Nottingham High School Library

Thanks to Darquati @Flikr Commons

Yesterday the annual ceremony for turning on the lights of the Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square took place. Any Blue Peter fans of the last forty years will know that the 70 foot spruce is a gift from Norway in gratitude for British support during the Second World War. Our guest this week, Kevin Crossley-Holland, was present at the felling and the lighting of the tree this year, our 65th, and explained the deeper significance of the gift. In Norse mythology the first man and woman are created from an Ash and an Elm. Norsemen believed that the universe consisted of three levels ; Asgard, Midgard and Niflheim , and nine worlds, and the axis of the three levels was a Mighty Ash Tree, a guardian tree. Trees are essential to the wooden boats that sail the Fiords and the wooden houses that bring shelter from the ice and the dark; central to the Norwegian psyche and mythology and the cosmology that underpins it. Hence, a gift of great significance on many levels. All this gleaned from Crossley-Holland, a master story-teller and a scholar of pre-Christian mythology from the North, Anglo-Saxon speaker and poet. Norse mythology seems particularly appropriate to us at this time of year. It felt like a whistle stop event but we hope to see him again soon.

Yr 7 at Muchamore visit in Birmingham

Very few authors have done more to keep boys reading in the last six years than Robert Muchamore, the author of the Cherub series.  This week we were invited by King Edward’s School, Birmingham to meet the author in the flesh and get some of our old battered favourites signed.  Unfortunately only 30 boys could be taken as many other schools were also invited.  So the names of six lucky fans from each class were picked out of a hat and given the morning off school.  Muchamore talked about what drove him to write his first book, The Recruit, the decisions he had made to engage a modern readership and keep them engaged, and why he thought the life of a writer was so good.  Known for the violence  depicted in his books, Muchamore is no award winner.  However, his narrative has a pace and thrill that keep his readers coming back for more, even sometimes into the sixth form where a quick read brings a bit of light relief to the gaming generation.  For keeping the window open to escapist fiction in a busy day, Cherub takes some beating.

I like November because that’s when I gain a perceptible change in my ratings from a bit odd, but nice, to (momentarily) quite cool.  It is when I get to deliver the free Booked Up Books to Year 7.  The whole process is a weird one for a librarian.  We don’t often give books away; we’ve got lots of great ones to lend.  But the process of choosing a new book for themselves, even in a school like this one, is not necessarily something every eleven year old has done before.  To make that decision amongst your mates is quite empowering.  Many will choose the same book, and read it, alongside their friends.  Some will be determined to try something different.  There will always be a couple of front runners among the titles, but because they are all good, the challenge for me is to pitch the others.  Each year there is a lovely poetry book – this year’s is Pumpkin Grumpkin, collected by John Agard and Grace Nichols.   That’s where I always start.  There are several points I make. It seems to me that even in houses with books, to find a recent poetry book is unlikely.  I make the point, however, that when there is a poetry book in the house, it is almost certainly one kept from parents’ schooldays, when the charity bag calls they are hard to let go.  The boys will be studying poetry (from teachers who love it), so having a poetry book around is very very useful. But most importantly, the pleasure of dipping into a book which makes you look at the world for a moment in a different way, taking time from a noisy day to listen to words carefully chosen, is something to be valued highly.  Pumpkin Grumpkin, a Book of Nonsense Poems from around the World is a good choice this year. As JonArno Lawson says, “Trying to make sense of nonsense brings us back to our senses”.

At the end of last term I made a visit to Prison by the kind invitation of the Nottingham Prison Librarian. The visit was one organised by the librarian’s professional body, CILIP, to show us how other libraries work and help us pick up good ideas for our own.  Although some ideas from the prison library do not translate easily to a school library, there were many similarities and I thought I’d write a brief description for those who haven’t experienced reading at ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’.

Nottingham Prison is a remand prison for men awaiting trial from the Notts and Derbyshire areas.  There are about 1060 inmates with 13 spare beds that day.  As they are awaiting trial, some are only there for a few months.  Consequently, education and courses can be disrupted or curtailed with moves to other prisons.  They are also curtailed by cuts to the education budget, cuts in staffing and by over-crowding.  The day we entered the prison was a training day so all inmates were locked up in their cells for the whole day.  Most cells are shared but the single cells are reserved for the prisoners who work, either as cleaners or cooks.  Needless to say, everything we saw was spotless.  The prisoners have all their meals in their cells.  Stairs, landings and doors are metal, the wings have three floors open in the middle and the noise is tremendous.

The Library, by contrast, is a haven of quiet and calm.  Inmates should be able to visit once a week  if a prison officer is available to accompany them, and it is the one part of the prison that looks normal and feels friendly.  Art work covers the walls and men can borrow four books per week although big readers can take more.  There are no over-dues and no losses.  Thrillers and fantasy fiction are very well used. There are books in foreign languages kept for foreign prisoners, classics, law books, cooking and art, poetry and careers.  It may surprise no one that the, by far, favourite author is Martina Cole.   The Librarians love their work.  They know they are essential and make a difference to peoples’ lives. They are committed to keeping their customers, prisoners and officers, stocked with books and love a good discussion.  The library clearly plays a role in the normalization process and in there every individual is seen as an individual and treated with respect.   Much was discussed about re-offending and cycles of crime with little optimism.  However, the Librarian, Gil Lewis, has won an award for piloting The Big Book Share at the prison where prisoners read and record bedtime stories to send to their children.  She also brings in authors and poets for workshops.  Although in theory there is a statutory requirement to provide a library service for all (including prisoners) in practice that can just mean a few books on a shelf. It is clear we should be very grateful for these small beacons of society in the most difficult of situations.

