Library 

Term 2, as usual, has been busy and fantastic! We’ve had lots of crafting, LEGO building, reading and drawing at lunchtime, we celebrated May the Fourth - Star Wars Day - with a ‘book dominos’ activity, and Year 7-9 classes have been forming a great reading and borrowing routine in their Wide Reading classes. 

Pride Week 

To recognise and celebrate Pride Week at THS, Tanja and I created two displays that highlighted LGBTQIA+ stories, characters and authors. We also collaborated with Queer Intentions (the LGBTQIA+ club at THS) to include some recommendations of their favourite queer books. They suggested favourites like Heartstopper as well as less well-known books like Dancing Barefoot by Alice Boyle. These were Nora’s (Year 10) thoughts:

“Dancing Barefoot by Alice Boyle is one of my favourite queer books. It is about a closeted lesbian and socially awkward girl called Patti "Patch" Smith who attends a private school on a scholarship whilst living at a record shop and falls for popular basketball star Evie. The book is about their blossoming friendship and relationship, after an incident unites them. Patti also helps her transitioning best friend through this particularly hard time of their life. I love this book as it was one of the first queer books I read and loved deeply. It explores being LGBTQIA+, dealing with bullies, friendship, transitioning, growing up and finding your self, self-acceptance, and it is also set in modern day Melbourne, so that's yet another connection I have with this book.”

These displays, as well as little flags throughout the Library to represent different communities, were a way to spark discussion and emphasise the importance of representation in literature. It is so wonderful to see such a diverse array of queer stories, whether they be focussed on self-discovery and coming out or just have incidentally queer characters across stories from all different genres. 

Staff Book Club 

The book that we began the term with was an absolute classic - Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd! I must confess that I had never actually read an Agatha Christie before, despite being quite partial to a murder mystery. Some people had read this one before, including our resident A.C. collector (paperbacks and hardbacks!), while others were also first-time Christie readers. Most people in the group enjoyed it but someone found it “an absolute punish to get through”. Fair enough! It is genuinely fantastic to have such a dedicated group of staff with diverse opinions!

Lucy Youston

Library Coordinator