Magic Numbers

It´s Number Day here at Swans!  And everywhere you look, people are having fun with numbers while raising pots of cash for children´s charities.

Here in the library we have a fabulous display of number-related titles from both our fiction and non-fiction collections, and lunchtime visitors will have the chance to hunt through the stacks for the Three Magic Words challenge.  There´s also a Ten Magic Words challenge for those who are brave enough, and this will be rewarded with double merits!

If all this wasn´t enough, we´re also Dressing Up For Digits today, so your humble librarian is wearing a special badge that marries mathematics with literature (see below).  Can you guess what number I´m representing?

 

Kung Hei Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year!

The first new moon of the year signals a new year according to the Chinese calendar system, Shēngxiào, which originated in the Han dynasty (206-220BC).  Each of the years in their twelve year cycle is named after an animal, which are said to determine the characteristics of that year and the people born in it.

According to this calendar we are now entering the year of the horse, and it might be a particularly interesting year for you if you were born in a previous year of the horse yourself.  The last one was twelve years ago in 2002-3 so there are probably a lot of typically independent, adventurous and free-spirited horses in Year Seven.

Here´s a link to a very interesting article which will tell you eight (a lucky number in China) things you didn´t know about the Year of the Horse:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/31/eight-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-year-of-horse

Let´s hope it´s a lucky year for all of us, without too much horsing around!

Girl Power in the Library

January´s Fiction Fan Club was for fans of ´Pink´ books, aka books for girls.  Unsurprisingly 100% of those in attendance were of the female persuasion, and there was a lot of fun had with a book hunt, some book reviewing and a quiz on courageous heroines of fiction and non-fiction.  The two teams actually tied for points in the end so merits were earned all round.

Our pink books are actually probably our most popular genre of books, with authors like Cathy Cassidy topping our list.  Her blend of humour and characters that we can all relate to seem to be a winning combination with the Swans readers.  If you count yourself among her fans you might want to check out her very interesting website:

http://www.cathycassidy.com/

Are you a Cathy Cassidy or pink fiction fan?  If so, don´t forget to post your comments below.

#tweetmyread

The library´s unplugged Twitter feed has been filling up all month with tweets about some of the best books in our collection.  Most creative tweet and best non-fiction tweet will be announced in assembly today and heartily rewarded with merits.

The task of picking winners was complicated by the high level of anonymity among Tweeters, but the object of the exercise was to share our thoughts on the collection so I would say the objective has been achieved very successfully.

While we´re on the subject of Twitter, did you know that there are now 58 million tweets a day?  That´s over 9000 per second!

The library was actually inspired to run the #tweetmyread competition after reading an article in November´s issue of Bloomberg Businessweek (available in the library) so if you´re a bit of a techy, come on in and check it out.

Welcome To Our Blog!

 

Greetings library fans,

And welcome to the Swans School Library´s very own blog!  If you want to know what´s happening in the library, what´s new and what´s old news, what´s hot and what´s not, make this your first port of call.  This will be the place to find out the latest competition news, read winning entries, learn about new additions to the collection, hear about upcoming events, get useful info and find out more about your favourite books and authors. 

There will even be the opportunity for you to participate.  If you have something to say about one of my posts, simply post a comment underneath.  Similarly, if a review is posted of a book that you have read, please feel free to add your opinion of it.  It would be great to get as many points of view as possible.  I will also be running competitions where the prize is seeing your work published right here on this blog.

And now that the library is the new home of Pulse Magazine, stand by for news and updates from the editor too.

*DISCLAIMER:  As the author of the blog the library reserves the right to share completely random oddities and items that may be of general interest too.*

Lots of exciting things to check out, so watch this space!