violin exam in June, so every minute that's not spend doing anything else, is currently being taken up with screeching away to the same three tunes in the vague hope that I can pass, and not let on the fact I haven't played 'properly' in about 3 years prior to September.

But I digress.

So that Easter reading list? I only had four books on there: Rebecca, Macbeth, The Bell Jar, and a book called All the truth that's in me, for the book club I help run for the youngest year in school. Rebecca I finished - the last post I did was a review of the book in fact. All the Truth that's in me, I also finished (I gave it about a 3.5/5 - it wasn't really my thing, but then again I am, sadly, no longer a member of the intended age group so maybe that had something to do with it). The Bell Jar I maddeningly took with me when I went to visit my family, then left there. So that did not get read. Macbeth I've been putting off for months. So that didn't happen either. Howeverrrr I did read the Hunger Games books, numbers 2 and 3, completing the series (finally). I enjoyed the books, although the parallels to Battle Royal are many and I can understand fans of BR when they accuse Collins of 'idea stealing'. I enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy in it's own right, and without being a spoiler sport, was very happy with the ending (ifyouknowwhatimean). I also read How To Be A Woman, by Caitlin Moran. I may do a separate post outlining my feelings about that book. Far too complex to sum up here.

So that was the reading. But what do school Librarians do in the school holidays? Do we swan off and take three weeks to spend at our leisure?

No. We do stock check. A task I'm pretty sure was created by the devil.

Stock check, in brief, consists of me and CC (my boss and other half of the Library team at our school), going through all of the shelves, in all of the libraries (there are 7) ticking off on a spread sheet, which books are on the shelves and which are not. You then have to discover which of the books that are not on the shelf are on loan, and which of the ones have just simply been taken away. Basically stolen. You then have to mark the missing books onto the main library system, so that when people search for a book that's missing they don't go looking in vain on the shelves, thinking that it's there.

It's a job that takes forever. But does need doing. And to be honest, it doesn't require much brain power, so you can just crank up your favourite music, throw your shoes in a corner and zone out for a bit while you tick off all of those books. I can't believe how CC managed to do this alone for all these years. Hopefully together we did a more thorough job and it was slightly less boring because we had each other to moan about it with.

We did each take a week off, myself at the beginning and CC at the end. I spent a week with my Mum and Dad and took a day trip to Bruges with best girly friend who was awaiting uni results so needed waffles and beer pronto! I also saw JJ at the very end of the hols for three days and an old uni friend who I hadn't seen in about a year for the weekend in between. So lots of friend seeing in-between the productivity. Aside from that, when completing stock check I was obviously living back on school site. There is nothing more lonely that living on a massive school site, when there's no pupils and no staff left living there because they've all gone away. I watched a lot of movies, read a lot and daydreamed a lot in the evenings. And sometimes went to pubs for tea to a) steal their wifi and b) just remind myself that there was still human life out there and I wasn't part of some awful sci-fi plot where the only girl left alive on earth is trapped in a massive school grounds watching various Japanese anime films over and over and dreaming up various alternate realities including one where cats have taken over the earth and considering how useful it would be if humans had three arms and wondering if we'll evolve this in a couple of thousands of years (if we haven't killed off ourselves or the planet by then).

Exciting times tomorrow: I have to help interview the candidates for my job! As I leave the school at the end of this term, they're interviewing for someone to replace me for next year. Very excited to have a chat with them and give them the tour!

So for now, I need to cherish this rare morning where I technically have nothing to do...

Over and out!

Hot off the shelf: What I'm reading - 'Rebecca' DuMaurier, Daphnie

I've read one from my Easter reading list! I rated this three out of five. One one level, I enjoyed it. On all other levels it frustrated the hell out of me.

 

Why did I like it?
The writing is excellent. The language is so eloquent, yet so understandable. She tells a brilliant story and has a  genuine talent for sending shivers down your unsuspecting spine. It's creepy and haunting. So what's the problem? I'll tell you. My problem was our unnamed protagonist.

