From the Library

From Alice, Librarian

Book Tasting

In the library the senior classes have been having “Book Tastings”. The students chose from four genres and speed read a book for four minutes. The aim is to taste as many books from across as many genres as possible and read out of our comfort zone. Students could take notes on the books they read and at the end they could reserve the books they were interested in. 

I chose books that hadn’t got a lot of love over the years, as we all tend to gravitate towards favourite authors and series and new books, while the older books tend to get lost on the shelves. By giving these older books a chance to be read, every single book that was tasted has found a reader who wants to gobble it up. 

How good is that? 

I recommend this activity to anyone in a reading slump. Go to the library and randomly choose 5-10 books to borrow and then read each for 5-10 minutes. Libraries are so great for low stakes reading - it doesn’t cost a cent and you won’t have unread books lying around your house giving off accusatory vibes.

New Languages Other Than English (LOTE) collection

New in the library is our re-vamped Languages Other Than English collection. We stock bi-lingual picture books in the following languages:

• Somali
• Arabic
• Chinese
• Vietnamese 
• a small selection of fiction in Chinese and Vietnamese.

We also stock books in our two school LOTE languages, Italian and Auslan

This collection is to support our English as an Additional Language (EAL) families and to celebrate and acknowledge the many, many languages spoken and read by our community.