For the Doctor Who fans

As has previously been noted on this blog Doctor Who is very hot right now at King's High.  I thought that the Whovians might be interested in reading tasters of some new stories.   These are from the Guardian Books Site and the links are below.  The latest story is by Patrick Ness who is the author of the very popular Chaos Walking series which begins with The Knife of Never Letting Go.  That news alone is enough to hook some non-Whovians into reading the extract of the story.  Here is ex student Micah discussing The Knife of Never Letting Go on this blog a while ago.  There is also a story by Michael Scott, who writes the popular Nicholas Flamell books and another by Marcus Sedgwick who writes creepy fiction like Midwinter Blood and Revolver which we have in the library.  You will also see Eoin Colfer of Artemis Fowl claim.  These are fantastic writers and the stories are very cool.  You will only get a taster, but that is fine, it will whet your appetite for when the programmes come onto TV and later when the books are available.

Doctor Who: Tip of the Tongue by Patrick Ness - extract

Sample the fifth in a new series of Doctor Who stories. Written by Patrick Ness, author of the Chaos Walking series and A Monster Calls, the story focuses on the fifth Doctor. In 1945, a strange new craze for Truth Tellers is sweeping the kids of small-town America. The Doctor and Nyssa soon discover that the actual truth behind the Truth Tellers is far more sinister than anyone could have imagined...

Read an extract from A Big Hand for the Doctor by Eoin Colfer

Read an extract from The Nameless City by Michael Scott

Read an extract from The Spear of Destiny by Marcus Sedgwick

Anzac Day at King's High School

Our Anzac Day service is a sombre occasion at King's High School, there is a full school assembly with knowledgeable speakers, staff and students, together with representatives of our Old Boys Association.  All then gather at the flagpole to reflect and remember those who lost their lives at war, students play bagpipes and drums and the last post is performed.  This year the students who are involved in Army Cadets marched in formation and presented arms at the flagpole as well.  Quite a few of the students involved in this are regulars of the library and BookGang.  They gathered prior to the ceremony in the library and read the Army News, in which two of them, Jesse and Kameron feature this month.  Here is a photo of them during a lighter moment before they went to do their duty.  They did an excellent job!

Classics for the Classics Class

Pictured is Mr Nathan Tane, guitar virtuoso extraordinaire.  Mr Tane is our Maori and Music teacher and he is also a highly awarded classical guitarist.  Yesterday Mr Tane gave his annual concert in the library for the students of Classics. Prior to the concert Mr Frost spoke of Mr Tane and mentioned to the students how in life we make assumptions about people based on what we know of them, and many of them would only have known Mr Tane as a Maori and Music teacher but they may not have realised how talented he is at guitar.  Mr Frost said in life we must avoid making assumptions on limited knowledge and that often we are surprised to find the hidden depths even in people we think we know.  The performance the students witnessed yesterday would have left them in no doubt of Mr Tane's talent.

Mr Tane played  The Usher Waltz by Nakita Koshkin, Gantasia by John Dowland and Seville by Isaac Albinez.  He also played Mr Frost's favourite piece called Classical Gas.

The staff also all look forward to this concert and as many as possible try to make it to hear it and there was an extensive audience in the library to listen.  A fabulous musical interlude in a very busy day in the library.

A cat for Braeden's birthday

Yesterday was Braeden's birthday.  Braeden is in the library every single day for interval and lunchtimes and is a huge reader and extreme BookGang member.  He is particularly keen on John Green and J.K. Rowling having read all of their books over and over.  Yesterday for his birthday the library organised a cat.  Braeden loves cats!  He was delighted.  Unfortunately he couldn't keep the cat because it has another home, although we are not sure where that is.  It is back in the library today sleeping in a sunny spot trying very hard not to be disturbed by hoards of students - this is not going well because everyone thinks it is so cute and needs to be cuddled.

An evening of Doctor Whoness

Last Thursday night the BookMafia (the senior BookGang) organised a great night of entertainment for the BookGang.  Lachlan, Ben and Brin are mad keen Doctor Who fans.  They knew that there would be plenty of other fans in the BookGang, so they decided we would have an evening of fun and watch some episodes of classic Doctor Who and also some modern ones if time allowed.  They made the invitations and sorted out the episodes.  Drink and snacks were provided, enough to ensure a sugar high for the boys - in well established BookGang fashion.  About 25 BookGangers and fans attended and we had an excellent night.  When the Doctor Who action wasn't enough to keep us totally enthralled we had other things going on, cards, gameing, 4 pics one word and plenty of laughs.  They boys bought their Doctor Who gear, which included costumes (cosplay), lighting, body art and screwdrivers!  Many many thanks to Mr Flemming and Mr McPherson who came along for some of the time. 
If you have a good idea for a BookGang event come and chat about it with Ms Schaumann.  All great ideas are welcome.  Below is a photo of those who stayed till the end with Lachlan and Ben at the back - representing BookMafia.

Our wonderful new books from Rotary

This year Ali and Callum took part in the annual Rotary Speech Competition and they were rewarded after their great performances with a lovely stack of books for the library.  Rotary are so generous to give us these lovely books and we are really grateful.  Miss Harford, our intrepid photographer, came to the library with the boys the following morning and snapped us posing with the books.  We had a great time finding books which we felt suited our personalities.  Thank you so much Rotary, these books will be well used and loved by our students.
Below Callum, Ali and Ms S have a little bit of fun with our lovely new books.