 

I understand that the novel is rooted in a time much different to our own, and that social conventions and people in general were much different than they are today. But the newly married, unnamed Mrs De Winter is so frustrating and unsure I almost gave up on the book more than once (something I have almost never done). It's like she's constantly seeking reassurance. She is always questioning herself and other people there's hardly any room for development to her character. When she marries Max in what is quite a hurried and exciting fashion, I wanted her to sustain some of that great spontaneity, it made me think her to have a certain hidden passion for adventure. This thought was steadily and continually  squashed as I continued to read. As soon as she gets to Manderley she goes back to being meek, just as she was before, as a companion to Mrs Van Hopper. She doesn't know how to behave, constantly curses her 'bad breeding' and does nothing about it. Not once does she say, hey you know what, I don't know how to play golf. Maybe I should learn, then when someone next suggests a game I could join in instead of apologising meekly to everyone and telling them I simply cannot play.

 

Also her entire survival seems to be dependent on 'he loves me, he loves me not'. Even when the biggest plot twist in the whole novel is revealed, her only thought is "he had never loved Rebecca". This is repeated so many times, parroted to the audience, it seems to be the only thing in her one track mind. The whole story had been building to this moment and all she can do is go "thank god, the guy I married, despite only knowing him for a couple of months, doesn't love his dead wife". As if it would be a huge deal if he did. She married him, knowing he'd lost a wife approx a year before. You'd have thought that if the notion he had loved another woman bothered her, she wouldn't have gone through with it.

 

Apart from this I think Rebecca was a great read. I'm trying to read several books from the BBC's top 100 books list, and hopefully will post some more reviews soon.

 

Over and out.

Volunteering: Week 2 and my Easter reading list!

So I’ve done 2/3 days of volunteering this week, the last being tomorrow and I thought it would be good to compare this second week to the first week I did. For a start, I am more organised. I’ve been given a timetable. I’ll be doing individual reading with pupils from year 1 on Tuesday and Thursday, with pupils from year 3 on Wednesday, and spending a little bit of time in the Library on a Tuesday as well. I’m really grateful for the timetable, as it will hopefully get the kids familiar with me, so they feel more comfortable reading with me. The last half an hour of each morning will be spent with the same three year 2 pupils, in a group reading session. However, after my first attempt at this on Tuesday, today I insisted on seeing them individually today. They lacked attention, distracted each other and were generally a nightmare to control, when part of a group. I left wondering whether it was my fault, but after speaking with the teachers – yes they were bad – but it is generally quite a difficult year group on the whole. So on the one hand, I was glad they weren’t simply acting up because I was new, and they were testing me.  On the other hand, it meant I needed to re-think things. I sought advice from JJ’s mum, who used to teach special needs children (not that these children have special needs, but she had some good advice in regards to short-attention spans) and I decided I would see if they behaved differently individually for a start. So this morning I saw them one by one, and what a difference! The teacher had apparently reprimanded them for their behaviour the previous day, after another teacher saw me struggling with them and had let her know. But they concentrated better, were generally more enthusiastic and we got through far more in ten minutes than we’d managed in half an hour as a group. I would definitely like to see them by themselves again in the future, as they seemed to enjoy the individual attention more as well. I even had one boy suggest he bring his books from home to read to me, which I obviously encouraged, after he learnt I’d be seeing him three days a week.

On the whole, today was far more positive than yesterday. After the bad session yesterday I went to work afterwards miserable, convinced I’d wasted their time and my own. But today has rekindled my enthusiasm and reminded me of why I set out to volunteer in the first place. What the children seem to value most is time focussed on just them. They are not part of a class when they’re reading to me, but just themselves. They can chat to me about their book and ask questions without judgement of anyone else and I’m really learning how to interact with different age groups, which hopefully will be really valuable in the long run.

