LIBRARY

TERM 3

Term 3 is the business end of the year for our senior students and the library aims to help them get the best possible results.  We are open until 5:30pm Monday – Thursday and the new heating system is just great at keeping the winter chills away.  Students in the library at this time are motivated and there is a very positive work atmosphere.  While in the library students have access to printing, scanning the overnight loan section and more.  So please consider coming to the library to get a few hours school work done before going home.

DID YOU KNOW OUR PHOTOCOPIERS ARE ALSO SCANNERS?

The library photocopiers can scan documents and email them to your McKinnon email. (A great way to build study resources). The best thing is that scanning to PDF and emailing is free!  Yes Free!  VCE students should consider building up there library of study reading now before the end of year arrives.

PUBLISHING EVENT OF THE YEAR

Students at McKinnon Secondary have read and studied “To Kill a Mockingbird” for a very long time.  (I can’t think of a time when it has not been a set text at school and I even studied it as a student).  However, students who loved the book and wanted to read another book by Harper Lee have up until now been disappointed.   With much fanfare a new book by Harper Lee, “Go Set a Watchman” has been published.  The reviews have swung between good and bad, but I guess the best thing is to read it for yourself!  The library has purchased a several copies to cope with the demand.

Laura Alexander comments:

Since its highly-anticipated release earlier this month, Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman has gotten quite a bit of backlash. Even before the official release date, rumors spread that Atticus Finch, our beloved, justice-seeking hero, is depicted as a racist in the new novel. Once reviews of the book started coming out, this was also their main focus; how could Harper Lee take the man we grew up holding deep in our hearts and turn him into such an ignorant monster? Clearly, she was right to keep it to herself for so many years!

It’s safe to say that is pretty much the only thing I’ve heard about the novel over the past couple weeks, which led me and probably everyone else following the media to believe that the book itself must be centred on racism and the awful things some imposter in Atticus Finch’s clothing says and does. Which then led people to believe that the book was simply not worth reading at all. That is where I strayed from the pack a little.

Curiosity and a little something called faith in the artist got the best of me, and I picked up the book earlier this week. I devoured it in two days, finding myself unable to take my eyes off of the pages from the moment I started. It brought all of the things a good novel should: belly laughs, a deep stinging behind the eyes, and some pretty severe nods of agreement. The fact that Harper Lee can write an enthralling piece of literature is no surprise, though. The real surprise, for me, was that the book was not about racism at all.

DUKE OF EDINBOROUGH SERVICE STUDENTS

As part of the service component of the Duke of Edinborough Award, students are required to do voluntary work. The library staff would like to publicly thank the following students for their contribution to the smooth running of the library: Michael Koletsas, Neg Hamedani, Will Hardy, Justin Tang, James Hardy, Hugo Veselik, Petar Glavinic, Amit Ben-Harim, Wilson Hu, Max Kennedy and Jack Doyle.  Every night after school two students come to the library to help with our end of day tasks.  This includes shelving, cleaning etc.  Through their voluntary activity they have gained a great knowledge of the library and it’s functioning.  Thank you once again.

WHAT WILL BE THE NEXT PUBLISHING EVENT OF THE YEAR?

I guess that will have to be the newly discovered Dr Seuss book!  “What pet should I get?”

It's not for sale here just yet.

In the US the book's a hit.

A star of The Office reads a bit:

"We have to pick one pet and pick it out soon.

"You know mother told us to be back by noon."

Dr Seuss. That's his style.

But hasn't he been dead a while?

The book was found in a box.

Maybe where he kept his socks.

All this rhyming is quite hard work.

How did the good doctor not go berserk?

Let's return to regular prose.

And after that, anything goes.

A newly discovered book by the prolific children's author Dr Seuss has hit US bookshops, two decades after his death.

What Pet Should I Get? is believed to have been written by Dr Seuss, born Theodor Seuss Geisel, between 1958 and 1962.

It was first found by Dr Seuss' widow in 1991, but was set aside and rediscovered in 2013 in a search of old material in his California home.

Leading Dartmouth College Seuss scholar Donald Pease calls the new book "a classic Dr Seuss treatment".

Russell Absalom

Resource Centre Manager