Firstly, Leicester Libraries are doing a fantastic reading summer scheme called ‘Team Read’ – for more info and the spangly interactive site, follow this link. You can also access more information at the Leicester city council website on the libraries page here, or from your local community library! The basic idea of the scheme is a reading challenge, with cool prizes for reading certain numbers of books over the hoiliday. There are also activities and events around reading, a K’Nex building competition, and ‘book gym’ sessions where you can get help and advice on what to read next!

There are also some very cool poetry realted events happening this summer! It’s poetry – but not as you know it!!! Leicester’s one and only Poetry ‘SLAM’ is gonna be happening at the Y Theatre on the 2nd October. Poetry slams are an international phenomenon that have re-energised people all over the world with a new enthusiasm for performance poetry and spoken word. Combining elements of hip hop, theatre, comedy and literature, Slams are live poetry competitions. Contestants perform their poems in a series of heats until the final two or three go head-to-head in the final, (a bit like the rap battles in ’8 Mile’ but with poetry!) If you fancy trying your hand at slam poetry there are a series of workshops beforehand to prepare you. contact Lydia Towsey – secretagentartist@hotmail.com for more information or to register.

We also have ‘Punk Poet’ Atilla the Stockbroker, performing in October, on the 9th at 7pm @ the Central Lending Library. Inspired by punk music, surrealist poems and songs, this dude is surely worth seeing! I for one, will certainly be there – cuz I really want to know what a ‘punk poet’ sounds and looks like! Booking is advisable, tickets are £3.

If this isn’t enough for you and your well bored try going on the Activities4U website. Its full of events and things going on in Leicester and Leicestershire for young people.

There are also tons of festivals for you to enjoy happening in and around Leicester over the summer. There’s the Castle Park festival, Summer Sundae weekender, The Carribbean Carnival, the OneRhythmn Dance festival and tons more!! For more info, dates etc have a look on the City Council’s festivals and events website and choose an event or a month to see what’s gonna be happening! You lot are seriously spoilt for choice! I’m gonna be working at some of these festivals, and at some of the ‘Team Read’ events so with any luck I’ll see you guys there!

‘Till then, have a great summer, and enjoy reading for the love of it

CRGW x

What a night! the glamorous award ceremony for the book of the year was held last night at the beautiful Guildhall in Leicester. A fantastic location for a fantastic award ceremony. Everyone had a great time! We had speeches from Councillor Connolly and The Lord Mayor and some really impressive presentations from 3 schools involved in the award – a film about the award created by Rushey Mead, short plays on each book from Moat and a reflection on their experiences of the award from St Pauls Catholic School. Congratulations guys, you were all brilliant! We were all very impressed, especially the authors! WOW!

We also got to hear from all four authors who attended ; Bali Rai, Ally Kennen, Sam Enthoven and Kevin Brooks. (Sarah Dessen, understandably couldn’t make it as she lives in California!) Many probing questions were asked by the audience. Well done on those guys!

Then we got on to the presentation of the award itself . . . . .

The Lord Mayor stood up on stage and was handed the golden envelope . . . . everyone held their breath . . i struggled to contain my excitement as i even i didn’t know who had won at that point . . . . . and finally she announced, “And the winner is . . . . . Ally Kennen for Berserk!!!!”

Thank you so much to everyone who made the awards night what it was – an awesome, awesome evening!!

We hope you’re all involved again next year and wish all the authors every success with their new books! Cheers guys!

CRGW

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How are you doing with the books? Chosen a winner yet? The time is coming soon when you will all have to vote and choose your favourite book. Shortly after that we will be having our glizty, glamorous awards ceremony at the Guildhall in Leicester with entry and exit entertainment from Spinoff, food and drinks, Q & As from the  Authors as well as presentations on the books from you lot! If you need any help with your presentations – ideas, methods, length or whatever – just drop us a line and we’ll come a-running. In the meantime, keep working hard on them – don’t forget – the Authors will be watching them!!!

Keep reading

CRGW

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Oh yeah, and we also want to know which of you lovely people and therefore which school groups want to present a book in front of the authors at the glitzy glamorous awards ceremony (that i’m having so much fun planning! – suggestions on a postcard), so get in touch soon as we’re running out of time – and books come to think of it. We”ve got quite a few volunteers already! see you all soon.

CRGW

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I just found yet another awesome site for you all to go see. It’s the British Councils’ reading group site. It has online discussion groups, recommended reads, quizzes, weblogs, news and information about events, books and awards, and a chance to chat to their ‘Reader in residence@ about books – What an awesome job eh? The link below leads you to the main site, and you can choose the teenage section from there if you so desire!

http://www.encompassculture.com/

Enjoy!