Thankfully I have the Easter break coming up. I will be in work helping to complete the stock check for some of the holidays, but first I’m making the trip up to see my family, and go on a mini-escape to Bruges (somewhere I’ve never been!) for a day with one of my best girly friends. Bliss! There’ll be lots of reading no doubt too. Books I hope to complete before the end of the break include:

• Rebecca – Daphnie Du Maurier (I’m about a third of the way through this)
• Macbeth – Shakespeare
• The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
• All the Truth that’s in me – Julie Berry (For the Carnegie Shadowing book club I help run)

Maybe I’ll get round to reading more. But those four have been sat waiting for a while! Expect some reviews too…

Two more days of work! For now,

Over and out.

Hot off the Shelf: What I'm reading - "Ghost Hawk" Cooper, Susan.

In preparation for the first Carnegie Shadowing book club for our year sevens that is being held today (excitement!) I wanted to read at least one of the books on the shortlist, so I could post a review both on here and on our book club website, to give the pupils an idea of what sort of things they can talk about in a review. See my previous post about Carnegie Shadowing here if you're not sure what it is.

The shortlist for the Carnegie medal 2014 runs as such...

All the truth that's in me By Julie Berry (14+)
The Bunker Diary By Kevin Brooks (14+)
The Child's Elephant By Rachel Campbell-Johnson (11+)
Ghost Hawk By Susan Cooper (11+)
Blood Family By Anne Fine (14+)
Rooftoppers By Katherine Rundell (11+)
Liar and Spy By Rebecca Stead (9+)
The Wall By William Sutcliffe (11+)

There's a really annoying theme of violence and destruction and downright misery running through a lot of these books. It's going to make our book club, whose members are all 11/12, somewhat difficult. CHILDREN'S AWARD PEOPLE. Not YA. Children's. It would be great to see more 9+ and 11+ really. Anyway, enough of my annoyance in regards to the selection. What did I think of Ghost Hawk?

Despite Susan Copper being around for like...ever. (She's 78!) I've never read any of her books. If Ghost Hawk is representative of the rest, I'll be sure to read more in the future! The book is divided into four parts, and although sometimes the book skips ahead in time between parts, we always have the same narrator, which ensures it's easy to follow. For the first 130 pages or so, it's a really good story but I was wondering whether anything dramatic would happen, as nothing major had really surprised me yet. Then something major does happen and it's a real shock! It's like Cooper is taking you for a little mountain stroll, where you quietly observe everything, and wonder at the view and then, when you're looking the other way, she pushes you off the edge. I was really shocked, and that's what got me hooked until the end. I really wanted to know the outcome.

If you liked the story of Pocahontas, or are interested in Native Americans, it's a great book for you. We follow the story of eleven year old Little Hawk as he's sent into the woods for three months, alone, to earn his right to be a man. While he's gone, English settlers have begun to land on the shores of America, and it has devastating consequences, which he learns on his return. His fate is later joined by that of English boy John, and their lives and story are entwined throughout the rest of the novel. It's a great story about injustice, and about the dangers arrogance and pride can bring to people. It shows both the idiocy and merits of religion and what friendship, honesty and being 'good' means. There's a neat little 'afterwards' section, in which Cooper runs through the real history of the English landing on America's shores, so you can see where she's fictionalized real events and where she's just made up parts for the story.

Overall I rated this 4/5. A great story, easy to follow and read, with some gorgeous writing. I may have snipped the story down a little in places, but overall I enjoyed reading this book. Can't wait to try the others!

Over and Out.

Volunteering. The first steps.

Well the week is nearly over. TGIF never rang so true. For three mornings this week, I’ve been volunteering at a local primary school, both in one-to-one reading sessions with the children and helping them to sort out their library. These three mornings have been followed straight by my usual eight hours at work. So I’m a little tired. Here’s an outline of my three morning sessions.

Day one: Reading with Year 1 Pupils.

