So far this year our library has staged a wide variety of events and has hosted some exciting visitors. In December, just in time to snap up a few bargains for Christmas, we had a Scholastic Half Price Bookfair running alongside a Second-Hand Booksale. Both of these were a huge success. Thanks to all who spent a very healthy total of £843.45 on these lovely new books and in turn earned our library £84.50 worth of new stock. £190 was raised from the second hand books and that helped to pay for our first visitor of the year – Storyteller, Niall de Burca.

On 23rd January Niall de Burca, Irish storyteller and and all-round entertainer came to Aquinas Library. In his own inimitable way he delivered a high energy, fun-filled performance to one hundred and twenty Year 8’s (and some year 9s and 13’s who sneaked in at the back !) They left with a new insight into storytelling, books and reading, books and reading and were completely in awe of his repertoire of funny, scary and sad stories.

February brought an invitation from “Writers in Schools” to host a workshop with two authors. The first was ex-B.E.L.B.childrens’ librarian- turned International yarn spinner and storyteller, Liz Weir. Liz “wowed” us   with her stories and answered questions from the pupils as well as giving them tips on how she remembers the storylines – memory tips which should also be useful for the upcoming exams.

The second “Writers in Schools” session was by local author Sheena Wilkinson. Sheena was a teacher in Methodist College but following the success of her most recent two books “Taking Flight” and “Grounded” she has now taken time off teaching to pursue her “new life” as full time author. Sheena delivered a very lively and informative session on creative writing which culminated in our pupils being given 2 “props” and a list of questions to craft their stories around. Both Sheena and Liz remarked on how imaginative our pupils’ stories were and how they had surpassed both of their expectations.

Thank you to Niall, Liz and Sheena for coming to our school and sharing with us their love of stories and reading. As one pupil remarked “It is great to have real life authors in school – makes you realise that maybe one day even YOU could do that”