Welcome back to all new and returning students.  Hope you had a relaxing break filled with lots of reading.    My name is Anna France and I have been appointed as the Librarian starting Term 1, 2019.  I'm looking forward to getting to know you all and learning what you like to read.  So come say hello and let me know what you are interested in.  

Just Finished Reading: Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty and The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

Currently Reading:  Leah and the Big Beat by Becky Albertalli

After almost 12 years as the Librarian at Queen's, today is my last day at school.  I am taking up a new role, training other schools to use Accessit library sofware - a position that I'm very excited about.  Leaving Queen's is not an easy thing to do and not a decision I made lightly, but the time is right for some new challenges.  So farewell and best wishes to the students and staff at Queen's - keep reading, stay curious and never stop learning.  You guys are the best.
Carole Gardiner
Librarian

Some ideas of where to go to find good books to read:

• Talk to fellow readers about what they're reading and enjoying
  
• Check out the Books and Reading page for links to book review and publishers websites and blogs
  
• Use the Books and Authors database in EPIC for suggestions of books similar to your favourites
  
• Follow blogs like Inside a Dog, Epic Reads and Bookish for fun posts, reviews and teen recommendations
  
• And be prepared to take a risk and try something different every now and then.  You must discover a new favourite!

Over the past week or so we've been celebrating poetry here at Queen's.  This coming Friday 24th August is National Poetry Day so it seemed like perfect timing to write and read poems and verse novels.  There is a display in the Info Centre featuring a selection from our poetry collection for you to enjoy or you can see the full list by choosing Poetry or Verse Novels under English in the visual search option of the WebOPAC.  (We have some great verse novels, by the way!)

A group of Year 10 students were lucky enough to take part in a celestial poetry evening last Thursday hosted by our English Department, as part of their Hidden Figures cross curricular study.  The evening featured poetry readings, inspiration from the night sky, fairy lights, stars of every shape and colour you can imagine, creative poetry writing activities, pizza, hot chocolate and marshmallows toasted over open fires!  The whole event was a delight from start to finish and the poetry that was crafted was of a very high standard - and adorned with stars, of course!  A very BIG thank you to the English Department for a truly amazing evening.

And if writing poetry is your thing, why not head along to the Writing Group on a Wednesday lunch time.  They are running some poetry activities this week for National Poetry Day and meet each week to share their writing and ideas.  (See Mrs Montgomerie for more details if you're interested)

On Friday we celebrated the conclusion of our Reading Challenge and Book Lovers' Week.  Congratulations to all our prize winners!  All our activities and competitions were very well supported and lots of fun was had in the process.  A big thank you to Mrs Hanning for the delicious, cute cupcakes, to Mrs Montgomerie for judging the exceptionally high standard of poems in the Book Spine Poetry competition and to Mrs Smith for helping with the prize draws.  And an especially big thank you to all the students and staff who took part in some way.  Our Reading Challenge this year saw us reading a total of over 450 books across the school - a magnificent effort!  It is going to be very hard to top this year's successes in 2019, but we're up for the challenge.

Congratulations to our Book Spine Poetry winners:

1st place - Abby and Eleanor (11SPE)
2nd place - Bridget (9CLA)
3rd place - Ella, Dani and Lydia (9CLA)
Comic poet's award - Amberley (10CIV)
Effective Last Line award - Juliette (12ROB)

And congratulations to our lucky Reading Challenge winners who took home a $20 gift card from Paper Plus:
Jenna, Zena, Jaizelee, Ruby C, Holly C, and Mrs Smith (staff prize winner)

The junior form class with the most books read during the Challenge was 10CIV and the senior form class (by only 1 book!) was 11SPE - enjoy your special chocolate cake morning teas :)

The winning house was Rae with 605 points - well done!

There has been an awful lot of reading going on since our challenge began back in June.

Our goal was to read 250 books across the school and we have exceeded that total with another 2 and a bit weeks to go!  Keep up the good work - it looks like we'll be setting a much higher target for our Reading Challenge next year to keep us motivated to read even more.

Here are the results as of today:
(For more up to date progress, check out the posters in the Info Centre entrance)

Leading junior form class - 9CLA
Leading senior form class - 11LWR and 13DOD

House points competition:
Ballard - 280 points
Dawson - 230 points
Pickering - 375 points
Rae - 365 points

And don't forget that every entry goes in the draw to win one of 5 $20 gift cards from Paper Plus, so keep those entries coming in!  Winners will be drawn in the Info Centre on Friday 10th August at the conclusion of Book Lovers' Week.