Escape to everywhere

The Children’s Book Council of Australia Book Week is from 19 to 26 August. The theme this year is ‘Escape to Everywhere’, which is alluding to the avenue of escape into the worlds in which novels are set. There have been displays and banners in the Primary Library using this theme.

The students are always keen to purchase a book for their home bookshelf. Students volunteered for a working Bee on 14 August, assembling the flyers which have now been distributed. The Primary Library gratefully receives commission on sales which it uses to buy books for the Primary Library.

NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge closing on Friday 25 August at midnight. 

There are still some students who have 4 or less books to enter to achieve the Challenge.

Perhaps the challenge is now to those students who have not achieved the Challenge yet to access their record on the website for NSW PRC and enter a few more of those books they have been reading.

https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html

Congratulations to the following students who have recently completed the NSW Premiers Reading Challenge 2017

Year 1 – Cooper Adler, Cameron Barel, Lexi Butt, Phoenix Gien, Jack Harrison, Allana Litvak, Grace Lyons, Mirabella Marshall, Edan Merritt, Jake Rosenfeld, Elah Sharabi, Maia Sharabi, Jasper Schraibman, Noaa Smily, Kayla Strous, Nathaniel Weinberger, Dean Wolf and Jacob Yakubson.

Year 2 – Ethan Gross, Misha Grynberg, Jonathan Igra, Indigo Joseph Steward, Tyson Latter, Seth Nachman, Isaac Nurick, Noah Revelman, Emily Seemann, Gabrielle Seemann, Brandon Shevelev, Benjamin Utian, Xavier Wilson and Jacob Zyl.

Year 3 – Oliver Allen, Joshua Barnett, Lia Brock, Declan Christie, Ariella Cohen, Samuel Dworkin, Louis Faktor, Alexander Gellert, Orlando Gien, Jake Isenberg, Yael Joffe, Gabriella Karro, Xander Keller, Phoebe Machlin, David Miller, Josephine Miron, Amelie Mueller, Rory Nathan, Gideon Owen, Max Rose, Nova Rosenzveig, Toni Sher, Ari Smaller, Jacob Solomon, Max Tsipris, Noah Vexler, Lara Yakubson, and Daniel Zipser.

Year 4 – Sahara Afutu, Shai Berkovic and Elias Davis.

Year 5 – Willow Gelin and Joshua Gordon.

Year 6 – Alexi Bader, Julian Baruch, Ethan Berkovic, Dan Blecher, Isabelle Cahn, Alix Cane, Jesse Carpenter, Shai Farhy, Aden Goodridge, Isaac Gorelik, Jesse Gothelf, Maayan Granot, Alexander Itzkowitz, Aaron Khedoori, Ella Kirschner, Lucy Klein, Noah Klisser, Daniel Langman, Joshua Leslie, Eden Levit, Mariah Lewy, Claire Madziar, Arielle Melamed, Lucia Meyer, Georgia Meyerowitz, Ruby Miller, Amber Mitrani, Daniella Nesher, Coby New, Talia Rabin, Lewis Saul, Jake Sharp, Jett Sher, Jack Simon, Lotus Van der Starre, Yana Vitkind and Leah Wolf.

Book review

We have many of Colin Thiele’s books but ‘Jodie’s Journey’ is a personal favourite. It is particularly suitable for upper Primary students as a novel about handling and overcoming adversity. It is sad but amazing, somewhat reminiscent of Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, which we also hold.

Colin Thiele had a lifelong struggle with rheumatoid arthritis and drew upon his own experiences when writing this fictional account of a girl’s struggle to live with this painful disease. As a champion horse rider Jodie at first assumes that the excruciating joint pain she is experiencing is due to having injured herself in some way during her training with Monarch, her beloved horse. After suffering for weeks while her condition is misdiagnosed it is finally correctly diagnosed. However, she receives little understanding from her peers and teachers at school as they do not understand this invisible illness. She suffers emotionally as well as physically as her plans for the future are in tatters. Not only does she now have none of those planned events to look forward to, her parents even talk of selling her horse!  Her heroic struggle to build a new life is informative and movingly told and communicates effectively with the reader as a strong piece of authentic writing. 

Ginette Cameron-Gardner, Primary Teacher Librarian