Unfortunately I only managed to read with three, as they had school photographs that day and the whole school was then called to assembly. The three I read with were of a very high ability, so needed little help, however I found that they needed corrections occasionally when reading too fast and stumbling over words. Slow down were definitely the two words of the day. I was told they just really enjoy the attention being purely on them for ten minutes out of the day – which sounds awful, but children can really gain confidence away from their classmates. I tried my best to be encouraging and helpful for them. I’m looking forward to spending time with the struggling readers also, perhaps next week, to see what different challenges they’ll bring.

Day Two: In the Library

Sweet flip-flops that library was a mess. After being shown around by an older pupil yesterday I knew where everything was and a teacher set me up with everything I might need. I spent most of the morning just organising the shelves and putting everything back in the correct place. I added shelf markers for the non-fiction, so the children could find what they wanted quickly and easily and that was as far as I got. I emerged dusty and satisfied and tootled off to work.

Day Three: Back to the Library

Not wanting to be a hindrance to anybody, I just picked off where I left – in the library. This time completing a display I’d been asked to do yesterday, but had run out of time to start. For World Book Day (see the post about WBD at my workplace here) the children here had written book reviews. So I chose some neat-ish and colourful examples and did a BOOKS WE LOVE display. It received many admiring comments. I am a display queen. I then began to make my way through the books that needed to be added to the library system. The management system they use is actually the junior version of Eclipse, the library software we use at work, so I found it really easy to add books and so on. I completed a small pile before heading off to ‘real’ work. I even helped a little boy return a book at play time.

So all in all I feel I’ve been useful so far. I’ve tried my best to keep questions to a minimum as teachers are very busy people and just try to get on with whatever needs doing. I hope next week to carry on reading with the children a little more than I have this week. Maybe set up a permanent rota, so I am reading with the same years each time so the children get used to me.

And that’s that. I feel like this right now.

Sleepy time. For tomorrow we have our first Carnegie Shadowing book club meeting. Power on.

Over and out.

Getting involved: Carnegie Shadowing

I am tres excited. Tomorrow morning I’m going to talk to our year seven students about the Carnegie shadowing scheme, and set up regular meetings with those who want to be a part of it. It may be the chance I’ve been looking for to bond with students! For those unaware, Carnegie shadowing works thusly:

• The books on the shortlist for the Carnegie medal get sent to our school. I think we’ve ordered three of each. (We don’t know yet what they will be. We’re getting them anyway. The shortlist is announced on the 18^th).
• Those students who want to be involved, meet once a week with myself and a member of their boarding house staff (who’s also a really keen reader) in an informal setting (with cake and squash) and we have a session similar to that of a book club. They choose books to read from the shortlist, we discuss them, we have games and generally just chat about all things bookish.
• They have their own personalised page on the Carnegie shadowing website, on which lots of cool things can happen – for example I can set up polls, they can post reviews and they can watch video clips from nominated authors. There’s a space for a blog…you can even create your own magazine. You basically get as involved as you want.
• You have weekly meetings right through the summer term, until the winner is announced in June.

How fabulous is that? What I really like, is that it will allow the students who like to read, but don’t really ever get to talk about it to anyone, to talk about it, and get enthused without anyone calling them geeky. Geeks are in anyway. TRUTH.

They can express their opinions openly with members of staff and fellow students and it could help develop their confidence. Anyone who wants to join in that isn’t a particularly strong reader will hopefully find themselves supported and girls who are quick readers will enjoy the challenge of finishing all the books. I for one am very excited and can’t wait to post an update about how everything is going. I know for a fact we’ll have at least a little interest, as there are some girls who are powering through the library’s books and are obviously keen readers. Fingers crossed we can get some others involved too and get everyone excited about reading. This also means I have to read the books too, so I can help guide discussions. Hopefully they’ll be some good ones!

This is what I was made for!! Ah!

Over and Outttt.