We are delighted to announce that Kevin Crossley-Holland, prize-winning writer of many children’s books, well-known poet and author is coming to Nottingham High School.  Best known for his King Arthur trilogy The Seeing Stone, Crossley-Holland is also celebrated for his translation of Beowulf from the Anglo-Saxon, the Penguin Book of Norse Myths, his Viking books and British Folk Tales. 

He is Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a patron of the Society for Storytelling, the European Storytelling Archive and has lectured in the U.S. and for the British Council.  Next year, he will take on the role of President of the School Library Association and we are honoured to have him spend the day with us and run a workshop with Year 8 on November 30^th before his diary completely fills up with much grander appointments.

Winner of the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Children’s Award, the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal and the Tir na n-Og,  Mr Crossley-Holland  will be signing books in the Library during lunchtime.  A selection of his books will be available including the newly published Bracelet of Bones, surely a contender for all the good book awards this year.

Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie funded 300 Libraries in Great Britain

On Friday a disappointing court decision in the London Borough of Brent gave the legal agreement necessary to close half the public libraries in the area.  Local residents have been campaigning for many years to keep their libraries open within their communities, enabling free access for those on low incomes and without transport. Brent is the joint fourth-worst Borough in London for levels of child poverty.  Save the Children reported in 2011 that 11,000 children are impoverished.  Unemployment is higher than the average for London.

Cricklewood Library, one of those to go, was founded in 1929 by All Souls College, Oxford, who donated the reading room to the area’s residents with a covenant which restricted its use to a lending library, reading room, or educational study.  Four generations of local people have paid through their rates to keep it open and supplied with books, newspapers, professional staff and, latterly, IT.  It will now close forever.  The products of social reform and philanthropy of the last two centuries, the network of free libraries for education and recreation within reach of everyone, is falling away.  Globally, we have never been so affluent.  Are the 2010s going to be defined as the decade we just let Public Libraries go?

Dale Chihuli glass ceiling.

During the summer holidays I had some fun looking at the excellent World Book Night Top 100 books and seeing how many I had read (an unimpressive 36!). There are many I mean to read or have meant to read for some time but then someone writes something new and marvellous and I swerve off course.  I was a poor reader at school so I’m always a bit behind those lucky people who were able to read the right thing at the right time and retain a memory of the beginning and the middle when they got to the end.  This was an ability I had to work at and only acquired quite late.

The Top 100 led me to an interesting article on what it means to be well read.  ‘Julia’ on the WBN Blog compares the concept of being well read with being well travelled.

“To me being well read is about exploration and an open mindedness that will take you beyond your comfort zone, to discover new things. We all have our own reading journeys”.

Our quest to get boys to read something new starts very early with the Year 7 Reading Challenge requiring them to try different genres and different authors. But even at that age ‘good readers’ can be very set in their ways. They know what they like.

For me, serendipity led me to read Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hess in my late teens and José Eduardo Agualusa’s The Book of Chameleons last week, with uncountable delightful and inspiring novels in between.   Libraries are rich with unexpected journeys for anyone who’s looking,  and it is often the library which inspires people to look further.

If you believe that science teachers stick to Stephen Hawking and Richard P. Feynman in their quiet moments, think again. This recommendation came from Mr Hortor this morning and is available from the Library now although if it’s still here on Friday, I’m taking it for the weekend!

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. ‘Excellent. A real page turner. The Sense of an Ending explores how our memories of the past are seen through the lens of later life. Not for those who like a fairy tale ending, but thought provoking stuff! Read the book last night, cover to cover! Avoided lots of jobs I should have done’.

Current Reservations

There is nothing here we like so much as a ‘The New Book in the Series’.  The new term has started with a great flurry of  these, creating great excitement in the Library and filling our reservations list.  Publishers are well aware of what will give an author longevity on our bookshelves and this Autumn the number that have appeared over the summer has meant that many people go straight to their library because they can’t afford them all.  Which is great. So we welcome Skullduggery Pleasant No.6 : Death Bringer (Derek Landy),  Hive No.7: After Shock by Mark Walden, Time Riders Bk4, The Eternal War, by Alex Scarrow,  Warlock (the new Nicholas Flamel) by Michael Scott, Charlie Higson’s The Fear, Spooks: I am Grimalkin:Book 9, by Joseph Delaney and good old Robert Muchamore’s ‘Peoples Republic’.  And we are really looking forward to the new Darren Shan, the new Rick Riordan and the new Angie Sage.  But with reservations (the other kind).  Let’s hope that authors and publishers don’t take their readership for granted.  We need good quality writing, clever plots, stimulating intellectual engagement, fiction at its very best. If it ends up being the same old “same old”, maybe we should all try something new.