Merry Christmas!

And hasn't our library been evolving this year!  So much activity and creativity!  You have all made my days here lots of fun.  From monster bookmarks to Christmas spiders, cupcake wars to the first annual Grade 10 Hunger Games and now our current Ollivander's Wand Shop we are having a great time in 2013/14.  You know that if you have ideas for projects or programs you would like to try I will always do my best to attempt to make them happen!  Who knows what the new year is going to bring?

A reminder to use the useful links!

Life is busy and you may not always think to scroll further down the page, but do remember to periodically check out the "useful links" on my page and also on the pages of your teachers.
The grade 12s, for instance,  may be interested in checking out the school division's Pursue Online Career website with info on scholarships, post-secondary choices, and career planning.

If you are at home or just too tired to make it downstairs to the library and require an atlas, try Canadian Geographic Atlas to look up what you need.

Working on an assignment for that Canadian history buff Mrs. Trumier?  Try using The Canadian Encyclopedia Online

Late at night and you totally forgot how to write a bibliography?  Try plugging your info into Bibme and it will format a bibliography for a book, article or website for you.

Saskatchewan Learning also makes available several databases for Saskatchewan schools.  To access them, go to Saskatchewan Learning and explore what they have.

These are just a few of the resources available to you if you take to time to explore the links on our blogs - so remember next time you aren't able to come down to the library!    All of the above are permanently linked on the right .

Library Creations!

The library has been a busy place this week and a productive one!  We had many creative projects started during book club on Tuesday and a few completed - some today after school!  Some of our senior students are even getting in on the fun during their study periods - Mai could not resist and has produced several lovely pieces of jewellery for herself!   I thought I would add a close up of the samples I made (the only ones left at the end of the day!)  Good job everybody :)

More Book Club Fun!

Those of you who regularly read the blog will remember my winter pictures of our family farm, so I thought I would add this summer one, taken at a 50th anniversary photo shoot for my parents (by Twyla Lapointe of Admire Photography)

Featuring my adorable six-year-old nephew, of course.  He regularly takes me down in light-saber battles, but then he ALWAYS gets to be Darth Vader, and Darth Vader ALWAYS wins.

Anyway, on to library stuff!  Book clubbers should be thinking about what passage of text you want to use for the jewellery project we are starting this week.  We can photocopy, print something out, or you can just use a page from a recycled book - give it some thought.   For those of you who want a reminder of what we are kind of aiming at here is a link at Julz Reads where she has used an old copy of Henry IV to craft her necklace.  This will probably take us more than one lunch hour, so don't expect to take your project home tomorrow!

Scholastic orders have been placed, so expect an influx of new books sometime in the next week to ten days!

Get Into a New Series!

We have LOTS of them in the library, including our newest purchase which we discussed at book club - the CHERUB series by Robert Muchamore. I told you a bit about the series while you were busy with your bookmarks, but you may be interested to hear the author himself tell you about it:

 As I told you on Tuesday, my son LOVES these books - he is on #11 right now and will be very sad when he is finished with the series. He assures me that they would appeal to both girls and boys, so consider putting your name down for them - it sounds like they are best read in order (I am numbering the spines.)

 I received an email from Random House which featured this infographic (all adult books), but it got me thinking that perhaps we could work on something similar at one of our book club meetings by tapping into all of your pooled reading experience - what do you think? I really like the look of this and it might be fun to do. Have a look at it here "What Do You Feel Like Reading Infographic"

A final reminder to book club members to hand in your bookmarks to me by the end of the day today if you would like them laminated - I will be taking them tomorrow and returning them to you next week.

Great Books Coming Your Way...Gradually!

Hello again!
We are going to try a book club meeting for Seniors today (Thursday) since we had such an AMAZING turnout of grade 7-9 students on Tuesday!  I think it would be more productive to split into two groups this year if we have some interest from older students as well.

Juniors, let me know what you think about incorporating the occasional small craft (such as bookmarks, etc.) into our meetings this year.  Fun?  or not so much - I don't have my Quinn at home this year to tell me what is cool and what's boring!

As a follow-up to our talk about the book Colin Fischer, which now has quite a long reserve list by the way, I read a few reviews (all positive) and found this little video trailer.  I hope all of you who put your name down for it enjoy it and I am now eager to read it myself!

