LIBRARY NEWS

Book Week is Coming!

Next week is Book Week across Australia, where reading and the very best of Australian authors and illustrators are celebrated when the Children’s Book Council of Australia announces the Books of the Year. This year, we’ll be celebrating in the library and across classrooms by reading more great books and running a number of competitions. Each day in Week 5, there will be fun events in the library during snack breaks. These include:

• Guessing competitions - how many bookworms in a jar, guess the shredded book
• Book trivia competitions
• Book Kahoots
• Scavenger hunts

There will also be a bookmark competition for K-2 about the Book of the Year theme, ‘Book an Adventure,’ and the inaugural HTS Guess Who challenge. Will students be able to match the teachers with their favourite books? I wonder if our families can guess, too?

This Week’s Reads

Once again, primary classes are reading books across a number of the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Books of the Year. Favourites are already emerging, so we will have to wait to see if the judges agree with us.

Last week, in K-2, we learned all about the Tooth Fairy in Briony Stewart’s ‘Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Tooth Fairy and Some Things You Didn't'. The students were captivated by the story and even learned a surprising fact: the Tooth Fairies' secret land is called Hypnagoggia!

This week, we've been buzzing with excitement over bugs. We're reading Anna McGregor's Spiro, a story about the challenges a spider faces to get his dinner, and Rhian Williams' One Little Dung Beetle, a rhyming and counting book. It's been hilarious to see the students' reactions when they discover what dung beetles eat!

Students in Years 3-6 have been exploring picture books that rely heavily on their illustrations to tell the story. This has been a great opportunity for them to practice "reading" the images, which can be a fun challenge, especially for our younger students.

We've explored two beautiful and powerful books recently. Afloat by Kirli Saunders is an inspiring story about caring for the environment, told through the beautiful metaphors of weaving and Aboriginal storytelling. We also read The Garden of Broken Things, a lovely story about an elderly lady revisiting her cherished childhood memories.

This week, we'll continue our journey with another touching story about dementia and Alzheimer's disease, written by Josh Pyke for his own mother. The illustrations in all these books are simply beautiful, and they've helped us navigate some very gentle but important themes.

We're having a wonderful time in the library, and we can't wait to see what books we discover next!

SORA Books of the Week

SORA has got on board with the Book Week theme and is taking you on some exciting adventures. I wonder if you can ‘Book an Adventure’? SORA login instructions can be found here. 

Premier’s Reading Challenge Update

With only five weeks to go before the Challenge closes, more students are returning their completed Reading Logs. Once students have logged their books online, please send their printed Reading Log to me for validation. The PRC organisers know that there is a state-wide issue with the date that is printed on these logs; please ignore that it says 2024.

Don’t forget that the closing date is Friday, 19 September 2025 (Week 9, Term 3).

Congratulations to this week’s super readers - Bethany Pearse, Liam Guest, Elsie Guest, KJ Eshman, Harrison Curtin, George Xavier and Ronnie Brooker.

Meet the Readers

Meet Daniel (2D) and Callum (KD), who were the first borrowers of these great new books. I hope you enjoy them!

Happy reading,

Mrs Toni Fraser