There will not be an external guest this year; instead we will hold a number of activities focused on books and reading:

• A Escape Room challenge
• A Connecting Wall
• A quiz

and the Book Club Cake Break will punctuate the week, but overall, we will encourage the boys to enjoy and explore new stories or cherished ones.

The PPA Book Sale on Friday 23 February at 1630 is a perfect end to the week, and will offer all an opportunity to replenish the boys' personal collections.

During the Week, the £1 World Book tokens will be distributed as well. 

Finally, a plea to all pupils to return any School library book which may have been hiding or resting on shelves or under beds for some time. They are always welcome back, no questions asked, so they can be enjoyed by eager readers.

A reminder from last week's newsletter:

The dates for the Book Club Cake Breaks have been decided. On Tuesday 20 February, Juniors will share their thoughts about The Lucky Bottle by Chris Wormell; on Thursday 22 February The Final Year by Matthew Goodfellow will be the title that Senior pupils will discuss.

There are still over two weeks before these dates and I hope that many boys will take the opportunity of free time allowed by the forthcoming half-term break to explore the two stories. They are incredibly different in their settings and narrative styles. Yet, they are linked by the characters whose resilience and ability to care shines through. Both are also strongly connected to other books – and I will leave it to the readers to see which ones!

Coincidentally, the title chosen by the PPA Book Club for their next meeting, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, also contains a strong link to a well-known tale.

Connections is the theme of our forthcoming Book Week, starting on Monday 19 February. We will not have a guest author this time, but reading for pleasure will be celebrated with other activities, one being the Cake Breaks. Further details will follow closer to the time (but no dressing up is planned for the week!).

In a serendipitous moment earlier this week, I stumbled upon the words of a great contemporary writer, Kate Di Camillo. She received a letter from an eight-year-old girl whose teacher was reading Di Camillo’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to her class. The teacher cried, reading the end of the story! And when the girl told her mother, she read that book with her daughter. ‘Why does this letter please me so much?’ Di Camillo mused ‘ Because the teacher is reading aloud to her class. Because the mother and the daughter are reading together. Because when we read together, we open our hearts to a story, open our hearts to each other. We connect. And that’s miraculous’.

Happy reading!

Mrs Brill
Head of Classics and Librarian