Book Week

Book Week is going to be Out of This World

Ten … nine … eight … seven … the countdown has begun to Brooke Weston's eagerly anticipated Book Week … Space and science is this year's theme with a stellar array of activities ready for blast off.

Head of Mission Control is librarian, Charlie Smith, who has worked out all the co-ordinates, plotted the trajectory and has her finger on the button to launch Book Week during the first week of next term.

There will be the usual favourites:

The Book Fair – Students will visit the library during tutor time to browse the books for sale and receive a promotional leaflet with a £1 money-off voucher.

Book Amnesty:

For Year 7s and those who have an abysmal memory the Book Amnesty is when you can return overdue items to the library with no questions asked – just a zany excuse required. There's a prize for the best one – last year's winner was: Zameen Brar with the excuse: 'Sherlock Holmes arrested me for book napping and the book is now being questioned.' Can you do better this year?

Quizzes and Competitions:

There's almost too many to shake a stick at - but most fiercely contested will be the Tutor Group Competition for Years 7, 8, 9 and 10, because, as we all know, it's not the taking part, it's the winning that counts! The victorious year groups will win a mystery prize (details to be announced).

The Year 9 Book Quiz is Wednesday 31 May (periods 4 and 5). As if that wasn't enough there will be quizzes and word searches in the library all week and an online quiz to match the member of staff with the book they are reading (intriguing, eh?).

Hot tips:

Author, Peter Simmonds will be passing on his skills to students in a creative writing workshop guaranteed to get some lively discussions and creative juices flowing.

Assemblies:

Librarian Charlie Smith will introduce the student reading group, launch Desert Island books and round everything off with the prize giving on Friday

Departments:

Design and Technology are having a 'pop-up book' competition for Year 8 students who will also get a chance to invent their own comic book characters during sessions with the English department when the origins of comic book genre will be explored.

One of the highlights of the week will be Auriga Astronomy's shows entitled 'The Science of Science Fiction for Year 7 students plus something so secret that we can't breathe a word about it yet… only to say that it's going to be out of this world!

Finally, to end on a space inspired, yet literary note: This was written by Plt Off John Gillespie Magee, an American who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Written on 3 September 1941, its author was inspired while flight testing a Spitfire Mk V at 30,000ft. He died, aged just 19, in a mid air collision over Lincolnshire barely three months later. A favourite among aviators and astronauts, the poem has been adopted as the official poem of the RAF and Royal Canadian Air Force. It was quoted by President Ronald Reagan following the loss of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986.

High Flight:

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, –and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of–wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew–
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.