For those of you who are Pottermore fans, the second book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is now available. I know there are quite a few people who have finished the first book on Pottermore, but I have to confess that I am still stuck at the bit where you have to catch the golden snitch – I’m just too slow!
Click on the picture to go to the site, and either logon if you’ve been there before, or register to play.
To celebrate the upcoming release of The Grunts in Trouble by Philip Ardargh and Axel Scheffler, their publishers Nosy Crow are holding a Colour-In and Create-a-Caption competition. You could win a personalised copy of the book as well as some copies for the library.
There are copies of the competition flyer on the round table (handily close to the trolley with felt pens and colouring pencils). Why not have a go? If you hand in entries at the main library desk I will post them before the closing date – which is not until November.
Click on the book cover to go the the Meet the Grunts site.
Ultraviolet is a truly amazing story about a girl who can taste colours and see sounds. One moment Alison Jeffries is fighting with the queen bee of the school, Tori Beaugrand, the next Tori disintegrates. Alison is convinced she tore her apart with her unusual mind but telling the police her theory gets her thrown into a mental institution. Alison struggles to find out what caused her vicious outburst and the journey takes her to Sebastian Faraday. Alison soon falls head over heels with his peculiar violet eyes and voice “like chocolate on velvet” (the feeling is mutual, obviously). Faraday takes Alison on an adventure while trying to convince her that Tori’s disintegration was not her fault and find out what really happened to the popular schoolgirl. An inspiring story of willpower and strength, with the occasional cringe (off the scale cheesiness).
Today, in 1963, Martin Luther King made his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at the Lincoln memorial in Washington.
You can find the full text of his speech here, or in the Human Rights section of the library.
This week’s Book of the Week is the latest in a series, rather than the first. Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series, about a school for girl spies called the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is already very popular here, so I know there will be lots of interest in the fifth book (there are due to be six in total), Out of Sight, Out of Time.
The blurb on the back says:
Cammie wakes up in an Alpine convent having lost her memory of the whole summer. She and her friends must travel to the other side of the world, trying to piece together the clues that Cammie left behind. But there are people hunting Cammie – people who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets…
Unfortunately I don’t think that the Gallagher Girls books can be read out of order and still make sense, so if you haven’t read the previous ones, you should start with I’d Tell You I Love You but Then I’d Have to Kill You, followed by Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy; Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover and Only the Good Spy Young – we have all of them in the library. We also have the first two titles in Ally Carter’s other series – Heist Society and Uncommon Criminals.
I love the titles!
Jane Prowse is giving away a free e-book of the first book in her Hattori Hachi series, The Revenge of Praying Mantis. To get your copy go to the Hattori Hachi site, by clicking on the cover. She is trying to get a copy downloaded in every country in the world, and it will be available until she meets the target.
I have downloaded it although I haven’t read it yet, but I did read a review of it at Book Zone, and it sounds very exciting – let me know what you think.
Every year, 23rd August is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, as designated by UNESCO. They chose this day because it was the date in 1791 when there was a rebellion in Saint-Domingue that began the elimination of the slave trade. You can read more about it on UNESCO’s site, or on HistoryWiz or Wikipedia.
Some of the Book Club were lucky enough to visit the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday, with Miss Irvine and Mr Galloway. They went to see Garth Nix and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Here is what some of them said about their experience:
and Mr Galloway said that he though that Garth Nix was a natural storyteller, and that he had really enjoyed himself.
We don’t have Garth Nix’s new book in the library yet, but I will be buying it as soon as possible.
The Book Club go the the Book Festival every year – in the past they have seen Melvin Burgess, Catherine Forde and Morris Gleitzmann. They meet every second week in the library, and if you are interested in joining, you should see Miss Irvine in the English Department. The Book Club is open to students from first to third year who love books and reading.
The first Book of the Week for a new term is the first of a trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. Uglies, is on many of the dystopian reading lists that have appeared following the success of The Hunger Games, but actually it came first. The series is set in a world where everyone has cosmetic surgery on their sixteenth birthday to make them beautiful and perfect. Uglies has a brilliantly disgusting opening, guaranteed to make you want to read on –
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right.
And from the blurb on the back of the book –
Tally can’t wait to turn sixteen and become Pretty. Sixteen is the magic number that brings a transformation from a repellent Ugly into a stunningly attractive Pretty, and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks, Tally will be there.
But Tally’s new friend, Shay, isn’t sure she wants to be Pretty. She’d rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the Pretty world – and it isn’t very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn Pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.
Read it and shudder – and then after you’ve read Uglies try the sequels Pretties and Specials, and 
the fourth book set in the same world, Extras – we have all of them in the library, as well as many of Scott Westerfeld’s other books. Click on any of the cover pictures to visit his website and see what else he has written.