What's new?

Free Stuff from NYR

The National Year of Reading website has launched a Free Stuff section on its homepage, targeting younger audiences with reading competitions, free downloads and reading offers. As well as a range of audio clips, there are fun worksheets and competitions to download.  www.yearofreading.org.uk

Autumn Schools Challenge from the NYR

Primary and secondary schools, are you ready to take the 2008 National Year of Reading Autumn Challenge? Take the challenge to develop reading for pleasure through a wide range of reading materials in your school and you could be in with a chance of winning £2000 worth of Oxford University Press resources for your school. http://www.yearofreading.org.uk/index.php?id=autumnchallenge#c855

Barack Obama

'Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading'. - an inspirational speech made by Obama to the American Library Association in 2005. http://www.ala.org/ala/alonline/resources/selectedarticles/obama05.cfm

People of the Great War

A new free educational resource from the Imperial War Museum, People of the Great War, features short films, orginal photographs, posters, documents and a range of great teaching ideas for schools: www.iwm.org.uk/peopleofthegreatwar

Sequels website

If you have ever wondered what comes next in the series when you're reading a good book, then look no further than this useful website, Children's Book Sequels: www.childrensbooksequels.co.uk

Leicestershire, Rutland and Leicester City nominations for Carnegie/ Greenaway

On 17th October, at a meeting hosted by Leicester City Libraries, representatives from the three authorities chose their joint nominations for the CILIP Carnegie and Greenaway medals 2009. The overwhelming favourite for the Carnegie medal was Siobhan Dowd's Bog Child, with the runner up Anthony McGowan's The knife that killed me. For the Greenaway medal, the nomination was Catherine Rayner's Harris finds his feet, with David Almond's Savage (illustrated by Dave McKean) coming a close second. The national winners will be announced on June 25th 2009. http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/awardsprocess/nomination_form.php

Win a visit from Michael Rosen for your school

To celebrate National Poetry Day, the NYR is offering schools the chance to win a visit from Children's Laureate Michael Rosen http://www.yearofreading.org.uk/index.php?id=366 . Using his poem Words are ours as inspiration, pupils can write a poem of around 20-30 words. Entries should be emailed to: competition@yearofreading.org.uk before the closing date, 12th December. The National Poetry Day website offers useful poetry lesson plans and resource packs: www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk

The Leicestershire Children's Book Prize

This is the first ever prize for a book selected by children in Leicestershire. Although aimed at children in Years 6 and 7, this does not preclude other children who have enjoyed the books from participating. Children will be able to vote for their favourite three books from a longlist of 25 titles until 13th December 2008. A shortlist of the six most popular books will appear in early 2009 and children will then be able to vote for their favourite book by the 3rd April. There will be bookmarks for voting in local libraries and the Leicester branch of Borders, or children can vote online at: www.leics.gov.uk/childrensbookprize. The winning book will be announced in the summer term and there is a prize of £200 worth of Borders books for the school. There will also be three individual prizes for children who submit the best reviews of a shortlisted book.

The Booktrust Teenage Prize

The Booktrust Teenage Prize has consistently raised awareness of the very best writing for young adults. Visit http://www.bookheads.org.uk/show/feature/Home/Booktrust-Teenage-Prize-2008 to view this year's shortlist. The winner will be announced on 18th November. Reviews of many of the books on the shortlist are on LSE's Book recommendations page.

World Book Day 2009

World Book Day 2009 will be celebrated on 5^th March. http://www.worldbookday.com/

Books of the Month - November

Our Books of the Month recommendations for November feature our favourite recent fiction from Foundation Stage to 16+.
Why not have a project collection with a selection of the most recent recommended titles to brighten up your library or classroom?
For our recommendations of the best fiction of the past year and a listing of fiction and non-fiction books about bullying, visit our Book recommendations page.