Wilberfoss Primary School

Work on the library is going really well. It’s been completely re-arranged and a small army of eager  pupils have been working so hard getting a huge amount of new fiction and non-fiction books ready for the shelves in February.

But we’re not just putting new fiction and non-fiction in our new school library. We’re putting a large comic and graphic novel selection in as well.

(And at this point, seeing as it’s Mr Bruton writing this, I hope you’ll understand why I switch from first person plural to first person singular.)

When I was a child I read comics, just like many of the parents reading this did. But I didn’t stop reading comics as I got older, instead my love and appreciation for comics grew and grew. Not just the sort of superhero comics you may automatically think of, but a comic medium with all the breadth and diversity of prose fiction. There are great comics on every subject for all ages, children and grown-ups alike. I could go on and on about them. But here is not the place.

Suffice to say that over the past 10 years school librarians have realised what I’ve always known – graphic novels are a wonderful way to get children reading (boys and girls – of all reading abilities) and most importantly of all discovering a love of reading that will stay with them for life. (And for clarification, Graphic Novels and comics are exactly the same thing – but Graphic Novels tend to have a book like spine).

So when Mrs Monkman and Mrs Hatter started talking about restocking the library I introduced them to the idea of putting together a small Graphic Novel section in the library, something I’m pleased to say they were fully in favour of.

Now, when I’m not working at school, a lot of my time is spent writing about comics (mostly at the Forbidden Planet International Blog). And because of this, I’ve built up a large contact list. It seemed to good an opportunity to pass up – after all, if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Several hundred emails later and we had a bigger and more generous response than I could ever have dreamt of:

Yes, every single graphic novel you see above came completely free, all donated by some wonderful companies/artists. We’re incredibly grateful here at Wilberfoss for the tremendous generosity shown by so many people. So this is our chance to say a big, big thank you to everyone.

So far, all the pupils who have been helping with the library restock who have had any contact with these graphic novels have been tremendously excited by the sheer wealth of different styles and themes. I can’t wait to see the reaction of the pupils when the new library opens. (Hopefully second week in February)

But that wasn’t all. One of my contacts who sends me graphic novels to review works at a publisher’s clearing house for a lot of foreign publishers. And they sent this lovely collection of picture books along – which means we now have enough to have a dedicated picture book section alongside our shorter books for developing readers. This is what they sent:

Wow. All completely free, donated by Publishers Group UK. And there are some absolutely beautiful picture books in that lot, the sort of picture books you really can call works of art in their own right. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the children from lower years fall in love with them. And, for that matter, I hope older pupils have a look at them as well – after all, beautiful art and well crafted, shorter stories should be enjoyed by all.

Right, back to the comics / graphic novels…. these are the donations we’ve received in absolutely no order….

The DFC Library and more from David Fickling Books / Random House.

Lots of Tintin and The Rainbow Orchid from Egmont Books.

The best of European comics, translated for the UK – all from Cinebook.

Robot City Adventures sent to us by Templar Publishing.

Gorgeous comics for younger readers (but we oldies love them as well) from Top Shelf Productions.

Beautiful hard-covers from Abrams Books UK.

Graphic Novels and more from Scholastic UK.

Familiar names from Titan Books.

Classic stories adapted into Graphic Novels from SelfMadeHero.

A few from artists and companies who only publish an occasional children’s book. Gary Northfield sent along his riotious Derek The Sheep (as seen in The BeanoMax). Fanfare/Ponent Mon added My Mommy, a beautiful work. Sweatdrop Studios sent along Telling Tales; Manga takes on classic fairy tales. The Little Prince is a gorgeous adaptation of the classic book from Walker Books. Morag Lewis donated her Manga tale Reya.

And last but not least, Forbidden Planet International sent along a huge box of comics full of superheroes and much more. The boys who sorted that out had a marvellous time – they acted as if they had just discovered Aladdin’s Cave!

I’d like to thank every single one of the companies and people who so kindly donated anything. I was genuinely amazed by the generosity of you all. We have a school graphic novel library now that I doubt will be bettered anywhere in the UK. Thank you from all the pupils, parents and staff at Wilberfoss.

Any library is only as good as it’s books. And part of the big change-around in our library is to completely restock the Fiction section and to add to our Non-Fiction.

The most important part of the selection process for these new books came before Christmas when Mrs Hatter got together with the staff and pupils of Year 5 & 6 to decide what sort of titles they were interested in.

After this we had to find the funds and order the new books: Thanks to the fantastic work of F.O.W.S and their very generous donation to the library funds we were able to put big Fiction orders in with Scholastic (with whom we get very good discounts thanks to the regular book fair events we hold) and with Simply Books – our local independent bookstore in Pocklington:

This is very important to us – it’s vital that, in these days of cheap online bookstores, we celebrate and support a local bookstore. We’d like to thank Sara Waddington of Simply Books for her sterling work helping us with stock selection and would like to encourage you all to shop there as much as possible.

So, with the money in place and the choices made, all we had to do was wait for the books to come in……

And they have. Lots and lots and lots of them…….