Author R.L. Stedman visits the BookGang

On Thursday at BookGang we were really privileged to have the author of the great new fantasy book A Necklace of Souls visit with us at BookGang.  Rachel is the Mum of one of our year 10 students and  has a busy schedule of book promotion and a day job, so we were delighted that she was able to join us for a chat about writing, reading and what it is like to have a book published, and indeed to win a prestigious prize.  The highs the lows and all the rest.  Because the book is so new, only a couple of people in the school have read it, but those people are recommending it very highly.

Rachel answered questions from the boys about the process of writing, about the characters in the book and gave us her thoughts on the kind of heroes and heroines she likes to read about in books.  This was a great topic of discussion and could have gone on for far longer then we had time for.  We talked about how there are recurrent themes in fantasy books, things like talisman in the form of gems which crop up very frequently and how this has been a long tradition.  Rachel also had words of advice for several members of BookGang who are writing their own books at the moment.  The boys asked heaps of questions and answered some of Rachel's, about what they liked to read, the sort of books they would recommend people to read and also about what happens to the stories when books get turned into movies.  We would love a sequel to Rachel's book and the boy's have even seen the manuscript for the second book!

Reading Period with 9Mn

King's boys love to read!  On Monday I took photos of every period in the library for a day in the life project.  These photos were taken when 9Mn came to the library for their fortnightly reading period.  Their teacher Mr McLean, avid reader himself, is seen showing some books to some of the boys.  There are some great readers in this class and they issued a mountain of books at the end of the period.

Michael Campbell, Celebration of a champion

A review by Sam Ballantyne (Year 9)

This is a book for any golfer.  It explains Michael's build up to the 2005 U.S. Open.  The years before are terrible but he comes out fighting in 2005.

He was born and raised in Taranaki and Michael first swang a club when he was 5!  Michael is our best golfer since Bob Charles and I really encourage any golfer to pick it up and read it.

The book is written by Martin Crowe and Craig Tiriana

Kia kaha - Be strong, be good is Michael Campbell's motto

Discworld on the iPad

Do you have an iPad?  Well if you do you might be interested in trying out the Discworld App which is freshly available in the iStore.  Familiar characters from the books roam the streets and get up to their Discworly business.  It looks like loads of fun and your librarian will be downloading the app this weekend to have a play with.  Such Fun!
Here is a taster!

Gandalf's Problem Solving Chart

Via the fabulous Kerikeri High School Cover to Cover blog, this is a helpful problem solving chart for Gandalf.  LOTR fans will love it!  And if you want to see the artist in action take some time to watch this TED talk.

If you are a LOTR kind of guy you might also enjoy this one.

Both of these images - and many other very awesome images come from here.

Social Studies Quiz - good mayhem in the library

At the end of last week two year 9 classes competed for the Social Studies Shield by competing in the Social Studies Quiz.  The quiz is great fun and highly competitive!  Year 13 students gave assistance by keeping track of the scores and making sure the answers were correct.

In the top photo are the champions:  Tame Govaerts, Oscar Arlidge and Kent Marshall, all from 9Ha
in the photo below are the year 13 assistants making sure everything was above board.

People are awesome

Check this out!  Video of people being awesome - and scary - and very very dangerous!

The international students at King's have been doing a research assignment looking at extreme sports, this video is for them.

Infographica - The world as you have never seen it before

by Martin & Simon Toseland

New into the library this week!

Do you know what an infographic is?  Here is the definition according to Wikipedia:

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.^[1][2] They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system’s ability to see patterns and trends.^[3][4] The process of creating infographics can be referred to as data visualization, information design, or information architecture.^[2]

^{Infographics are cool! This book is chock full of infographics on lots of different things.  You can see The number of satellites which orbit around the earth by country, the average time people spend watching television country by country, the number of McDonald's per country, the cars driven by James Bond, some of the longest words in various languages, the world's busiest airports, untimely deaths of rock legends.  As you can see, a lot of variety and a lot of wacky information in one handy volume.}  

 

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman

On Valentines Day it seems right to have a story about love on the blog.  Why We Broke Up is one of those quirky books which isn't everyone's cup of tea but those who love it - well, they really love it.  It is the story of Min and Ed.  First time girlfriend and boyfriend.  The book takes the form of a letter Min is writing to Ed, the letter is going to go in a box which is being delivered to Ed's place which contains everything that Ed has ever given her and souvenirs from their dates.  Each chapter starts with a picture of the item and the chapter then talks about the significance of it in their relationship.  The box has items in it such as movie tickets, a recipe book, two bottle caps, keys, a pennant, a folded note, all kinds of things that Mim has kept as mementos during their romance.

This book is going to appeal to the boys who liked Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and the books of John Green. It is funny, sad and a great book for any boy who has been dumped, so really more suitable for year 10 up!

BookGang 2013

This is the first post of 2013 and it is appropriate that the first post is to welcome in the new BookGang members and to appreciate the longstanding BookGangers!  Today was the first gathering of the boys for the year, there were quite a number of us, 21 or so, and several boys who couldn't make it to this meeting who intend to come along next year.  Warren was appointed Prefect In Charge of the BookGang and he will help marshal the troops and bring order to the chaos. 

It was a chance to have a chat and to think about some of the things we might do together this year.  A show of hands indicates that we are wild Hobbit fans and so a movie visit one evening soon will be our first activity for the year.  As usual there were heaps of new books and these were snaffled up eagerly!  It is great to have so many new guys in the group and I hope you all had fun and will be back for more mayhem next week.