Guide to the Library and its services: Library news

Jólabókaflóð: Unwrapping the gift and the promise of reading

Around this time of year every household in Iceland (the world's third most literate nation, according to the World Economic Forum) receives a copy of the annual Bókatíðindi (book bulletin). This is an exciting beginning to preparations for a much loved Icelandic Christmas tradition, the Jólabókaflóð, or Christmas Book Flood (pronounced yoh-luh-boh-kuh-flawd). On Christmas Eve many Icelandic families exchange books as gifts and spend a cosy, festive evening reading their new treasures together, curled up with mugs of traditional Icelandic cocoa. Iceland's national love of books is also enshrined in their proverbs such as ‘It is better to be without shoes than without a book’ and ‘A man’s best friend is a book’. But a soggy, windy November Guernsey seems quite far both from Christmas Eve and from Iceland (it's just 37 sleeps and 2,000km if we're counting...), so what does this have to do with us? Well, this year Jólabókaflóð is coming to Blanchelande!

As a reward for all their hard work revising for exams, a recognition that that may have squeezed out some of their opportunities for recreational reading and, most importantly, a very practical demonstration of how important we as a school believe reading to be (see this report from Booktrust), Year 7 will not get any subject related homework for the last four weeks of term (apart from Bedrock, which itself supports their reading) and will instead have to opportunity to participate in Blanchelande's own version of the Jólabókaflóð.

For the Jólabókaflóð Year 7 will be expected to:

• choose a reading pathway from the options below (they can choose more than one over the course of the four weeks)
• read for about an hour each week night
• journal their reading in their planner
• submit an assignment on their English Team each week. In the first two weeks this will be in the form of a 200-280 character Tweet (or is that an 'X'?) explaining why they have chosen the challenge that they have, and what they are getting out of it. In the third week they will find an image and a tag line representing their challenge and write a short (1 minute or less) advert that they will read out to their class in the last lesson of term to convince their friends to try what they have been reading.

We recognise, of course, that children have a variety of different feelings about recreational reading, ranging from joy to dread, and our goal is to offer a wide variety of options so that there is something to appeal to everyone, and in each of the reading pathways below, 'reading' in any category can encompass a wide variety of formats, including audiobooks, magazines, newspapers and database articles.

UPDATE: Our new LibGuide gives full guidance on how the challenge will work, and how to access the resources you need. Year 7 will start unwrapping this amazing gift of reading this week in their Library lessons.