This is just one very small part of the deliveries we’ve been having. The ICT suite is full to bursting of boxes of books. Books just like these……

And now that we have the books in, the work really starts. With the hard work of a whole team of quite magnificently keen Year 5 & 6 pupils we’re getting them stamped, barcoded, catalogued and organised.

The final job, when they arrive, will be to put them all into book jackets.

And then they can all go on the shelves and the new library can open! (Right now, we’re hoping for mid February.)

As you may well be aware, our school library has long been in need of some attention. The selection was a little outdated, the condition of a great many books wasn’t the best. In short, we needed a whole new library.

But instead of refurbing and extending it, we’ve decided the best thing to do is to make it work better in the space we have. To do this, we’ve spent the last few weeks since coming back from Christmas completely redesigning the arrangement and getting it all ready for a massive influx of new stock.

Here’s what it looked like mid-redesign:

We stripped the fiction selection right back, removing all of the books that were in poor condition. These will be replaced with lots and lots of lovely new books very soon. See a future blog post for information.

The Non-Fiction sections have been completely revamped, and all non fiction is now in one section of the library, with a greater emphasis on categories that the children can understand and use, based around their work. As good as the Dewey system is, we found it just wasn’t working for us. And anything that doesn’t work with a school library just doesn’t get used by the pupils.

Our Non-Fiction section now consists of one very well organised corridor of books. We’ve still to add some new books, sort out proper and permanent labelling for the shelves and get some good quality bookends in place, but at the moment it’s pretty much finished:

Right – so that’s the Non-Fiction section (mostly) sorted.

Now, what to do with all of those empty shelves in the other two-thirds of the library?

More on that next time.

I have been reading the Darren Shan Demonata Saga. They are 11+ Horrors. They are all different stories and they are all about people and demons:

There are 10 books in the series and they are called: Lord Loss, The Demon Thief, Slawter, Bec, Blood beast, Demon apocalypse, Deaths shadow, Wolf Island, Dark Calling and Hells heroes. I have read quite a few of them and I am really enjoying them so I recommend them to whoever is reading this blog.

Josh (Year 6)

Darren Shan’s Website.

(Editor’s note – as Josh says these are 11+ books and, like any books suitable for older readers, we would only recommend our pupils read these with their parent or guardian’s permission. However, we believe that, provided the child is mature enough, they are able to read this level of books and we’re pleased that they do.)

Hi all, Mr Bruton here. Apologies for not blogging during December.

In our defence, it was rather busy, what with Santa visiting and all the fun of a school Christmastime.

However, we’ll be back to posting regularly again very soon. Pupils are beginning to get into the swing of writing for the blog again and we’re all very excited right now about the big school project that the whole school has been watching develop since we got back …….. lots more news here very soon.

(But I can tell you that our little library wont be looking so empty for that much longer).

We’re extremely lucky at Wilberfoss to have good contacts with a number of extremely generous comic and book publishers. One of these is the US company Toon Books, part of Candlewick Press, who regularly send us copies of their wonderful early reader graphic novels.

I’d recommend these to anyone with a young child, and would point you in the direction of their website for more information, a wide variety of activities and ideas on how effective using comics can be to educate and entertain the youngest of readers!

Which is why, when we received Benjamin Bear from Toon Books, I really wanted to get the views of someone the books are really aimed at…. which is where sister and brother team of Lucy and Joseph came in! Lucy’s one of our great Year 6 library team, and was more than happy to take the book home to read and to read to (and with) little brother Jo-Jo. Here’s what they both thought of it…..

Benjamin Bear

By Philippe Coudray

Toon Books

Review by Lucy (Year 6) and her brother Joseph (Year 1)

Benjamin Bear In Fuzzy Thinking is a funny fantasy that starts with a bear called Benjamin who uses his logic and his brain to solve his problems. But his ideas, and his logic, aren’t always the most obvious or the most sensible!

Benajamin Bear in Fuzzy Thinking is a series of comics, linked to lots of things that pople will find familiar. In the book Benjamin is the main character, but he’s joined by various animals including a rabbit, cow, polar bear, birds, fish, and even the man in the moon! In each strip Benjamin has some problem to solve and uses his brain to come up with a solution….

It was lovely reading it to Jo-Jo, who really liked the pictures and some of the stories. Here’s what he said….

Benjamin Bear Fuzzy Thinking is amazing! I liked it when the rabbit said he’d won the fishing competition – except he only thought he’d won, but really Benjamin won with a very big fish!

Benjamin Bear has lovely, detailed artwork. It’s simple but very pretty, with lots of interesting colours over the pages to make the story stand out. It’s also very funny at times. The structure is very well thought out as well, with different length strips, lots of different topics and ideas. The only weakness is that I thought a couple of the strips were a little dull looking and difficult to explain to Jo-Jo – like “The Maze”:

My favourite part is “Comic Strip” because Benjamin realises he’s in a comic and tells us, the readers, that he knows and that we know! I think  it brings the book to a very nice ending: