Nottingham High School Library

Mukul and Harry, two more in a long line of distinguished High School authors, presenting their Spanish novels to the Librarian, for inclusion in the MFL collection.  Coincidentally both titled Mi Tiempo Libra  or My Free Time, using StoryBird software, the boys won their form prize for the best extended writing in Spanish and the books make a useful addition to our shelves.  Read more about it on the MFL Blog.

The Hunger Games film is keeping uncountable feet dry this half term so when I was sent this link to a brilliant Pinterest on Young Adult Dystopian Novels by Nottingham librarian Fiona Crawford, I asked her if I could pass it on.  By the way, Dystopia is defined as

“An imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible.Opp.Utopian”.

I suppose there may be a certain comfort in knowing how bad it might get.  A sort of ‘yard stick’. Takes your mind off your exams.

http://pinterest.com/fionacrawford/ya-dystopian-novels/

I am often asked this question and I wanted a good answer because our lives are very busy and reading a classic requires generosity of time and attention that we are often unused to giving to books.  Happily, I have come across the brilliant Italo Calvino collection of essays Why Read the Classics so with thanks to him, here is my attempt to explain.

Classics were written in a different age and often from a different culture.  As a result they help us understand who we are and the point we have reached.  They give us a context with which to understand both where we have come from and the very different world that surrounds us now.

In order to read the classics, you have to recognise where exactly you are reading them ‘from’, or the point is lost. The contemporary world is where we have to place ourselves to look forwards and backwards.

Classics leave traces trailing behind them in culture.  The recent blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean would not exist without Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and this year Andrew Motion has been compelled to write a sequel, Silver, one of countless still inspired by the original.  The book, published in 1883 about an era a century before, was a favourite in this school library in 1950, long a classic by then, and still gathers no dust on our shelves. It’s influence on our culture today is beyond estimation.

Why then, when the language is odd for us and the style is a bit difficult and the content doesn’t seem recognisable, are we trying to encourage young people to read them now?  We tend to follow well-trodden paths, we select based on what we know we’ll like.  If we avoid risks and don’t develop our ability to read more rich and complex texts, we’ll miss 99% of what is available to us.  Also,  as Calvino says:

“the reading you do in your youth gives a form or a shape to your future experiences, providing models, ways of dealing with them, terms of comparison, schemes for categorising them, scales of value, paradigms of beauty; all things that continue to operate in us even when we remember little or nothing about the book we read when young”.

School has to teach you to know, whether you like it or not, a certain number of classics to give you the tools to enable you to make your own choices later on.  It’s an education. So go on, be brave, take risks, read a classic.  It might well affect how you look at the world from now on.

Why Read the Classics. Italo Calvino. Penguin Classics (2009) isbn 9780141189703

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Part of the Year 8 Reading Challenge this year is to read some Classic fiction;  one ‘Contemporary Classic’ and one pre 1945 ‘Classic’ (at least).

It’s like pulling teeth.  They are really grumbling.

So I was interested to find the results of an informal questionnaire about leisure reading done by Lower 5A (Year 10) in 1950.  Taken from boys aged between 10 and 15, the favourite author by far was W.E.Johns, writer of the ‘Biggles’ series.  R.L.Stevenson was a close second, with Enid Blyton popular amongst the first forms and Arthur Ransome, P.F.Westerman (the Muchamore of his day) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in that order for the other forms.

Many boys admitted to reading ‘Classics’ occasionally, a good number often, but very few never.  The most read Classics were by R.L.Stevenson, Dumas, Dickens, Kipling and Conan Doyle with some discussion as to whether Conan Doyle counted.   And in response to the question ‘What proportion of your recreation time do you spend reading?’, the majority spent half their time reading and a large number most of their time.

Ah yes.  Ancient History .

On March 1^st, World Book Day, Year Seven had a visit from A.M.Crawford, a writer who has turned her hand to YA Fiction, from the world of political journalism, and published her first novel, The Titan Prophecy last month.

