The 12 Book Series of Christmas

Stuck for a book to keep you entertained over the winter months?  The S3-S4 Book Group recommend their favourite book series:  read one and you're bound to be hooked!

1 book:  My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher
2 books (so far!):  Divergent and Insurgent by Veronica Roth
3 books:  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
4 books:  The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein
5 books:  The Ingo Chronicles by Helen Dunmore
6 books:  The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver
7 books:  The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
8 books:  The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer
9 books:  The Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowtiz
10 books (so far!):  The House of Night series by P.C. Cast
11 books (so far!):  The 39 Clues series (various authors)
12 books:  The Saga of Darren Shan

Happy Holiday Reading!

Book Week Scotland

 

This week, 26th November - 2nd December, is the first ever Book Week Scotland. To celebrate, we are having a Book Amnesty! Return any overdue books to us this week and get a reward...We are also joining in with the National Reading Hour, in conjunction with the English Department.

There has not been a better time to pop into the library and borrow from our wide range of fiction and non-fiction books, or simply get a recommendation.  So what are you waiting for?!

Spook of the Week!

As it's Hallowe'en this week, why not check out our range of spooky books?  We have everything from vampires, to ghosts, to werewolves, to golems!  Enjoy!

Book of the Week

A new term, and a new book as Book of the Week!

This week's new addition is The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett.  The book was shortlisted for the 2012 CILIP Carnegie medal, a prestigious prize for children's writers.

From the blurb:

'Under cover of darkness, two brothers cross a war-ravaged countryside carrying a secret bundle. One night, they stumble across a deserted town reduced to smouldering ruins...but at the end of a blackened street, they find a small green miracle: a zoo filled with animals in need of hope.'

Particularly good if you like a historical novel or an adventure story, snap it up before someone else does!

Scottish Children's Book Awards Shortlist

The Shortlist for the Scottish Children's Book Awards has been announced- In the Older Readers Category the shortlist is as follows:

-The 13^th Horseman by Barry Hutchison

-Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

-The Prince Who Walked With Lions by Elizabeth Laird

Carnegie 2012

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness has won the 2012 Carnegie Prize. For the first time in the prizes history, the same book has also won the Carnegies sister prize, the Kate Greenaway Award for the illustrations by Jim Kay.

More information can be found here: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/pressdesk/press.php?release=pres_2012_winner_carn.html

Synopsis:

The monster showed up 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 since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming.... This monster is something different though. Something wild. And it wants the truth.

Book of the Week

Our Book of the Week is:  'City of Bones' by Cassandra Clare. This series come highly recommended by Eilidh and Rachel, two S5 pupils.

Sixteen-year-old Clary Fray is an ordinary teenager, who likes hanging out in Brooklyn with her friends. But everything changes the night she witnesses a murder, committed by a group of teens armed with medieval weaponry. The murderous group are Shadowhunters, secret warriors dedicated to driving demons out of this dimension and back into their own. Drawn inexorably into a terrifying world, Clary slowly begins to learn the truth about her family - and the battle for the fate of the world. We have all of the books in the Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series in the library. Please ask to reserve.

New Books in May

Lots of new books came into the library this week. New titles are on the 'New in the Library' table- If the book you wish to borrow is not there please ask and we can put you on the reservation list. A list of new titles is below.

Junior Fiction

Black Dawn- Rachel Caine

Out of Sight, Out of Time- Ally Carter

VIII- Harriet Castor

City of Lost Souls- Cassandra Clare

The Death Cure- James Dashner

Fear- Michael Grant

Paper Towns- John Green

We'll always have summer- Jenny Han

Department 19: The Rising- Will Hill

The Intern- Dillon Khan

Falling Fast- Sophie McKenzie

Killing Honour- Bali Rai

The Kane Chronicles: The Serpents Shadow- Rick Riordan

Under the Never Sky- Veronica Rossi

Insurgent- Veronica Roth

Brothers to the death- Darren Shan

The One Dollar Horse- Lauren St John

Senior Fiction

The land of the painted caves- Jean M Auel

On Canaan's side- Sebastian Barry

An invisible sign of my own- Aimee Bender

Red Mist- Patricia Cornwell

Neverwhere- Neil Gaiman

Pigeon English- Stephen Kelman

The Dogs of Riga- Henning Mankell

A Storm of Swords: Part 1- George RR Martin

A Storm of Swords: Part 2- George RR Martin

Pure- Andrew Miller

Graphic Novels

Bakuman Volume 1

Essential Avengers

Reference and Textbooks

Folio Writing Skills for Higher and Intermediate 2 English

How to pass. Flash Revise! Higher Biology

How to pass. Flash Revise! Higher Chemistry

How to pass. Flash Revise! Higher Maths

Stop what you're doing and read this

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is:  'Ruby Redfort:  Look Into My Eyes' by Lauren Child.

If you liked the Clarice Bean books when you were younger, maybe you wished that her favourite fictional heroine, Ruby Redfort, really existed?  Well, wish no more, as Lauren Child gives life to this character in a book aimed at teens instead of tweens!

13-year-old Ruby is recruited by a secret agency to become a code breaker.  She's super-smart and always cool...but can she keep her mouth shut?

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is:  'The Tiger's Wife' by Tea Obreht. 


