Holiday Break coming up!!

Thank you for all your resource returns, and patience with my grouchiness. 

Next term will see a new Library Management System in operation, which should be miles better than our poor 20 year system that battles along with us every week - so the start back will be BUSY!

Enjoy a lovely, relaxing break - and don't forget to include LOADS of recreational reading.  It lowers the blood pressure, calms the mind - and, well it's just good for you.  Snuggle up with a blanket, hot chocolate and just forget about everything for a while.  The real world will come knocking on your door soon enough, so make the most of it.

See you all back next term

Something to ponder

Every so often the conversation about reading levels for students pops up again and whether or not this is a good way to teach children to read.  

My personal opinion is that - in an ideal world, which, of course we aren't - that being encouraged to read for pleasure, and reading things that interest them, is going to get them on board far more than trying to hit some target number of books.

However, check out the link below for more thoughts and opinions on the matter from people probably more qualified than myself.  

 https://theconversation.com/how-should-reading-be-taught-in-schools-61361

Australian Futures Project: My Big Idea

Through an email from another Librarian, I came across the 'My Big Idea' challenge - which is part of the Australian Futures project.  This is a nationwide ideas competition, which is focused on creating positive change for Australia - within our communities and with our hopes and ideals. 

Their hope is to foster a culture of ideas and action, build capability in the communities and to instil a sense of possibility for all Australians.

Is there something you - or your students - are passionate about?  And you think you know what it would take to make it awesome? 

Then check out the link below and get involved. 

https://australianfutures.org/my-big-idea/

Australian History as Fiction

Another new title for our shelves - this one is part of the My Australian Story series which are historical novels for older children.  Each book is written in the style of a fictional diary of a young person living during an important time period or an event that happened during Australian history.  

We already have a number on the shelves, dealing with subjects such as Ballarat goldfields, Bombing of Darwin, Cyclone Tracy and this new one is about the Snowy River Scheme.


Blurb:
Eva Fischer has moved to Cabramurra, the highest town in Australia. Eva feels on top of the world too. Surrounded by people of every nationality, Eva makes new friends and tries strange foreign food - such as pizza. Eva learns to ski and ride, and even learns that being half German isn't so bad after all. But all around her, momentous things are happening. The Snowy Mountains Scheme is underway, huge dams have been built, tunnels constructed, homes abandoned, people lost...

 They are a great series, well written and suck you into the story.  Well worth a read.

Another new title

Another resource gracing our display shelves at the moment which has been generating a lot of browsing time with the students, is a non-fiction title written in picture book style.  It is about the creatures who live in our Australian deserts and how they have adapted to survive comfortably in these temperatures.  (See the blurb below)

The author, a former teacher, has lived in the Arctic all her life - such a totally different lifestyle to what she is writing about here.  Her passion for nature inspired her to start writing nature books for young readers, which fuse gentle narratives with incredible facts about the natural world.

Travel to one of the hottest places in the world, and discover the amazing animals who call the desert home. Meet the unique creatures of the Australian desert, from the Sand Goanna and Red Kangaroo, and find out just how these incredible creatures have adapted to survive in temperatures as high as 40 degrees! Packed with fantastic illustrations which beautifully depict these animals and their desert habitat, this title will captivate, amaze and inform readers.

New titles in the Library

I am often surprised how quickly time slips away - you get busier than usual and then whoosh - here you are nearly 6 weeks later and no new posts.  And it isn't as if nothing has been happening either ... Sports Day, PD Day and so on.

We have had a few new titles arrive in the Library, which are all now processed and on display ready to be borrowed.  A couple of these were requests from the students - if bitterly complaining that the next in the series they are reading wasn't available could be called a request.  (I chose to see it as such)

Ghost in the Billabong: by Jackie French
 This is the fifth title in her historical fiction series which is loosely based around the song 'Waltzing Maltilda' and follows the lives of a family through from the 1800s.  
In this book, hippies wear beads, demonstrators march against the Vietnam War, and the world waits to see the first human steps on the moon's surface. But at Gibbers Creek, Jed Kelly sees ghosts, from the past and future, at the Drinkwater billabong where long ago the swaggie leaped to his defiant death. But is seventeen-year-old Jed a con artist or a survivor? When she turns up at Drinkwater Station claiming to be the great-granddaughter of Matilda Thompson's dying husband, Jed clearly has secrets.  Set during the turbulence of the late 1960s, this was a time when brilliant and little-known endeavours saw Australia play a vital role in Neil Armstrong's 'one giant leap for mankind' on that first unforgettable moon walk.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 3: by Jeff Kinney
 Let’s face it: Greg Heffley will never change his wimpy ways. Somebody just needs to explain that to Greg’s father. You see, Frank Heffley actually thinks he can get his son to toughen up, and he enlists Greg in organized sports and other "manly” endeavors. Of course, Greg is easily able to sidestep his father’s efforts to change him. But when Greg’s dad threatens to send him to military academy, Greg realizes he has to shape up . . . or get shipped out.


Wool: by Hugh Howey 
 'Wool' is another of the dystopian books that the students seem to love and is billed as the 'next Hunger Games'.
 In a ruined and hostile landscape, in a future few have been unlucky enough to survive, a community exists in a giant underground silo.
Inside, men and women live an enclosed life full of rules and regulations, of secrets and lies.
To live, you must follow the rules. But some don't. These are the dangerous ones; these are the people who dare to hope and dream, and who infect others with their optimism.
Their punishment is simple and deadly. They are allowed outside.
Jules is one of these people. 
She may well be the last. 

 These are available and ready for loan now so come on in and have a browse.  Lots more stuff here to catch your attention, I promise.