Book week
Book week at St Mary's included exciting art, writing and art lessons alongside learning about diversity in their books.
Year 6 looked at ‘The Barnabus Project’ by Terry Fan, Eric Fan and Devin Fan - In a world built for Perfect Pets, Barnabus is a Failed Project, half mouse, half elephant, kept out of sight until his dreams of freedom lead him and his misfit friends on a perilous adventure. A stunning picture book from New York Times bestselling creators The Fan Brothers, joined by their brother Devin Fan.
In Year 5, pupils enjoyed sharing the book ‘Nour's Secret Library’ by Wafa' Tarnowska and Vali Mintzi - Forced to take shelter when their Syrian city is plagued with bombings, young Nour and her cousin begin to bravely build a secret underground library. Based on the author’s own life experience and inspired by a true story, Nour’s Secret Library is about the power of books to heal, transport and create safe spaces during difficult times. Illustrations by Romanian artist Vali Mintzi superimpose the colourful world the children construct over black-and-white charcoal depictions of the battered city.
Year 4 looked at ‘Granny Came Here on the Empire Windrush’ by Patrice Lawrence and Camilla Sucre - This heart-warming and heartfelt debut picture book from multi-award-winning author, Patrice Lawrence, will help ensure that the struggles and achievements of the Windrush generation are never forgotten.
Finally, the Year 3 classes all looked at ‘Valentine's Guest House’ by Sam Sharland- When a tiger comes to stay at Valentine's guest house, the human visitors all check out in a rush. Luckily, the hotel soon starts to fill again - but with a very different collection of residents, all with new and differing needs. Elsie and Valentine make lots of changes to accommodate the new guests, and a very popular, accessible and unusual guest house results!
As you can see all of the books chosen this year were selected to show diversity and inclusion, something we believe passionately about here at St Mary’s and all of the children responded really well to the themes raised in the books.
We thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the fantastic wooden spoon book characters! There were some really creative ideas and the children enjoyed sharing them. We hope you had a look during parents evening at the wide range of characters! Could you guess who they were?
We all enjoyed our Book Week guess the teacher game - some of them were so hard! We hope you enjoyed playing along at home, how many did your children correctly identify?