A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina. His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall. But for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic - Shere Khan awoken from the pages of The Jungle Book.
Natalia is the granddaughter of that boy. Now a doctor, she is visiting orphanages after another war has devastated the Balkans. On this journey, she receives word of her beloved grandfather's death, far from their home, in circumstances shrouded in mystery. From fragments of stories her grandfather told her as a child, Natalia realises he may have died searching for 'the deathless man', a vagabond who was said to be immortal. Struggling to understand why a man of science would undertake such a quest, she stumbles upon a clue that will lead her to a tattered copy of The Jungle Book, and then to the extraordinary story of the tiger's wife.

World Book Night

As you may already know, last night was the second official World Book Night.  The purpose of World Book Night is to get people to give away a book that they love to others, and so encourage more people to enjoy reading.  We are always big fans of reading promotion events at the Library, so we thought we'd make our own display of this year's chosen titles to celebrate!


For more information about World Book Night, visit:  http://www.worldbooknight.org/

Book of the Week

This week's book of the week is the thought-provoking 'My Name Is Mina' by David Almond.

Mina writes and writes in an empty notebook, and through her stories, thoughts, lessons and dreams, her journal grows into something extraordinary...

Recommended reading!

New Displays in the Library

We have a number of new displays in the library with different themes. We have one dedicated to dystopian fiction, another highlighting Sport books and a wall display showing the release date of much anticipated books!


Why not come into the library to have a look?

Book of the Week

In honour of Sport Your Trainers Day (in support of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games), this week's Book of the Week is: 'The Sports Book', a compendium of sports facts, rules and stats.

All you ever wanted to know about almost every conceivable sport is here! Even if you aren't the world's biggest sports fan, what's not to love about a book covered in genuine astroturf?

Come along to the library and take a look :)

Connections Book Club

Connections Book club runs every Tuesday at 1pm here in the library. It is open to all S1 and S2s (S3s who are passionate about reading are always welcome too!)

Over the last few weeks a number of books have been recommended including:






All are available to be borrowed from the library and come highly recommended!

World Maths Day

Today is World Maths Day! We will be having a maths display all week, so come along to the Library and improve your numerical knowledge! There are books on code-cracking, sudoku and other number puzzles, as well as histories of maths to help you get your head around tricky concepts.

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is: 'The Weight of Water' by Sarah Crossan, which is entirely written as a series of poems. If you are looking for a charming, affecting and different read, this one's for you!

From the blurb: 'Armed with a suitcase and an old laundry bag, Kasienka and her mother head for England. Life is lonely for Kasienka. At home, her mother's heart is breaking. At school, friends are scarce. But when someone special swims into her life, Kasienka learns that there might be more than one way to stay afloat...'

World Book Day

To celebrate World Book Day, we held a book and bake sale.

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...'

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week has the longest title we've seen for a while: 'The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight'. Jennifer E. Smith's novel about romance and destiny comes highly recommended!

From the blurb: 'Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything? Today should be one of the worst days of Hadley's life. Her father is getting married in London to a woman she's never even met, and she's just missed her flight. Hadley has never believed in destiny or fate before...but, stuck at the airport in New york, today is also the day she meets Oliver. He's British. He's cute. And he's on her new flight...'

Costa Book Prize Winner!

Andrew Miller has won the 2011 Costa Book Award for his sixth novel, Pure. The award was announced last night on Tuesday 24th January, 2012.


For more information please visit:

http://www.costabookawards.com/

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is 'Crossed' by Ally Condie. The second in the 'Matched' series, it takes a fictional look at a dystopian future world. Although the series is generally popular with teens, plenty of adults have enjoyed it as well! Why not take a look?

From the blurb: 'The Society chooses everything. The books you read. The music you listen to. The person you love. Yet for Cassia, the rules have changed. Ky has been taken and she will sacrifice everything to find him. When Cassia discovers Ky has escaped to the wild frontiers beyond the Society, there is hope. But on the edge of society, nothing is as it seems...'

All the world in a book!

The latest addition to the library displays is a section on countries of the world. If you're in S2, this may come in very handy for your Population Studies project in Geography...just a hint! Even if you aren't in S2, remember that we have a wide selection of non-fiction books for everyone on subjects related to your homework and projects.

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is: 'The Future of Us' by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler. This quirky romantic comedy takes a look at what might happen if we could see our own futures...

It's 1996 and half of all high school students have never used the internet. Facebook will not be invented for another eight years. Josh and Emma have been neighbours their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long - at least, they were until last November, when everything changed. Things have been awkward ever since, but when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD in the mail, his mum makes him take it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When the two friends log on, they discover their profiles on Facebook - and they're looking at themselves fifteen years in the future...

The Book of the Week is available to borrow from the main library desk. Why not give it a try?

Book of the Week

This week's Book of the Week is Blood Red Road by Moira Young.

"In a lawless land, where life is cheap and survival is hard, Saba has been brought up in isolated Silverlake. She never sees theangers of the destructive society outside. When her twin brother is snatched by mysterious black-robed riders, she sets out on an epic quest to rescue him. The story's searing pace, its spare style, the excitement of its fabulously damaged world, its unforgettably vivid characters, its violent action and glorious love story make this a truly sensatonal YA debut novel" (http://www.amazon.co.uk)

This book also won the Children's category of the Costa book prize. It is available to borrow from the library now.