Author visit - Marcus Sedgwick

Year 8 and Year 9 pupils will enjoy listening to author Marcus Sedgwick on Thursday 4 February. He is coming to Abingdon for this year's Joint Schools' Author Visit, organised by the Librarians of the three independent schools. This is an opportunity to also invite students from other local schools and Marcus will do two other session including groups from local primary schools. Mostly Books will be selling books which can be autographed on the day.
Please return permission slips and advance book orders as soon as possible.
http://www.marcussedgwick.com/

Closing date for Scholastic Book Clubs order changed

Because of recent snow days I’ve changed the closing date of our Scholastic Book Clubs School Group Order to Thursday 28 January. You can add an order at any time up until that point and benefit from free post and packing when your order is delivered to school. There are books on sale from £1.99! Go to: http://clubs-school.scholastic.co.uk/olab

Great Expectations - whole school reading during 2010

Our Lady's Abingdon shares its 150th anniversary with Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations. It was published in instalments, starting in 1860, and my aim is that as many students and adults associated with the school read the book over the year, with book group discussions for anyone interested. There are 59 short chapters so five chapters will appear, in monthly instalments, on the Library pages on the school intranet. There are also printed copies, including abridged and play versions, available for loan from the Library.
Start reading Chapters 1- 5 now!
As the book is out of copyright there are also web versions available.

Bodleian Library Winter Exhibition

Crossing Borders: Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-place of Cultures
Exhibition Room, Bodleian Library (free, open every day)
The Bodleian Library winter exhibition, running until 3 May 2010, tells the story of how together Jews, Christians and Muslims have contributed to the development of the book. It illustrates the cultural exchange, the social interaction and the religious toleration between Jews and non-Jews in the Muslim and the Christian worlds during the late Middle Ages. The exhibition draws on the Bodleian Hebrew holdings, one of the largest and most important collections of Hebrew manuscripts in the world.
Highlights of the exhibition include:
* The Kennicott Bible, the most beautifully and extensively illustrated manuscript among Spanish Bibles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and
* The Michael Mahzor: the earliest illuminated Jewish prayer book for the Festivals, produced in Germany in 1258. The prayer book was illuminated by a Christian, who - not familiar with the Hebrew script- painted the first illustration upside down.
More details and opening hours.

Patrick Ness - Costa Children's Book Prize Winner

Some links to recent interviews with this popular teen author:
-Patrick Ness' s Diary
-BBC report including a 4-minute interview (scroll down the page)
-YAReads.com Author interview.

Costa Book Awards 2009 Category Winners

This year's Category Award Winners are:
Costa Children's Book Award Winner
Patrick Ness - The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, Book Two)
Costa Novel Award Winner
Colm Toibin - Brooklyn
Costa First Novel Award Winner
Raphael Selbourne - Beauty
Costa Biography Award Winner
Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man
Costa Poetry Award Winner
Christopher Reid - A Scattering

Each category-winning author receives £5,000. The 2009 Costa Book of the Year will be announced on Tuesday 26 January 2010.
Click here to read more.