TED Week - The WeekThat Was!

The Library hosted this fantastic event this week. Its mission was to promote curiosity, provide entertainment and inspire each of us to “think outside the box”. There was a different theme every day.

Monday was all about positive inspiration with Talks for When You’re Just Done with Earth;

Tuesday provided motivation (and cupcakes!) with Talks to Watch during Breakfast;

Wednesday passed on amazing facts and discoveries with Talks to Inspire Smart Conversation;

Thursday provided (weird) food for thought with The Apocalypse Survival Guide;

Friday promoted a sense of wonder and curiosity with Where Do Ideas Come From?

The guessing competition saw boys developing complex mathematical theorems and asking philosophical questions about just how many snakes can fit into a jar! The TED photo booth was a hit and we had some live TED-talks too. Mr Barnes passed on the secrets of ten-minute meditation, leading students in some effective de-stressing techniques. Ms Anagnostopoulos shared her extensive knowledge of manga, a hugely popular yet often misunderstood art-form. Mr Dixon encouraged students to think outside the box. His selection of weird and wonderful items from some of his many collections were held up for analysis and boys were asked “What on earth is this?”

Overall TED week was a great success, enjoyed by teachers and students alike.  Many thanks to Ms. Mileto who organised the week.

Blackout Poetry

There are some pretty amazing things being done with blackout poetry at the moment. This was inspiration enough to feature blackout poetry in our World Poetry Day displays.

Popularised by writer and artist Austin Kleon, blackout poetry comes about by searching for stand-out words in a previously published work and emphasising those words by crossing out the unneeded text with a permanent marker. Crossing it out can mean just that, or it could get quite a bit more creative.

Students and teachers have been having fun this week creating poetry using these techniques and we have been building up a pretty decent display as a result.

World Poetry Day March 21

This week we will be celebrating all things poetry to commemorate World Poetry Day. Visitors to the Library are invited to contribute to our displays of book spine poetry and blackout poetry – both innovative ways of taking existing works of literature and creating something new. Plus, they are heaps of fun to do.

So why have a day of recognition for poetry? In celebrating World Poetry Day, UNESCO

“recognises the unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind.”

The collaborative displays are proving popular with English classes and the lone poet alike. Come for a visit and create some poetry - unleash your creative spirit!

Look out for more posts this week with the results of your creative labour!

Your Ultimate Reading List! Part 3

Still looking for things to read? Here we have Mrs Paterson's picks. You'll recognise themes of survival, power, and destiny running through all these books. The characters in these stories overcome fear, learn the importance of curiosity, and search for truth. 

1. His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
Not long after Lyra Belacqua witnesses a plot to poison her uncle, the adventurer Lord Asriel, her friend Roger is kidnapped by the "Gobblers". These events lead Lyra on an epic adventure that enters parallel universes and spans three amazing books! 

2. The invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick 
Orphaned Hugo lives an anonymous life within the walls of a train station, until his biggest secret is jeopardised by his relationship with the cranky old man who runs the toy repair booth.

3. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak 
Liesel Meminger is a nine-year-old girl living in Nazi Germany during World War II. Her family hide a Jewish man named Max, who teaches Liesel to read in secret.

4. The curious incident of the dog in the night time by Mark Haddon
When Christopher Boone discovers the neighbour's dog speared by a garden fork, he decides to investigate the dog's death and record his experiences as a murder mystery novel.

5. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Young Pi Patel survives disaster at sea only to find himself sharing the lifeboat with an assortment of zoo animals, including a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Today it is all about the unique worldview of the man who was born Theodor Seuss Geisel as the Library celebrates the birthday of beloved children’s author and illustrator Dr Seuss. I am yet to meet someone that doesn't like at least one of his stories, many of which have become the most popular children's books ever. Is your childhood favourite here?


The Cat in the Hat

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back

Green Eggs and Ham

The Lorax
Yertle the Turtle
Horton Hears a Who
Oh, the places you'll go!

Fox in Socks
The Sneetches
The 500 Hats of Bartholemew Cubbins

I bet you can't choose just one, right?

The great thing about Dr Seuss books is that they are so much fun to read aloud. Try it today - read one to your younger brother or sister. Or yourself. Or a much-loved pet, like The Fish  - the voice of reason from The Cat in the Hat.

Let’s remember this wonderful quote that sums up what reading is all about!

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Answer truthfully, when you see the word wizard what image comes up in your mind?

For me it's a majestic being in a light blue cloak carrying a magical staff with a book levitating in front of him, who can twirl up a tornado with the sound of a few words. Sounds grand, doesn't it? See, most people conjure up the same image, more or less, so when I started reading The Dreseden Files it changed my perspective completely.

Harry Dresden is a powerful wizard, a wizard so renowned he himself has been requested by the White Council (a court with the same power as the Australian High Court except for, well, wizards) to represent all wizards in numerous formal events. However instead of living a life of celebrity as you would assume, he lives in an old, musty basement, struggling to pay the rent with the money he earns from his few cases as a public wizard (the wizard version of Sherlock Holmes).

We are introduced to the main character in this first book of the Dresden Files, Storm Front. In general the plot is about the cases he undertakes, from small things such as finding a missing ring to solving murder cases. Mixed into this are complications from breaking one of the laws of magic written by the White Council to the quarrels he has with the leader of the vampires.

Without revealing too much of the book, Dresden is hired to find a missing husband but in fact stumbles upon a complicated set-up involving murders, black magic and a mob boss.

