New JK Rowling Book!

JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has just announced that she will be publishing a new book in the future. It is not going to be a follow up to the Potter books but rather a novel for adults. More information, including a title and a genre is due to come in the next few months.

For more information please click here

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, a thrilling spy story set in World War II.

From the blurb: 'I have two weeks. You'll shoot me at the end, no matter what I do. But I look at all the dark and twisted roads ahead and co-operation is the easy way out. Possibly the only way out for a girl caught red-handed doing dirty work like mine - and I will do anything, anything, to avoid SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer von Linden interrogating me again.

He has said that I can have as much paper as I need. All I have to do is cough up everything I can remember about the British War Effort. And I'm going to. But the story of how I came to be here starts with my friend Maddie. She is the pilot who flew me into France - an Allied Invasion of Two.

We are a sensational team.'

Why not pick it up and take a look?

Red House Children's Book Award 2012

Patrick Ness, author of the hugely popular The Chaos Walking Trilogy, has won the 2012 Red House Children's Book Award for A Monster Calls.

'The monster showed up just after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the one he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming... The monster in his back garden, though, this monster is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Costa Award winner Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final idea of much-loved Carnegie Medal winner Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself. Darkly mischievous and painfully funny, A Monster Calls is an extraordinarily moving novel of coming to terms with loss from two of our finest writers for young adults.' (Amazon.co.uk)

Both the Chaos Walking Trilogy and A Monster Calls can be borrowed from the library now.

More information can be found at:

Red House Book Award 2012- The Guardian Article

and

Official Website of the Red House Children's Book Award

Helen Grant Visit

Beaton Road Librarian, Mrs Hume, reports on a fantastic visit from Helen Grant, whose debut novel, 'The Vanishing of Katharina Linden', was shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Award in 2010 and won an ALA Alex Award in 2011:

As you may already know, we at the Library love having a real-life author visit us! On Monday 6th February we were lucky enough to host the successful Young Adult writer, Helen Grant, who enthralled members of the Connections Book Club, the Creative Writing Club and invited guests with an interesting account of the inspiration behind her Young Adult thriller novels, the first three of which are set in Germany.

She provided a fascinating insight into life in a small German town and into the process of writing based on myths and legends.

Her search for inspiration has resulted in climbing windblown bell towers, researching historical witch trials and even an eerie trip into the Paris catacombs!

Later in the afternoon, she also ran a very successful workshop about constructing ghost stories with S3 pupils, which involved some spooky props... A great time was had by all, and the best stories produced may even appear on the author's own website!

For more pictures of the event please visit:

http://www.hutchesons.org/life/secondary/photo-gallery/secondary-photo-gallery-2012/album/1548

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is: 'The Vanishing of Katharina Linden' by Helen Grant, who visited the Library on Monday to give two really interesting workshops. This is the first of her three novels. It is set in a small town in Germany, where strange things have started to happen...

From the blurb: 'On the day Katharina Linden disappears, Pia is the last person to see her alive. Terror is spreading through the town. How could a ten-year-old girl vanish in a place where everybody knows everybody else? Pia is determined to find out what happened to Katharina...but then the next girl disappears...'