Words read: Bronze: 500,000
Silver: 2,000,000
Gold: 5,000,000
This month we are awarding badges to the following students: Year 8 Year 9 Bronze:
Silver:
Oscar Denton Kyra Usher Kiera Humphrey Claudia Kurera Meredith Furlong Charlotte Sparks
Marc Charlesworth Harry Tipton Adam Jones Fay Mugridge Samuel Dilkes
Ewan Greenhalf Toby McIlroy Alison Burcombe
Congratulations to the following students for achieving the highest points scored from Reading Practice quizzes in November, please collect your prizes Oscar Denton Tom Parke Matthew Clegg Kiera Humphrey Gathsara Seekkuge
95.0 57.9 54.0 49.4 44.2
Prizes: Chocolate Advent Calendars, Bookmark or Pencil, Chocolate/Sweet
Caitlin Buller James Fullard Toby McIlroy Gary Paine Sophie Chaplain
44.0 40.2 39.7 38.3 38.0
Bookmark or Pencil and Chocolate/Sweet
A special congratulations to Harry Bickers who has taken 14 quizzes this month and passed them all. Well done Harry a fantastic achievement, please come and collect your prize Did you know Academic Achievement Merits are now being awarded for getting 100% in quizzes
1.
The Recruit – Robert Muchamore
2.
Ways To Live Forever – Sally Nicholls
3.
Switched – Amanda Hocking
4.
The Medusa Project – Sophie McKenzie
5.
Rodrick Rules – Jeff Kinney
6.
Life On The Refrigerator Door – Alice Kuipers
7.
Slated – Terry Teri
8.
Girl Missing – Sophie McKenzie
9.
Gone – Michael Grant
10.
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
SSBA Presentation Evening 10th January Roedean Year 10 Book Club
Mrs Langley’s Book of the Month
A brilliantly brain-warping thriller and a love story that leaps back and forth in time - All Our Yesterdays is an amazing first novel, perfect for fans of The Hunger Games. Em is locked in a bare, cold cell with no comforts. Finn is in the cell next door. The Doctor is keeping them there until they tell him what he wants to know. Trouble is, what he wants to know hasn't happened yet. Em and Finn have a shared past, but no future unless they can find a way out. The present is torture - being kept apart, overhearing each other's anguish as the Doctor relentlessly seeks answers. There's no way back from here, to what they used to be, the world they used to know. Then Em finds a note in her cell which changes everything. It's from her future self and contains some simple but very clear instructions. Em must travel back in time to avert a tragedy that's about to unfold. Worse, she has to pursue and kill the boy she loves to change the future ...
December Display on Christmas
Design a Christmas Card :
All entries will now be sent off to the Schools Advisory Service to see if we can win a hamper for the school and a Kindle Fire for the student. Fingers crossed!
In January we will be holding a Pets Caught Reading Competition
Lots of time to get creative over the Christmas Holidays
Email your pictures to me along with a couple of lines about the book your pet is reading and why they are enjoying it (entries not accepted without this)
This competition is open to Students and Staff More information in January Remember to be kind to your pets, some pets are camera shy and may not want to be involved!
Student Book Club Xmas Party will be:
Friday 13th December at 1.30pm in the LRC
Staff Book Club meeting will be: Monday 16th December at 3.30pm in the LRC We will discuss books read over a nice cream tea and the new book club reads will be available.
New Book Additions
Accelerated Reader level 1 and 2’s
Greg Heffley's on a losing streak. His best friend, Rowley Jefferson, has ditched him, and finding new friends in middle school is proving to be a tough task. To change his fortunes, Greg decides to take a leap of faith and turn his decisions over to chance. Will a roll of the dice turn things around, or is Greg's life destined to be just another hard-luck story?
What if your whole world was a lie? The thrillingly dark conclusion to the No. 1 New York Times bestselling DIVERGENT trilogy. What if a single revelation - like a single choice changed everything? What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected? The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered - fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she's known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories. But Tris's new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature - and of herself - while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love.
Neva keeps a list of The Missing - the people like her grandmother who were part of her life but who have now vanished. The people that everyone else pretends never existed. In a nation isolated beneath the dome of the Protectosphere - which is supposed to protect, but also imprisons - Neva and her friends dream of freedom. But life is becoming complicated for Neva. She's falling in love with her best friend's boyfriend - and she's learning more than she ever wanted to know about what might be happening to The Missing...A gripping thriller with a dash of romance.
Who would believe that a kid at a sleepover could be a spy?
Accelerated Reader level 1 and 2’s
Graphic Novels
The Second Book in the Fantastic Blood of Eden Series. Sequel to The Immortal Rules Out here in the Fringes, there is only one rule: Blood calls to blood. She has done the unthinkable: died so she might continue to live. Now Allie, the reluctant teenage vampire who was cast out of Eden, and Zeke, the human boy who loves her, must attempt to save the world from a deadly new strain of plague. In order to do so, they must first hunt down the monster who holds the promise of the cure and Allie s beloved mentor in his sadistic grip.... Joined by Allie s blood brother, Jackal, this unlikely posse of companions will brave a landscape stalked by raiders, rabids, and rogue vampires. But even if they survive, they re bound for the Inner city, and a vicious showdown that will test their bonds in ways they never expected. It may just be that becoming undead was the easy part. Confronting the horrors of Allie s awakening hunger, her growing feelings for Zeke, and the uncertainties of their future is going to be the ultimate challenge.
Something wicked this way comes...She thought she'd be safe in the country, but you can't escape your own nightmares, and Lis London dreams repeatedly that someone is trying to kill her. Lis thinks she's being paranoid - after all who would want to murder her? She doesn't believe in the local legends of witchcraft. She doesn't believe that anything bad will really happen to her. You never do, do you? Not until you're alone in the woods, after dark and a twig snaps...Hollow Pike - where witchcraft never sleeps.
The stunning new novel from Costa-Novel-Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell: a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976. It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce - back home, each wih different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share. Staff Library This is a heart-warming story of loss and recovery that won the American National Book Award 2010 - one of the most moving books you'll ever read. 11-year-old Caitlin has Asperger's syndrome, and has always had her older brother, Devon, to explain the confusing things around her. But when Devon is killed in a tragic school shooting, Caitlin has to try and make sense of the world without him. With her dad spending most of his time crying in the shower, and her life at school becoming increasingly difficult, it doesn't seem like things will ever get better again.
Zadie Smith's brilliant tragi-comic "NW" follows four Londoners - Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan - after they've left their childhood council estate, grown up and moved on to different lives. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their city is brutal, beautiful and complicated. Yet after a chance encounter they each find that the choices they've made, the people they once were and are now, can suddenly, rapidly unravel. Staff Library
Fifteen year old Casey Blue lives in East London's grimmest tower block and volunteers at a local riding school, but her dream is to win the world's greatest Three Day Event: the Badminton Horse Trials. When she rescues a starving, half-wild horse, she's convinced that the impossible can be made possible. But she has reckoned without the consequences of her father's criminal record, or the distraction of a boy with melty, dark eyes, with whom she refuses to fall in love. Casey learns the hard way that no matter how high you jump, or how fast you gallop, you can never outrun the past. A real life thriller that delves into the competitive and elite equestrian world from the 2011 BLUE PETER BOOK OF THE YEAR award-winning author.
Alex and Ethan are brothers, growing up on an estate where there are just two choices: sport or crime. Ethan is a promising footballer, and when he is selected to go on a training programme in the US, he feels sure that he has found his chance to escape the gangs that dominate his streets. But as life spirals out of control for his brother, Alex, and things unexpectedly take a turn for the worse for Ethan, he finds himself drawn into the midst of an explosive feud with the gun at its heart. The gun can make a weak man strong. The gun is the coward's fist. The gun is power. In this tense, gripping and absorbing real life thriller, Alan Gibbons explores the complex issue of gun crime, and the far-reaching consequences it can have.
The Soviet Union 1956: after Stalin's death, a violent regime is beginning to fracture. Stalin's successor Khrushchev pledges reform. But there are forces at work that are unable to forgive or forget the past. Leo Demidov, former MGB officer, is facing his own turmoil. His adopted daughters have yet to forgive him for his part in the brutal murder of their parents. They are not alone. Leo, his wife, and their family are in grave danger from someone with a grudge. Someone transformed beyond recognition into the perfect model of vengeance. Leo's desperate mission to save his family will take him from the harsh Siberian Gulags, to the depths of the criminal underworld, to the centre of the Hungarian uprising - and into a hell where redemption is as brittle as glass. Staff Library On a wet November day, Detectives Pia Kirchoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to the scene of a mysterious accident. A woman has fallen from a bridge onto the motorway below. It seems that she may have been pushed. The investigation leads them to a small town near Frankfurt, and the home of the victim, Rita Cramer. On a September evening eleven years earlier, two seventeen-year-old girls, Laura and Stefanie (also known as Snow White), vanished without trace from this same village. In a trial based entirely on circumstantial evidence, Stefanie's boyfriend, handsome and talented, Tobias Sartorius, was sentenced to ten years in prison. He has now returned to his home in an attempt to clear his name. Rita Cramer is his mother. In the village, Pia and Oliver encounter a wall of silence. But when another young girl goes missing, the events of the past repeat themselves in a disastrous manner. The investigation turns into a dramatic race against time, because for the villagers, there is soon no doubt as to the identity of the perpetrator. And this time they are determined to take matters into their own hands. Staff Library What if your prank killed your best friend. Could you live with yourself? You try to forget and move on; you enrol in Army training, you want to make something of your life. The training is tough and it almost breaks you. But you survive; you know you'll make a good soldier. Finally, when you're out in Afghanistan, under enemy fire, you come face-to-face with your best friend's brother. He still blames you for his brother's death. You now have more to fear than just enemy soldiers ...
Saker is a member of the Clan. They're like brothers, but once you're a member you can never leave - ever. Each member has their own animal identity and tattoo, each is an expert in jungle law, survival and the ways of animals in order to make them better spies, thieves or assassins. Saker's latest assignment takes him to India to bring down the men who protect tigers. He's being employed by a Chinese overlord who specialises in poaching for tiger farms and tiger organs for high-priced medicines. But something happens to make Saker change sides and now he's on the run from his predatory brothers. They're hunting him down and they're professionals. He meets 15-year-old Sinter, a spoiled rich girl, who is running away from an arranged marriage, and their uneasy friendship will eventually form an unshakeable bond, as together they face adventure and danger as two young ecowarriors in a truly threatening world. After barely escaping the Mission alive, Gene and Sissy face an impossible task: staying alive long enough to stop an entire world bent on their destruction. Bound on a train heading into the unknown with the surviving Mission girls, Gene, Sissy, David, and Epap must stick together and use everything they have to protect each other and their only hope: the cure that will turn the blood-thirsty creatures around them into humans again. Now that they know how to reverse the virus, Gene and Sissy have one final chance to save those they love and create a better life for themselves. But as they struggle to get there, Gene's mission sets him on a crash course with Ashley June, his first love ...and his deadliest enemy.
Lord Oda has sworn to destroy all ninja. Now Taka and Cho must help to protect their village from the invading samurai army, but they are outnumbered ten to one. Will they be able to save everyone? Action-packed sequel from bestselling Young Samurai author Chris Bradford.
Last year, Pierce died - just for a moment. And when she was in the space between life and death, she met John. Tall dark and terrifying, it's his job to usher souls from one realm to the next. There's a fierce attraction between them, which Pierce carries back into our world. But she knows that if she allows herself to fall for John she will be doomed to a life of shadows and loneliness in the Underworld. When things get dangerous for her, her only hope is to do exactly what John says. Can she trust a guy who lives for the dead?
Cursed to be a siren, Gemma's life is slowly being destroyed. Struggling to move away from the savage darkness she needs to survive, she's desperate to break the curse that has turned her into a monster and is keeping her from the family -- and boy -- that she loves. But the alluring yet lethal sirens, Penn, Thea and the newly initiated, Liv have no intention of letting her go. The key to her freedom lies with an ancient scroll and Gemma's frantic search leads her to someone who might be able to help--the mysterious immortal Diana, who cursed Penn and her sisters thousands of years ago. But Diana will not give up her secrets easily and unless Gemma and her sister Harper can unlock the scroll's powers then Penn will trap Harper's boyfriend Daniel and destroy the two sisters for good.
Nikki Beckett has just returned from the Everneath to a family who doesn't know where she's been, a boyfriend who doesn't know why she left and old friends who think she's an addict. But Nikki doesn't have time to answer questions. She only has six months before the tunnels of the Everneath come for her again. Six months for goodbyes she'll never be able to say out loud. Six months to find redemption, if it exists. But then Nikki discovers that she didn't return to the surface alone. Cole, the Everliving who lured her into the Everneath followed her as is determined to make sure Nikki returns to the Everneath with him, but this time as his queen. Nikki soon realises that Cole will stop at nothing to convince her to rule with him, putting everyone she loves, especially her boyfriend Jack, in grave danger. Together, Nikki and Jack search for answers in ancient myths and from mysterious characters, hoping to find a loophole for Nikki to escape her fate. And they do...Killing an Everliving can't be that hard, can it? The world has fallen in love with Nick Gautier and the Dark-Hunters. Now Nick's saga continues in the next eagerly anticipated volume ...Go to school. Get good grades. Stay out of trouble. That's the mandate for most kids. But Nick Gautier isn't the average teenager. He's a boy with a destiny not even he fully understands. And his first mandate is to stay alive while everyone, even his own father, tries to kill him. He's learned to raise the dead, divination and clairvoyance, so why is learning to drive and keep a girlfriend so hard? But driving isn't the primary skill he has to master. Survival is. And in order to survive, his next lesson makes all the others pale in comparison. He is on the brink of becoming either the greatest hero mankind has ever known - or he'll be the one who ends the world. With enemies new and old gathering forces, he will have to call on every part of himself to fight or he'll lose everyone he cares about. Even himself. These are the stories our ancestors told to explain how the world began; or they are the legends of half-remembered heroes and people whose lives were changed by magic
Jesse has survived the chasers. He's survived the roving bands of humans. And he might even have started to make some new friends. But the quarantine period is up. The army is coming in. And Jesse's about to learn that the real test of survival has only just begun.
The new headteacher is very strict about health and safety - and bans football from the playground. Lily, Zack and their friends are devastated, but when they find an old tennis court hidden away in the woods behind the school, they decide to keep playing as a brand new team - the Secret FC!
Gemma is facing the fight of her life. Cursed by beautiful but deadly sirens, her extraordinary powers have a terrifyingly dark side, and becoming human once more is proving her greatest challenge yet. As she struggles to break the curse, the sirens, Penn Lexi and Thea are determined to kill her before she can set herself free. Gemma's only allies are her sister, Harper, and Harper's boyfriend, Daniel. Together they must delve into their enemies' mythical pasts -- to discover their darkest secrets. But Penn has also set her sights on Daniel. Soon, the sirens threaten everything Gemma holds dear: her family, her friends, her life, and her relationship with Alex -- the only guy she's ever loved. Can she save herself and those she cares about before it is too late?
A brilliantly brain-warping thriller and a love story that leaps back and forth in time - All Our Yesterdays is an amazing first novel, perfect for fans of The Hunger Games. Em is locked in a bare, cold cell with no comforts. Finn is in the cell next door. The Doctor is keeping them there until they tell him what he wants to know. Trouble is, what he wants to know hasn't happened yet. Em and Finn have a shared past, but no future unless they can find a way out. The present is torture - being kept apart, overhearing each other's anguish as the Doctor relentlessly seeks answers. There's no way back from here, to what they used to be, the world they used to know. Then Em finds a note in her cell which changes everything. It's from her future self and contains some simple but very clear instructions. Em must travel back in time to avert a tragedy that's about to unfold. Worse, she has to pursue and kill the boy she loves to change the future ... The new boy at Cassie's school is gorgeous. Her crush is instant and all-consuming. But Ollie is confusing: one minute he's giving her his special smile, the next he's flirting with another girl. If only Ollie was as easy to talk to as his best mate, Sam. But whilst Cassie sees Sam as just a friend, he has other ideas. Suddenly Cassie has a choice to make.
My name is Jason - and I have just met the most incredible woman, on Charlotte Street. Well, I say 'met'. I sort of held her bags for a second. But she smiled at me! And it was this amazing smile. Of course, I don't know her name, or anything about her at all. But I do happen to have something of hers. She left behind one of those old-school disposable cameras. I've got it. It's here in front of me. So there are two things I could now do: I could develop the photos. See her again, see her life. Maybe work out a way of finding her. Find that smile. Or I could chuck it in a bin like a grown-up. I'm fairly sure one of those ideas is a good one. I'm fairly sure the other might be illegal. Look, if you were me. what would you do? Staff Library
In book one of the Fury trilogy, Em Winters and Chase Singer discover that a little guilt isn't the only consequence of doing wrong. After Em hooks up with her best friend's boyfriend and Chase's secret harassment of a social outcast spirals out of control, three mysterious Furies-paranormal creatures that often assume the form of beautiful women-come to town to make sure that Em and Chase get what they deserve. Not everyone will survive-and those who do will discover there are worse punishments than death. But when Em befriends outcast Drea and learns more about who and what the Furies really are, she becomes resolved above all to take them down and stop their plans. Little does Em know that, by confronting the Furies, she could become inextricably bound to them for life.
