Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Favourite Harry Potter Character - And the Winners Are:

 According to the Harry Potter UK Book page and The Guardian the results are:
Professor Severus Snape         Photo source
Professor Severus Snape has been voted the number one character from the Harry Potter novels. Some 70,000 people voted in the Bloomsbury poll, and 20% of these agreed that
the Potions Master & Head of Slytherin is No.1!   
Hermione Granger came 2nd
and Sirius Black 3rd
Hermione Granger               Photo source


Sirius Black                          Photo source
 
 The Top Ten Characters were:
1. Severus Snape
2. Hermione Granger
3. Sirius Black
4. Harry Potter
5. Ron Weasley
6. Luna Lovegood
7. Ginny Weasley
8. Albus Dumbledore
9. Dobby
10. Draco Malfoy 

For a full list of all 40 characters and where they finished you can follow this link and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Monday, August 29, 2011

On the New Books Display this week

Picture Book:
  • "Milly Maloo and the Miracle Glue" by Melanie KOSTER
  • "Say Hello to Zorro!" by Carter GOODRICH
 Fiction:
  • "Battle of the Borders : Volcan" by Mac PARK (Boy vs Beast series)
  • "Just One More" by Joy COWLEY
  • "Ottoline goes to School" by Chris RIDDELL (Ottoline series)
Senior Fiction:
Non-Fiction:
  • "Art Attack - Even more Cool Stuff!" by Neil BUCHANAN
  • "Yates Young Gardener : Get your hands dirty" by Janice MARRIOT

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Favourite Harry Potter Character - Update

Less than two days to vote for your favourite Harry Potter character, so if you haven't already, VOTE NOW!

The Poll closes on 26th August  (which here in N.Z. might mean about midday on 27th August) and the results will be announced by Bloomsbury Publishers on Tuesday 30th August.  Results will be available here on our library blog as soon as I know they are available.

Two people have commented about who they voted for on my first blog post  about the favourite Harry Potter character, and they both voted for different characters, Hermione and Harry.  I can tell you I voted for someone else too, Professor Snape (I know, I know.... he is a bad guy most of the time but really he is one of the good guys, you just don't find that out till almost the end).

So.... if the official poll is as close as our comments indicate it could be very close indeed.

On the New Books Display this week

Picture Book:
  • "Finklehopper Frog" by Irene LIVINGSTON
  • "You Are What You Eat and Other Mealtime Hazards " by Serge BLOCH
 Fiction:
  • "Deep Fear" by Debi GLIORI (Pure Dead series)
  • "Star Surprise and other stories" by Emma THOMSON (Felicity Wishes series)
  •  "Zac Power : Blockbuster" by H.I. LARRY (Zac Power series)
Senior Fiction:
  • "Coraline : The Graphic Novel" written by Neil GAIMAN; adapted and illustrated by P. Craig RUSSELL
Non-Fiction:
  • "Wonders of the World" by Philip STEELE
  • "Changes in Food and Farming" by Steve PARKER

Monday, August 22, 2011

Book Fair 2011 Update and the Library will be open again SOON

St Brendan's Book Fair is over again for another year. A BIG Thank you to everyone who came along and supported our major library "fundraiser". The value of sales this year earned us almost 20 free new books for our library collection. A BIG Thank you also to the families who purchased "Red Dot" books for donation to the library - keep a look out for them in the library later this term, they will all have special Book Fair Donation book plates inside!

With all the snow here last week, and else where, the Book Fair cases and boxes were not able to be collected as expected last week. However they are due to be collected on Wednesday this week so the library should be back to normal again from about mid-morning on Wednesday. 

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Snow, snow and more snow

Another day at home today thanks to the extreme cold weather we and the rest of the country have been experiencing over the last few days.  Yesterday we experienced the third afternoon in a row of snow here in Upper Hutt - a place where we usually only see snow dusting the higher surrounding hilltops. Here are a few snapshots of the snowfall yesterday afternoon at my home, not far from school.
The photographs really don't do it justice - so silent - it was like magic!   

A few more days like this and I can see how the novelty of snow would wear thin, it is just so cold!  Thank goodness for a good book (or two), a good fire and hot food to keep you warm.

Paddington Bear

One in a series of posts about children's classic books available for borrowing from our school library.

Paddington Bear is a polite immigrant bear from Darkest Peru, with his old hat, battered suitcase, duffle coat and love of marmalade sandwiches he has become a classic character from English children's literature.

The Paddington Bear stories were written by Michael Bond and based on a lone toy bear he saw sitting in a London store. This from an article in The Independent newspaper celebrating Paddington Bears 50th anniversary in 2008:  Mr Bond describes how a pang of sympathy for a neglected toy bear in a London shop inspired him to write the children's stories which have since been translated into 30 languages, and sold more than 30 million copies around the world: "I bought a small toy bear on Christmas Eve 1956. I saw it left on a shelf in a London store and felt sorry for it. I took it home as a present for my wife Brenda and named it Paddington as we were living near Paddington Station at the time. I wrote some stories about the bear, more for fun than with the idea of having them published. After ten days I found that I had a book on my hands. It wasn’t written specifically for children, but I think I put into it the kind of things I liked reading about when I was young." 

The first Paddington book A Bear Called Paddington was published in 1958 and is still in print today. Eleven other Paddington books have since been published, the most recent Paddington : Here and Now was published in 2008 exactly 50 years after the first book.  In 1972 the first picture book editions of  the Paddington books were published, the most recent picture book editions, illustrated by R.W. Alley, were published in the 1990's.  R.W. Alley's version of Paddington worked so well that he was then asked to re-illustrate many of the earlier picture books as well as covers for the novels including the latest novel Paddington Here and Now.

The Paddington Bear stories were adapted for television series in the 1970's and late 1980's and it has been suggested that there could soon be a movie adaption too. There are also numerous soft toy versions of Paddington Bear, however the first manufactured Paddington Bear was created in 1972 by Gabrielle Designs who dressed  Paddington in Wellington boots to help him stand upright.

We have Paddington Takes the Air in the fiction section of our library. We also have copies of the picture book versions of Paddington Bear; Paddington at the Carnival; Paddington at the Zoo and Paddington the Artist in the picture book boxes.

Upper Hutt Public Library has copies of 12 Paddington Bear books in the Childrens section as well as an audio book and a copy of the 50th Anniversary Paddington Bear DVD.

Most of the above information is from or adapted from: here, here and here.

Trivia:  Gabrielle Designs, was a small business run by Shirley and Eddie Clarkson and the prototype Paddington Bear was made as a Christmas present for their children Joanna and Jeremy Clarkson - yes that is Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Book Fair 2011


St Brendan's Book Fair will be open before and after school, for viewing and sales, most days from Mon 8th - Fri 12th August 2011.  The Book Fair will also be open late during Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon/evening.

Opening Hours:
Mon 8th August   2.40pm-3.15pm
Tues 9th August   8.40am-9.15am and
                                     2.40pm-8.00pm
Wed 10th August 8.40am-9.15am and
                                     2.40pm-5.30pm
Thur 11th August 8.40am-9.15am and
                                     2.40pm-3.15pm
Fri 12th August     8.40am-9.15am only

Hope to see you there.

Remember all purchases from the Book Fair help to earn free books for our school library.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Welcome Back for Term 3

In Week two (next week) our Book Fair will be running.  This means that the library will be closed for two weeks from this Wednesday, 3rd August, until Wednesday 17th August for the Book Fair, including set-up and pack-up. 
So if you would like to return books or borrow from the library this week please try and visit on Monday & Tuesday this week.

More information about the Book Fair will be on the blog later this week and soon also on posters on display around school.