Congratulations to our SID winners!

Poole Libraries held a competition for children in Years 4-7 from Poole Schools to design a poster to keep our Internet users in Poole Libraries safe.  The competition which launched on Safer Internet Day saw over 230 quality entries from schools in Poole. 

It is great to see the message of staying safe on the Internet being remembered by school children.  There were four winning entries from Hamworthy Middle School, Haymoor Middle School, Hillbourne School and Nursery and Oakdale South Road Middle School.  We congratulate each of our winners,  each of whom will receive an Amazon voucher and a certificate to celebrate their achievement. 

Winning entries have been colour photocopied and will be on display near the computers in our 10 Libraries for the public to see and learn from, from Friday 18th May.

Thank you to everyone who took part in our competition, pupils and teachers, which was run to mark our partnership work with the SWGFL’s Online Compass initiative.

Author Robin Bayley to visit Poole

 

Author Robin Bayley is coming to Poole Central Library on Tues 12th June at 7.00 pm to talk about his book ‘The Mango Orchard’, part travelogue, part family history, part adventure. The book is the true story of how Robin set off on a journey in the footsteps of his great grandfather, Arthur Greenhalgh, around Latin America. After encounters with witches, drug dealers and an ex-Nazi diamond trader, he managed to track down the village in western Mexico where his ancestor had lived and worked, and discovered that he had left a secret family of over three hundred people. What is more, not only had his great grandfather had a narrow escape from the Mexican Revolution, but he also had a hand in starting it.

 

Gripping and eminently readable, the book has attracted favourable reviews from the critics: ‘The Mango Orchard… is a pure pleasure. Part travelogue, part touching family history, it artfully weaves the account of Bayley’s journey with Arthur’s, and the narrative builds to a revelation that will leave only the most obdurate reader unmoved.‘ Independent on Sunday

 

Book your free places at centrallibrary@poole.gov.uk or by ringing 01202 262421.

Branksome Library

Good news! The library will be open from 11am today!

Branksome Library – latest

We are now nearly dried out so will open at 1.00pm on Friday 4th May

Branksome Library closed

Due to a water leak we have had to close the library, and it will be closed tomorrow as well (Weds 2nd May). Thursday is the normal closed day so should be back to normal Friday.

Thank you Talbot Combined School …

 

…for giving us such a warm welcome at your Reading and Writing Information Evening for parents/carers.

Poole Libraries were invited along to talk to parents, carers and staff about reading and Poole Libraries can support children’s enjoyment of reading. 

We took along some of our latest titles to show the wide ranging books we offer.  Amongst the titles attracting interest were Jeff Kinney’s, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Boy’s from Glee by Mel Williams, and recent picture books such as the Greenaway shortlisted title, Jim: A cautionary tale by Hilaire Belloc and illustrated by the wonderful Mini Grey.

It is great news to here the recent success enjoyed by the school and the enthusiasm of the Headteacher, Mrs Curtis is certainly infectious. We hope to welcome lots of parents and their children to our libraries soon!

Books and more books

More than 70 guests took over Hamworthy Library last night, glasses of wine in hand, chatting about books and wrestling with the crafty prize quiz. The occasion was our party to celebrate World Book Night and the atmosphere was relaxed and festive.

Imogen reads from an early favourite: Umphy Elephant Window Cleaner

 

The main event of the evening was a talk by  guest writer, Imogen Parker about books which have influenced and inspired her over the years. These ranged from picture books right through to Booker shortlister, Snowdrops by A D Miller and she soon got  everyone thinking - and laughing. As a finale, everybody got to chose a free book to take home with them from the World Book Night collection of giveaway titles.

Holly talks of “mad wonderfulness” about our reading group!

 

“Five hotly-opinionated, coolly-assured young people, aged 11 and upwards, pelted me with ideas.  Nervously, I told them they’d have me out of a job”, Holly Corfield-Carr writes about our teen reading group. 

Read Holly’s blog entry for insights into the writing project with Lit-Up! Writing.  How will Holly turn original artwork, zany ideas and topics as varied as World War 2 and Portal 2 into a story?

As one of our reading group members, Andrew writes, “I’ll leave it to you to decide how you’re going to unravel all our ideas”.

Wow, thanks Holly!

 

What a fantastic session our teen reading group had with Holly Corfield-Carr.  Holly visited us as part of the Lit-up project, Tailored Tales.  After a successful bid by our teen reading group for home educated children, we have the pleasure of working with Holly, a young writer who will write a story for us based on our ideas!  Lit-up are also working with 3 other reading groups across the region.  Our reading group were certainly not short of ideas at our first meeting held at Hamworthy Library on Friday.

It is great to work with Holly, a Cambridge graduate who has written a number of GCSE and A Level English Literature study guides and who is currently working on an exciting cultural project for Stoke  Council in one of the disbanded Spode factories, a space covering 50,000 square feet!

Ideas for our novel which flew around our session included the influence of video games such as Portal 2, an interest in Second World War, robots and machines (inspired by Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines) and a love of the adventures of TinTin.

Holly certainly has a lot to work on and we can’t wait to hear the first draft of her/our story next month! 

 

Book Group Workshop

If you have ever thought about starting, running or joining a book group, why not come along to our free workshop on Tuesday 24th April from 1.00 – 4.00 pm? Run by Bournemouth and Poole Skills and Learning, the workshop is part of the celebrations for World Book Night. There will be lots of ideas, discussions, a quick library tour and refreshments in the course of the afternoon. No need to book – just turn up at 1.00 pm.