I was particularly chuffed to invite her because from early readings, her book has gone down very well in this library and new authors tend to take a long time to break into the boys’ reading world of familiar names and well worn series.

The book first came to my attention through some well-aimed, old fashioned cold-calling which, luckily, I didn’t rebuff this time.  A book duly arrived printed on good quality paper with a good cover and, best of all, bookmarks.   I offered it to Joe, a Yr 9 pupil librarian with a critical eye.

A few days later, the verdict was good. It got the nod that non-effusive boys give to show low key enthusiasm;  pretty impressed.  He said it was very well-written and an interesting story line.  It made a lot more sense than Percy Jackson and the language was much better.  It has humour and serious battles.  It may not sound like it but this was high praise. I realised we were on to something. Reader two and three also gave it the nod.

The comparison with Percy Jackson is a problematic one for Crawford because she takes her Greek Mythology seriously and stays true to the Gods and their original stories.  However, a modern day plot-line which interacts with the myths makes some people jump to the obvious conclusion.  The Titan Prophecy is aimed at an older audience than Rick Riordan’s novels, isn’t difficult but doesn’t talk down to the reader.  It gives us real Greek mythology, a contemporary edge,  pace and excitement, and a promised sequel.  Early days yet but certainly a lot of boys went home with a copy.  Nice to get there before Waterstones.

When the Year 8 forum made the suggestion last month that that the Library should get some Kindles , I realised I was going to have to address the issue head on. Some of my local School Library colleagues already have some Kindles in their libraries and the issue is a frequent topic of discussion as we review the pros and cons for spending such a large amount of money on a technology with limited application, already facilitated in the main by a medium almost as old as the message itself; the book. Although viewed as a way to engage ‘reluctant readers’ with fiction, the jury is still out on whether e-readers make a lasting difference.  There is no quick fix to make a person into a reader although school librarians know from experience that the right book at the right time with the right encouragement can be habit changing.  A positive reading environment(social and physical),  certainly makes a huge difference and investment there has proven results.

It has been estimated that this Christmas one in 40 British adults received an e-book, 92% of which were Kindles.  And no wonder. The e-reader is a great way to read on the beach, with poor eye-sight, when reading many things simultaneously, when reading very quickly or when you only have one hand free.  It’s not so great if you tend to lose things, drop things, are vulnerable to thieves, read in the bath or want to keep a book you’ve liked forever. Most of our clientele fall into the second category.  The love of the book, the love of its cover, the love of taking it off the shelf five years later and finding exactly the bit you particularly remembered, the reading it “cover to cover”- these are physical things it is hard to imagine living without. And it’s only a bit annoying if you leave your £8 paperback on the bus.

Where it does appear e-readers may find their first application in school is in the area of non-fiction and text books.  Already in US universities, most text book provision is as e-resource and the ability to purchase by chapter and update in real time not to mention the ability to interact with images and graphics is transforming publishing.   It is forseeable that this will  quickly filter down to schools and for a number of reasons the Kindle or any other simple reader may not be the best tool for the task.  Students now used to smart phones require more to be impressed.  The wide-spread use of hand-held technology in school to read fiction may well be led by what we use to interact with the broader curriculum.  At that point the expense makes sense.  We are going to carefully “watch this space”.

For the moment I know that if my pupil librarians hadn’t read Warrior Cats in the conventional form, they wouldn’t have spotted their favourite books in the fantastic video below.  Enjoy!

Stephen Lawrence by Carol Ann Duffy

Cold pavement indeed

the night you died,

murdered;

but the airborne drop of blood

from your wound

was a seed

your mother sewed

into hard ground-

your life’s length doubled,

unlived, stilled,

till one flower, thorned,

bloomed

in her hand,

love’s just blade.

(Published in The Guardian Sat 07.01.12)

Murder_of_Stephen_Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust