Celebrating World Book Day at Bishop's Stortford College

Published on isbi School News dated Wednesday 13th of March 2013

This year's World Book Day began at Bishop's Stortford College with pupils from Lower Third (Year 7)in the Junior School sharing stories with Year 1 classes from the Pre-Prep. The beaming smiles across the faces of both young and older pupils as they read together showed just how much they love this type of shared activity.

The rest of World Book Day was spent in the company of visiting author Eleanor Updale. Ellie joined the Lower and Upper Third (Year 7 and 8) Book Club to hear pupils' opinions of her latest novel The Last Minute.

All said how they had particularly enjoyed the very distinctive writing technique employed in this book. Book club readers shared views on the characters they liked and then grew to dislike, revealed how they had worried about the ones they wanted to escape from the disaster, and marvelled how in 60 seconds, and in 60 chapters, Eleanor had managed to convey such a real sense of a town and its inhabitants. As a writer of fiction she was delighted when one reader said he had searched on the internet to see if Heathwick actually existed!

Eleanor also spent three lessons with different Lower Third (Year 7) classes, in which she asked a pupil to pick out the most boring article or advert from the local newspaper, and they then, as a class, constructed stories from these starting points. It was amazing how a three bedroomed house for sale, and adverts for carpets and for writers of wills led to stories featuring goblins, aliens and murders!

Finally, in a presentation to all of the Lower and Upper Thirds, Eleanor talked about her latest book and, using the online material featuring the government report on the disaster, radio and press reports and tribute sites of some of the victims, she explored differences of how people are perceived before and after tragic incidents and how the media report on tragedy.

She also talked about her other novels - Johnny Swanson and the Montmorency series- 'all of which can be borrowed from the library!' noted College Junior School Librarian Rosie Pike. Every pupil at Bishop's Stortford College will, hopefully, be exchanging their World Book Day £1 token for one of the exclusive World Book Day books or to get £1 off a book of their choice.