World Book Day!

World Book Day is on the 6^th March. However, for reasons unknown, the school I work at
celebrated on the Friday 7^th. But what did we do? Did the day go well? And most importantly, is it still cool to dress up in high school?

Yes. It’s always cool to dress up. Always.

I love dressing up, and seeing as you don’t really get asked to do it much beyond Uni years, I fully embraced the opportunity. I’ve never really heard of any high schools making their students dress up for World Book Day. In my experience it was limited to pre and primary school. And, because I’m blonde, and was an even blonder child, Alice in Wonderland was the inevitable choice for much of the time. But no, here at the boarding school I work at right now, World Book Day is thoroughly celebrated every year, and students and staff really get into the dressing up. I guess it’s just nice to not have to be in their school uniform for the day. My costume this year was the Owl, from ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’ (I was carrying around a toy cat – I did not manage to make a pea green boat). Some of the costumes were stunning. There were photo opportunities during the day, and lots of people turned up to be snapped (lots more than last year apparently) and there will be a prizes given out at the end of the term, for groups and individuals. Us librarian staff get to choose a winner, and there's an open vote held on the intranet so the pupils can choose too. Some of the great costumes that stick in my memory was a 'Very Hungry Caterpillar' constructed from a sleeping bag, a pack of Dalmatians, a Coroline (including buttons!) and the cast from the Three musketeers. There were also some odd ones, Teletubbies and Mario/Luigi included, who I'm pretty sure don't have a single book to their name. But it's the taking part that counts :)

The English and RS departments also banded together to organise a debate about evil portrayed in fiction. That happened in the evening and seeing as I couldn't attend, hopefully I can get the low down on how it all went from the staff who arranged it and perhaps do a post. Maybe they'll even be a guest post!

We also held a Book Amnesty:  As we’re a boarding school, and as such, seeing as the students live on site, we can’t really install any security in the library (imagine if an alarm went off at midnight when we weren’t there?), a LOT of books don’t get signed out properly and so go ‘walkies’. We really pushed everyone to keep a look out for library books and return any they may have that haven’t been signed out properly, with the promise of no wrath from us library staff. (Not that there’s normally wrath. We’re usually just glad to see the book back).  This was fairly successful, especially in Junior Library, where several missing books appeared in the returns box, placed sneakily in when we weren't there!

I think the success of the day was, in part, due to the hype we tried to create. Obviously this being my first and only year here, I don't have previous years to compare to - but I really feel we pushed advertising it well in advance so people could prepare an outfit. I made sure to ask pupils and staff about it often, to keep it on everyone's minds and I think people probably wanted to shoot me by the time the day finally arrived, but it all paid off and costumes were worn all throughout the day.

In the run up to WBD, I had another idea for a display in Junior Library. I designed a poster, asking them to imagine what the world would be like if Harry Potter, Katniss, Matilda etc had never existed. I then put a tub full of cards and pens to the side of the notice board and invited them to write down their favourite book characters. I wasn’t sure whether I’d get a response but I actually had the opposite problem - we almost didn't have enough notice board! Characters ranged from Winnie-the-pooh, to God (!?). It was also a really great way of seeing which books they’re reading so we can buy them for the library if we don't already have them. To follow on from this, as Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit was a fairly popular character choice, I've done a new display asking 'If they could spend a day with one character from LOTR, who would it be and why?' with some pictures of characters and reasons they might want to hang out with them. For example: Gollum - You could go for Sushi (we hear he likes raw fish) and play a good old fashioned game of riddles. Some response so far, but it's only been there a day, so we'll give it time before I comment further.

Basically a fun day overall. Here’s the social media side of things for World Book Day:

Website: http://www.worldbookday.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worldbookdayuk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/WorldBookDayUK/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/WorldBookDay2012?feature=guide

and that's me done for now. Time to go to work (I think I'm one of few people who can honestly say they look forward to going to work!)
Over and out.