CRGW

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p.s. oh yeah, i also found another pretty cool site called spine breakers. Its a website about reading (obviously) made for teenagers by teenagers. It’s got reviews and recommended reading lists and author and celebrity interviews – all sorts. check it out!!! www.spinebreakers.co.uk

            Wasted is an exceptional account of madness, addiction, agony, decadence, yet most pertinently, love.  It had me in the throes of hysteria and the depths of despair as I read it and it invoked the ability for me to both laugh with unfettered joy and cry with uncontrollable sorrow.  The impact that this novel had on me was breathtakingly astounding.

            Goffin recounts the story of two sisters who share a profound and special bond.  Abigail, the youngest by seven years, holds the free-spirited and reckless Jasmine in the highest esteem; Jasmine is her beautiful idol, a wayward ‘hippy’ who is stubbornly rooted in her bohemian principles.  However, the uninhibited Jasmine is also manacled by a destructive and profligate addiction to heroin.  Moreover, she is also afflicted with the blighting mental illness, schizophrenia, which renders her life – and the lives of those around her – to be torturous, arduous and, sometimes, virtually impossible.  Abi is devoted to Jasmine, yet when she leaves for Brighton to go to university at eighteen, she realises that she is not so dissimilar to her rebellious sister.  Abi slides rapaciously into a hedonistic lifestyle fuelled by drugs and alcohol and her daily inebriation proves to hold more appeal to her than her studies.  It takes a huge and devastating wake-up call to haul Abi back to reality and to force her to re-evaluate her life.  We come to see how these two sisters, manifested as so different, are actually strikingly alike: the self-destructive junkie and the hedonistic student, both seemingly caring for each other more than themselves.

            This novel struck me hard like a sharpened blade to the brain.  It is not only of a laudable quality of writing but is utterly commendable for the tricky issues it broaches.  It is, however, not for the faint-hearted or easily offended as much of the content and language can only be described as rather, ahem, licentious.  In spite of this Wasted oozes sprightly effervescence and the spirit of youth.

            Goffin focuses on the battles with one’s own demons and juxtaposes this aptly with the heady days of self-nihilistic studentdom.  This novel is also an enchanting love story of two sisters, fighting for themselves and for each other and trying – often vainly – to get through each day whilst maintaining a degree of sobriety (in Abi’s case) and sanity (in Jasmine’s).  It is touching, poignant and acute to the details of the boundless scope of human emotions.  Wasted overflows with intrepid humour, rapt with feeling and pathos, yet, most saliently, it is concerned with the in-severable nexus that inexorably holds these two girls together through thick and thin.  The overriding notion and wise moral of this multifarious book is that love is unconquerable.  This is an amazing and profound novel and arguably provides the best insight into such taboo subjects since Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation.

In honour of the National Year of Reading i’ve dug up some fantastic quotes about reading to inspire you, maybe they’ll be useful for your Book of the Year displays too!!

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”          Groucho Marx

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.           Groucho Marx

“Never judge a book by its movie.”     J. W. Eagan

“The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television.”       Andrew Ross

“Books can be dangerous.  The best ones should be labeled “This could change your life.”       Helen Exley

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”        Oscar Wilde

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”       Ray Bradbury

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them”         Mark Twain

“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”   P. J. O’Rourke

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.”     Mortimer Adler

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.         Jessamyn West

Enjoy!

CRGW

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Natalie Browne
Fullhurst Community College
07/03/08

well, we’ve been busy busy busy recently, dropping the shortlisted books into schools and talking to all you lovely people about them. Hopefully now you should be busy too – enjoying your easter hols of course but also reading the books! if you have something to say about them or a review let us know and we’ll post them up on the site.

We’ve done some awesome stuff these last two weeks, from quiet chats in lovely libraries with the select few of a reading group to presenting the award to an assembly of 750 children! which was a little scary to say the least! :s we even had some help along the way from some of the members of the schools’ reading groups. AND – we’ve seen some awesome displays getting started – have a look at the photos below and see what we’ve been up to! Get reading!

CRGW

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just thought i’d let you know about an awesome site i found recently thanks to an author recommendation – its called ‘LibraryThing.com’ and basically, it allows you to create an online ‘library’ – list of your favourite books, and view the ‘libraries’ of others online. So you can see what your favourite author loves to read, and maybe get some ideas about what to read next from them or others! This is an awesome site!!!

we now have a librarything page, so feel free to visit or suggest books to add to our virtual ‘library’. We are looking for any great teenage fiction books that you would recommend to a friend, so that we can recommend them to everyone and we can all enjoy reading books we otherwise wouldn’t have known about.

http://www.librarything.com/profile.php?view=leicsteenagefiction

CRGW

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