School Librarians’ Favourite Books

School librarians have come up with a list of their top 100 books, in response to a list made by TES.

The list below shows the top 100 books, chosen by school librarians, listed in alphabetical order rather than rank. The top 10 books, however, are in bold. (There are actually 11 in bold, but presumably two tied.)

SCHOOL LIBRARIANS’ TOP 100 BOOKS

Skellig – David Almond

Flowers in the Attic – Virginia Andrews

Atkins’ Molecules – Peter Atkins

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

The Crow Road – Iain Banks

Rebecca’s Tale – Sally Beauman

Noughts and Crosses series – Malorie Blackman

Junk – Melvin Burgess

The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey

Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

Looking for JJ – Anne Cassidy

Wild Swans – Jung Chang

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke

Artemis Fowl series – Eoin Colfer

The Hunger Games trilogy – Suzanne Collins

The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

The Dark is Rising series – Susan Cooper

Framed – Frank Cottrell Boyce

Gatty’s Tale – Kevin Crossley-Holland

Matilda – Roald Dahl

Everything Happens for a Reason – Kaista Daswani

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

The Hare with Amber Eyes – Edmund De Waal

The Gruffalo – Julie Donaldson

A Gathering Light – Jennifer Donnelly

Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne Du Maurier

Middlemarch – George Eliot

Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

A Room with a View – EM Forster

The Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank

The Graveyard Book – Neil Gaiman

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend – Matthew Green

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

The Raw Shark Texts – Stephen Hall

Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

Black Daisies for the Bride – Tony Harrison

Tales of the Otori series – Lian Hearn

Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

The Strange Meeting – Susan Hill

The Outsiders – SE Hinton

The Island – Victoria Hislop

Stravaganza series – Mary Hoffman

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg

High Fidelity – Nick Hornby

A Thousand Splendid Suns – Khaled Hosseini

The 13th Horseman – Barry Hutchinson

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Journey to the River Sea – Eva Ibbotson

A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving

The Summer Book – Tove Jansson

Howl’s Moving Castle – Diana Wynne Jones

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – Rachel Joyce

The Fionavar Tapestry series – Guy Gavriel Kay

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

The Giver – Lois Lowry

Goodnight Mister Tom – Michelle Magorian

A Song of Fire and Ice series – George RR Martin

I Carried you on Eagle’s Wings – Sue Mayfield

Atonement – Ian McEwan

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things – Jon McGregor

Breathe – Cliff McNish

Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – David Mitchell

Anne of Green Gables – L Montgomery

Private Peaceful – Michael Morpurgo

War Horse – Michael Morpurgo

Trash – Andy Mulligan

A Monster Calls – Patrick Ness

Chaos Walking trilogy – Patrick Ness

The Time Traveller’s Wide – Audrey Niffenegger

The Abhorsen trilogy – Garth Nix

Z for Zachariah – Robert C O’Brien

1984 – George Orwell

The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series – Michelle Paver

Seeing the Blossom – Dennis Potter

Tom’s Midnight Garden – Philippa Pearce

Tamar – Mal Peet

Soul Music – Terry Pratchett

His Dark Materials trilogy – Philip Pullman

The Long Walk – Slavomir Rawicz

Mortal Engines series – Philip Reeve

The Wave – Morton Rhue

Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

Holes – Louis Sachar

The Invention of Hugo Cabret – Brian Selznick

Black Beauty – Anna Sewell

Mahabharata – Margaret Simpson

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark

The Help – Katherine Stockett

Under Milk Wood – Dylan Thomas

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – JRR Tolkien

The Enchanted April – Elizabeth Von Arnim

Out of Shadows – Jason Wallace

The Tadpole’s Promise – Jean Willis

The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham

The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Book Thief – Marcus Zusak

alice teap party

FREE COMIC BOOK WORKSHOP: LONDON LIVES

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Karen Robins with robot – from her website

CROYDON CENTRAL LIBRARY

Saturday, 27th April, 2013

2.30-4.00PM

This activity is aimed at 8 – 12 year olds.

Join comics creator Karen Rubins for London Lives: Cityread Comics Workshop in Croydon Central Library.

Create colourful characters, then see what happens when they meet other people in the streets and stations of London.

The workshop is free but participants space is limited, so booking is required.

You can view some of her art work at http://www.karenrubins.com/images/KarenRubins_E.pdf

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Karen Robins

What is “Reading Activists”?

Reading Activists logoReading Activists in the new name for The Reading Agency’s MyVoice project.

Reading Activists is running in 18 regions in the UK and, according to The Reading Agency,  by 2014 there will be:

  • 6000 young people running 60 reading hubs in libraries, schools and youth clubs
  • 27,500 young people taking part in 760 creative reading and writing activities
  • 30,000 young people taking part in online reading activities, of which 6000 will be doing reading-inspired volunteering roles

You can get details on The Reading Agency’s Reading Activists project via their website,  on their facebook page called In the Loop and by following them on Twitter @ReadingActivist.

But, is it for you?

  • Are you aged 11 to 19 years?
  • Looking for something fun, exciting and creative to do?
  • Want to meet other young people to make a difference?
  • Interested in putting on events for young people?
  • Want to learn new skills and get some work experience?
  • Want to meet writers, musicians, artists and other creative people?

Gain new skills and build confidence by becoming a Reading Activist in your local community.

What Reading Activists means to us

We got involved in Croydon MyVoice at Ashburton Library and don’t regret it one bit, although there is always more that can be done! We took along a friend too and we’ve now had experience in organising events, including nail art – which really is NOT our thing, but, hey, you have to go along with the majority vote.

Reading Activists may be operating in your area so take a look and give it a try.

In our next posts we will give details of what we have done in Croydon and how the project has developed.

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World Book Night

World Book Night is coming up sworld book nightoon, on the 23rd April, and there are many ways you can get involved. Places all over the  UK are holding events to celebrate reading and books.

World Book Night celebrates reading and books, and sees tens of thousands of passionate volunteers gift specially chosen and printed WBN books in their communities to share their love of reading.

Each year, 20,000 volunteers are recruited to hand out 20 copies of their favourite book from the World Book Night list to members of their community who don’t regularly read. World Book Night aims to reach the millions of people in the UK who have not yet discovered the joys of reading, in the hope that they will fall in love with a book, and begin to embark on their reading journey.

In addition, World Book Night distributes half a million books directly to the hardest to reach potential readers in prisons, care homes, hospitals, sheltered, supported and social housing, the homeless and through partner charities working throughout the UK. It is about giving books and encouraging reading in those who don’t regularly do so.

Why April 23?: It is a symbolic date for the world of literature. It is both the birth and death day of Shakespeare, as well as the death day of Cervantes, the great Spanish novelist. It also marks the city of Barcelona’s celebration of St George’s Day. St George is the patron saint of Catalonia as well as England and traditionally, to celebrate this day, Spanish gentlemen gave their ladies roses and the ladies returned the favour with a book. Considering the literary history of this day, it seems fitting that April 23rd should be chosen as the day of celebrating the reading and giving of books!

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