Tag Archives: David Almond

World Book Day books

We have some copies of the World Book Day books in the library. You can find them on the Quick Reads spinner. These are a great way to try out an new author, or to read a different genre.

World Book Day vouchers can be used up until the end of March to get your own copy of any one of the books for free! If you don’t have a World Book Day voucher, ask your English teacher.

 

New books in the library – A Song for Ella Grey, by David Almond

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I’m the one who’s left behind. I’m the one to tell the tale. I knew them both… knew how they lived and how they died.

Claire is Ella Grey’s best friend. She’s there when the whirlwind arrives on the scene: catapulted into a North East landscape of gutted shipyards; of high arched bridges and ancient collapsed mines. She witnesses a love so dramatic it is as if her best friend has been captured and taken from her. But the loss of her friend to the arms of Orpheus is nothing compared to the loss she feels when Ella is taken from the world. This is her story – as she bears witness to a love so complete; so sure, that not even death can prove final.

Pros and Cons of My Name is Mina – feedback from the Book Group

minaThe Wednesday Book Club have been reading My Name is Mina and, being articulate people, they have different and quite strongly held views about it. Rather than listening to them argue, Fern and Beth took a ‘side’ each and came up with a for and against list

We split into two groups those who did and didn’t like the book these are some of the pros and cons they came up with about how they felt about the book.

Pros:

  • It shows how Mina copes with difficult situations
  • The messy and hyperactive style is perfect for the age of the young storyteller
  • It gives a good background for ‘Skellig’
  • The lack of typical plot is more accurate to life than most books
  • The fonts and text formats are quite unique and eye catching
  • Mina is a little bit crazy, and the writing styles demonstrate this well
  • There is an air of carefree-ness in Mina’s life
  • It isn’t too heavy going and is quite light-hearted

Cons:

  • It is a boring story
  • We didn’t like the theme
  • It was too complicated to read with the strange fonts, sizes and positioning of the words
  • The language was immature and horribly written
  • The story made no logical sense
  • The vocabulary was inappropriate for the age of the character
  • It had a nonsense structure switching from diary to third person and back except diaries don’t have chapters
  • It was not interesting
  • The book is probably aimed at primary kids, it was far too young for (some of) us
  • It was not challenging or enjoyable

My Name is Mina – Book Club

minaOn Wednesday 14th January the book club will be meeting during lunch to discuss the book My Name is Mina by David Almond. Could all people with a copy please bring it to the meeting in the library. We will be talking about the cover and our first impressions about the book along with some more in depth questions.

If anyone is interested in joining the book club see Mrs Vennall in the library.

Wednesday Book Club

imageThe Wednesday lunchtime book club will be taking part in the Scottish Book Trust’s Winter Read over the holidays. We will all be reading the same book (even Mrs Vennall), and then we will be talking about it in the book club meetings after we come back in January. At last week’s meeting the senior pupils in the group conducted a poll to find our which book everyone wanted to read, and after talking about it, we decided to read My Name Is Mina, by David Almond.

Our box of books arrived yesterday (unfortunately just as book club was finishing), they look really good, and we are all really excited and ready to get reading! Mrs Vennall hopes that we will be blogging about My Name Is Mina on the library blog, and tweeting about it on the twitter feed.

Thank you for our books, Scottish Book Trust!

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