Meeting the author

We've just had two fantastic opportunities to meet two amazing authors.

On Wednesday we had Mandy Hager visit our school. She is a New Zealand author and has written Run for the trees, Smashed, The blood of the lamb trilogy and recently The nature of Ash. All of which are absorbing teenage novels of quite different genres. My personal favourite is The blood of the lamb trilogy which is a dystopian fiction that has strong racism and human rights themes. All of her books include social issues, but are fast paced with lots of action.

Then on Thursday a small group of us were very lucky to be able to go to Hutt International Boy's School to see Chris Paolini - author of the Inheritence series. He was a very engaging speaker.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

I've just read this fantastic book about a boy with a terrible facial abnormality. Auggie wants to be ordinary, but it's impossible for him to live an ordinary life when everyone notices his abnormality before they find out what he's like as a person. I loved this book because Auggie is such a strong character and the people whos lives he touches also add their perspective. I recommend that everyone reads this book. It will help you to be more accepting of others. Also watch the author interview to find out her inspiration for the story.

New library books

In a recent survey you told us that you want us to buy more new books. You'll be pleased to know that we've just bought many new titles. Here are just some of them. Don't forget to ask for anything that  you would like us to buy by using the suggestions for purchase form at the issues desk or clicking on the page link to suggestions for purchase on this blog.

To see all the new books, check out the list on the library OPAC. You can access the OPAC in several ways.

From a library computer just login and open Internet Explorer - the library home page will automatically come up. Click on OPAC search from here.

From a computer eslewhere in the school. Open ETaunga and click on the link that says HC library page.

From a computer outside the school. Google ETaunga and open the student portal. You will have to sign in at this stage with your school login. Click on School library catalogue link.

Death cure : the exciting conclusion to The maze runner trilogy

I've just read it and it was very exciting and tied up all the loose ends. If you haven't read this series yet, you need to start with The maze runner then The scorch trials. These books are dystopian fiction similar to The hunger games. Highly recommended.


If you like these kind of books then have a look at the reading list in the OPAC called dystopian fiction. You will find 82 titles listed there. Enjoy!

This new book looks fantastic.

Check out the trailer here. We have the book and it looks like it's going to be the next big series.

Upper Hutt Library Quiz

We sent one team to the Upper Hutt Library to compete in their general knowledge quiz that they run to celebrate NZ Post Childen's Book Awards. Congratulations to these students who came third overall.

Guess how many people are on the waiting list for The Hunger Games book at Auckland Public Libary.

Now read this NZ Herald articles to find out the answer
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10802788

Who would've believed it. I've checked at our public library and they have eight copies with 27 reserves. We have copies available right now as we're lucky to be able to offer some of the English Department copies for you to read. This changes on a daily basis though so be quick. We do have a waiting list for the two sequels as we don't have class sets of these, but our waiting list is not that big.