Monthly Archives: June 2014

Film of the Book – How to Train Your Dragon II

On release this Friday, the unoriginally-titled How to Train Your Dragon II, the further adventures of Hiccup and Toothless. I’m looking forward to it, because (unlike other films around at the moment) it will make me laugh not cry!

All Cressida Cowell’s books are hilarious – ideal for holiday reading.

Fear by Michael Grant, reviewed by MM

fearFear by Michael Grant

You should read this book because it was a good thriller with some freaky bits. It also has some quite funny parts but the rest is serious. My favourite part was when Penny was allowed to make Cigar hallucinate about stuff he loved and feared. When Cigar would get the stuff he loved by Penny playing mind tricks on him she would take it away and give him something he feared.

Book of the Week – How to Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Cowell

How to train your dragon

Fantastic film, terrific TV series, bit first of all it was a brilliant book… The second How to Train Your Dragon film comes out later this week, loosely based on the series of books by Cressida Cowell – hilarious laugh-out-loud books, full of appallingly bad jokes which tell the story of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the third and his dragon Toothless.

Can Hiccup pass the Dragon Initiation Programme with a toothless dragon and fight the Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus before it gobbles up every Viking on Berk? It’s time for Hiccup to learn how to be a Hero.

We have some of the other books in the series as well – look on the junior fiction shelves. Or go and have a look at the Barbaric Archipelago by clicking on the book cover.

The Fault in our Stars Movie, Review by ND

I can’t say that I wasn’t worried about this movie – adaptations of books rarely work. At most, I expected it to be very good but not quite the book. Either that or it was absolutely terrible, so we could all laugh about it afterwards. My main fear was that it would be a mixture of the two, and that I would hate it. However all these fears were put to rest as soon as the screen became black apart from several shining stars and an amazing song that I can’t remember but went so well with the piece played and I started to cry because this was what I had been waiting for ever since I’d read the book. And it was spectacular, it was perfect, and even my mum cried (why wouldn’t she?). I won’t lie, I managed to nick a few complimentary advanced screening posters for a librarian who will not be named due to legal reasons. I have never cried so much at a movie before, and I think that the silence after the end of the movie – only disturbed by a few sobs and sniffles – accurately describes how much it destroyed everyone’s lives, and also how much they want to see it again. It was the perfect movie, so good in fact that after watching my mum borrowed my copy of (unfortunately unsigned) TFioS but then returned it to me the next day because it was the same as the movie. She now wants to read Looking For Alaska. Good luck, mum, and thank you to John Green and everyone who helped with the movie.

Generation Diary

generation diaryThe Anne Frank Trust are sponsoring Generation Diary – a project which is attempting, over the next year, to create the world’s biggest digital diary. You must be between thirteen and fifteen, (as this is how old Anne Frank was when she was writing her diary) and you can enter as many diary entries as you want. There are prizes to be won if your diary entry is chosen for publication in Generation Diary.

Click on the logo to find out more.

Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings, reviewed by NW

PawnOfProphecyThe Pawn of Prophecy is about wizards, witches, sword, mythical creatures, castles, vast landscapes and gods of good and evil. It’s very epic!

My favourite bit is when the god of the dragons Torak speaks to the hero on a dark and cold night, in a dark hallway in a small tavern – the voice is in the mist and it’s very scary and stirs fear into the hearts of everyone in the tavern.

Primary visits

wchslionPrimary 7 pupils from our feeder primaries will be visiting today, tomorrow and Thursday this week. They will meet some of the teachers they will have next year, find out what high school classes are like, and be able to have a look around the school.

Please be friendly and welcome them!

Book of the Week – The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente

The girl who fell beneath fairyland I loved the first book in this series (I think it’s going to be a trilogy), The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, and I chose it as Book of the Week in January last year. I will admit that I haven’t actually finished The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There yet, (which is why it is not on the Book of the Week stand) – I am about half-way through, and I’m loving it as much as the first one.

It has been a long time since young September bid farewell to Fairyland, and she is excited to see it again; but upon her return she is shocked to find that her friends have been losing their shadows, and therefore their magic, to the kingdom of Fairyland-Below… It spells certain disaster, and September won’t stand for it. Determined to make amends, she travels down into the underworld where, among creatures of ice and moonlight, she encounters a face she recognizes all too well: Halloween, the Hollow Queen. Only then does September realize what she must do to save Fairyland from slipping into the mundane world forever.