Overall, Jim Butcher's series The Dresden Files is an interesting and captivating idea. I recommend this book to young adult readers who like the fantasy and mystery genres. If you want to try a new book or are already a fan of the Sherlock Holmes mystery novels then you would enjoy this series.

Review by Siven

Do You Dystopia?

Stories not about your happy place.

Dystopian fiction. It’s not a new phenomenon (1984, Z for Zachariah, The Giver) but it certainly seems to be having a resurgence. As a genre it’s a little bit like a virus, an appropriate comparison because so many dystopian storylines feature one. As we all know a virus replicates and spreads, which is pretty much what has happened within the genre since The Hunger Games was published in 2008.

So it's a really popular genre, but how do you identify a dystopian novel? It is probably set in one of many possible futures or deals with the end of civilisation as we know it. It may point to the possible results of a disturbing world-trend - dangerous reality television, worsening climate change, extreme plastic surgery, Belieberism. 

While it may make you anxious about the way humanity is headed it may also fill you with hope for it - the hope that people will work together to find solutions to these problems before it’s too late. Here’s to getting it right before we are forced to go all Sci-Fi on each other and set off to find another planet we can call home.

Below are some reviews of dystopian fiction that we've recently read. If these books fuel your dystopian fire, check out our reading lists Speculative Fiction and Dystopia for more like this!

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Reviewed by Mrs Paterson

I really can’t say anything about this story without giving too much away, so I’ll just say: this is one of those unstoppable pandemic dystopias, where everyone dies from some unrelenting virus and no one can stop the dying and soon there are just a handful of people who haven’t died or are not dying. And some of them perform Shakespeare for the dwindling, non-existent masses because "survival is insufficient". The story moves back and forth through time, weaving together seemingly disparate people and things: the lives of survivors, the histories of the departed, a mysterious comic strip and a bizarre cult. But that’s really all I can say.

So if I can’t give you even a shred of coherent storyline, why should you read it? Because ultimately this is a story about hope and beauty and human resilience in the face of extreme none-of-those things. And it is about the power of memory, and the importance of remembering. I loved this story. And i highly recommend that you read it. Just don’t do what I did, and start getting pneumonia while you’re reading about fevers, coughing, and dying. Not good...

Themes ticked: global pandemic, post-apocalyptic, decline in the fabric of society, set immediately after the catastrophe, survivors as the main characters

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Reviewed by Mrs Klein

Bill Masen is disappointed when he misses out on the greatest light show ever because he is in hospital recovering from an eye operation. What he doesn’t know is that everyone who has seen the light show is blinded. When he removes his bandages the next day, he also finds that the Triffids, plants that can walk, have escaped their compound. Everyone had forgotten about the Triffids “because they were novelties”. What they had also overlooked was that “the whorl topping a Triffid’s stem could lash out as a slender stinging weapon ten feet long, capable of discharging enough poison to kill a man if it struck squarely on his unprotected skin.”

So there you have it – a world of blind people at the mercy of rampaging carnivorous plants – the stuff of nightmares! I still can’t see a strange plant without being reminded of this book.

Themes ticked: catastrophic event, rampaging carnivorous plants, decline in the fabric of society, set during the catastrophe

Clade by James Bradley

Reviewed by Ms Herlinger

Set in the near future, with global warming worsening with each year that passes, Clade is a loose collection of episodes in the life of a family - set against a background of a world in peril. Beginning with power cuts, bird die-offs, progressing to tropical cyclones in England, refugees from flooded lands, a global pandemic,  technology to replace lost worlds and lost people, it could be depressing, but it’s not. It’s just a fascinating glimpse into a possible future world – if we don’t act now.

Themes ticked: environmental disaster, global pandemic, decline in the fabric of society, set during the catastrophe

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

Reviewed by Ms Agnostopoulos

Thomas wakes up in dark box that is slowly moving upwards. He has no memory of how he got there or who he is. All he knows is his name. When the box gets to the top Thomas enters The Glade, a field surrounded on all sides by a mile high wall. The Glade is populated by other teenage boys who have also had their memories stripped. Some have been there for 2 years, with a new boy arriving once a month. The box also brings some supplies, but the boys have to work to survive. They tend crops, raise animals and keep the place in order, but their main objective is to escape the maze that is outside the stone walls.

Within the maze are monsters called Grievers who mostly come out at night - mostly. Each night the doors to the maze close. Overnight the walls of the maze change, and each day ‘runners’ explore the maze and return to map out the changes. After two years they have still not found an exit. A couple of days after Thomas arrives the box brings someone else to The Glade - a girl in a coma. In her fist is a note that reads ‘She is the last one ever’. Thomas gets flashes of his memory back and soon realises that her arrival signals the end for The Glade. It is time to finally solve The Maze and find out why they were put there in the first place.

Themes ticked: catastrophic event, decline in the fabric of society, set during the catastrophe

Your Ultimate Reading List! Part 2

Another five books, this time from Mrs Klein.

1. The Sword and the Scimitar by David Ball
Tags: siblings, slave markets, sultans, knights, sieges
2. Two Brothers by Ben Elton
Tags: brothers, Nazis, Jewish, Berlin, WWII
3. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Tags: ambition, brothers, builders, cathedrals, Henry I
4. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Tags: Belgian Congo, jungle, missionaries, families, tragedy
5. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Tags: Bombay, beggars, gangsters, slums, underworld 

If you want to find out any more about these titles, come and ask!