Back to the Books!

Welcome to all students returning to Rivier Academy and especially to those exploring our halls for the first time this year!  What an exciting year we have ahead of us - certain to "go beyond" our expectations in so many ways.

As many of you are aware, the cataloguing of textbooks has monopolized my time for the last while so you have not had many new books out on display yet - but I promise they will be coming!  Mrs. Mengell has the Scholastic book orders out so make sure you have a look at those if you enjoy the experience of owning your own book collection.

Our first book club meeting will be tomorrow, Tuesday, at 12:05 in the library.  I think we will call for juniors and seniors together at this first meeting and see who is interested this year and then we can decide how we want to proceed.    I am looking forward to hearing about what all of you read over the holidays!

Quinn (my daughter) and Kenzie in the library for graduation formals in June.  Both are off experiencing THEIR challenging first weeks at university!

Almost Spring!

Or is it...
I took this photo at my Mom and Dad's farm on Easter Sunday - we have the old community hall in our farmyard and it is almost 2 stories high. This is how much snow had drifted around it:

Lots of fun for my nephew (and Quinn and Charlie!) but it was kind of a crazy Easter egg hunt!

Now that we are further along into "spring" here's what it looked like this Sunday:

I am all for fun in the snow, but enough is enough!  Let me just say that if that building is completely submerged when we visit next week I am heading south!  It is time for some serious thawing to happen.    (Meanwhile, Mr. C and Charlie were helping to dig trenches around the house to divert the anticipated water flow from the basement!)

And in library news, we have a super-fancy new library catalogue and you can search it from ANYWHERE!  How exciting is that?  For now, I have linked it here through the Loopy Library on the  top right.  Once you click on that it takes a minute and then you will be taken to the world of LIBRARYWORLD, or Rivier's little corner of it.  You can then enter your search terms in the box at the top, or just browse the latest items I've been cataloguing.  I haven't fully investigated whether you are able to reserve items from home or not - we will be learning together!

All of my noon hour regulars will be delighted to know that Model U.N. has wrapped up for now, so there will be no more of those meetings delaying your entry into the library!  We are back to 12:05 opening Monday to Thursday, unless unforeseen circumstances arise.

Finally, I am so enjoying your artwork on our bookshelves!  We even had our big group of exchange students from Japan decorate them for us - I thought I would share a couple of my favourites here:

Have a great day and try out that new catalogue link!

More New Titles For You!

We had another awesome book club meeting at lunch today! Anyone who missed out can pop by to see what's new and exciting. I thought I would post a couple of trailers for new books that may have been overlooked because they don't have a very "descriptive description" or perhaps I just haven't talked them up enough to the students who have come in looking for reading material... Anyway, some of you might be too young to remember Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, but it was VERY popular and he has now published another novel - the first in a series - called Who Could That Be At This Hour?
Have a look:


The other book I WISH more students would read is Wonder by R.J. Palacio. I have read this one and it is an excellent book about SO MANY THINGS - from not fitting in to the true nature of friendship and courage, I WANT YOU TO READ IT!!!
Here's the trailer:

Hello again!

Such a long time and SO MANY GOOD BOOKS since my last blog post! All of you book clubbers know that we have had a steady influx of new reading material over the past months and lots to talk about at our weekly meetings. As always, I love to hear your suggestions and requests and enjoy seeing your artwork on the ends of our bookshelves :) I also thought I would post a very belated photo from our book club Christmas party:

It's hard to believe we are getting close to Easter already!  

So, as we discussed at last week's meeting, the Newbery Award winner this year is a book    called The One and Only Ivan, which I just purchased and it is still available to be signed out if anyone is interested.

The story is told from the perspective of Ivan, a gorilla, who does not really miss his life in the wild until a new baby elephant enters his life and he begins to realize what he might be missing.  (Or at least that is what I am getting from the reviews I've read - I haven't read the book yet!)  

For those of you who don't come to book club - you may not always see the newest books because they are snapped up by the book club students first!  Keep checking those shelves over the encyclopedias for new titles, and never hesitate to ask me if we have a title you are after in our library!  I can put you on a waiting list if we do, and if I we don't already have it and I think it would be a good addition, I will put it on my "to order" list!