It's a perfect world, where everything looks right. But ugly truths lie beneath the surface...It is the future. There is no war, no hunger, no pain. No one in The Community wants for anything. Everyone is provided for. Each Family Unit is entitled to one female and male child. Each member of The Community has their profession carefully chosen for them by the Committee of Elders, and they never make a mistake. Jonas, a sensitive twelve-year-old boy, had never thought there was anything wrong with his Community, until one day. From the moment Jonas is selected as the Receiver of Memory at The Ceremony, his life is never the same. Jonas discovers that The Community is not as perfect as it seems. Although they appear to have everything, they are missing something of great importance. It is up to Jonas, with the help of the Giver, to find what long ago had been lost. And so Jonas embarks on an adventure to save the world as he knows it. Simply and beautifully written, The Giver is sure to touch the heart of every reader
Gemma had to disappear with Penn, Lexi and Thea after a night of incredible violence on the island. She can still barely come to terms with her new affinity with the ocean -- and the siren powers that go with it. Now she's been transformed, Gemma has no choice but to leave all she loves behind. She swears she won't lose her humanity, but the call of the sea is maddening and compulsive. Harper won't give up on her missing sister. The search draws her closer than she'd like to bohemian Daniel, but she could really use his help. They'd almost given up, until a small news item tells of a horrific murder in a nearby beach town, and Harper thinks she's found the deadly group. But can Gemma's curse be reversed -- and what if she doesn't want to come home? Jess Hall's dad is the new general manager at Porchester Park, and is moving Jess, her brother and pet cat into a staff apartment there. Jess is dreading the move, until she learns the apartments are strictly A-list only and soon to be populated by actors, musicians, models and millionaires...But fraternising with the stars isn't all it's cracked up to be, and soon Jess is wishing for a return to real-life - but can she admit to her friends that the gilded cage isn't quite as golden as she'd anticipated?
Spain, 1936 and the brink of civil war. Young, poor Sira Quiroga is swept up in a whirlwind romance with her wily love Ramiro. Fleeing Madrid together for Morocco, her love blinds her to his real failings. Soon abandoned, left penniless and in debt to the authorities, she has to rely on the one skill she still possesses: sewing. Taken under the wing of the bullish but caring housekeeper Candelaria, Sira is able to sew for the glamorous foreign English and German women in Tetouan. Privy to their unbridled gossip, Sira becomes invaluable to the British secret service, a position that is filled with untold risk. A story of danger, espionage, romance and war. Staff Library
When tragic events tear him away from his parents, 15-year-old Mickey Bolitar is sent to live with his estranged uncle, Myron. For a while, it seems his train wreck of a life is finally improving - until his girlfriend, Ashley, goes missing without a trace. Unwilling to let another person he cares about walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld, revealing a conspiracy so shocking it will leave him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.
Nestled high in the Italian Alps lies Vilminore, home to Ciro, a strapping mountain boy. Close by lives Enza, a practical girl who longs only for a happy life for her family. When the two meet as teenagers, it seems it could be the start of a life together...Then Ciro catches the local priest in a scandal and is sent to America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Little Italy, leaving behind a bereft Enza. Her family faces disaster and she, too, is forced to flee to America with her father to secure their future. Unbeknownst to one another, Ciro and Enza build fledgling lives in New York. Ciro masters shoemaking and Enza takes a factory job, until fate intervenes and reunites them. But it is too late: Ciro has volunteered to serve in World War I and Enza must learn to forge a life without him. From the stately mansions of New York's Upper East Side to the cobblestone streets of Little Italy, over the perilous cliffs of northern Italy to the white-capped lakes of northern Minnesota, these star-crossed lovers meet and separate, until, finally, the power of their love changes both of their lives forever... Staff Library Strange things are happening in Skeleton Creek ...and Ryan and Sarah are trying to get to the heart of it. But after an eerie accident leaves Ryan housebound and forbidden to see Sarah, their investigation takes two tracks: Ryan records everything in his journal, while Sarah uses her video camera to search things out, then email the clips for Ryan to see. In a groundbreaking new format, the story is broken into two parts - Ryan's text in the book, and Sarah's videos on a special website, with links and passwords given throughout the book
Stephanie Harker is travelling through security at O'Hare airport with five-year-old Jimmy. But in a moment, everything changes. In disbelief, Stephanie watches as a uniformed agent leads her boy away - and she's stuck the other side of the gates, hysterical with worry. The authorities, unaware of Jimmy's existence, just see a woman behaving erratically; Stephanie is wrestled to the ground and blasted with a taser gun. By the time she can tell them what has happened, Jimmy is long gone. But as Stephanie tells her story to the FBI, it becomes clear that everything is not as it seems. There are many potential suspects for this abduction. With time rapidly running out, how can Stephanie get him back? Staff Library
Doctor Who Screenwriter Ben Aaronovitch's superbly entertaining supernatural crime series has, with its witty one-liners and wonderfully erudite take on London, won a legion of fans in double quick time. Peter Grant is learning magic fast. And its just as well - he's already had run ins with the deadly supernatural children of the Thames and a terrifying killer in Soho. Progression in the Police Force is less easy. Especially when you work in a department of two. A department that doesn't even officially exist. A department that if you did describe it to most people would get you laughed at. And then there's his love life. The last person he fell for ended up seriously dead. It wasn't his fault, but still. Now something horrible is happening in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up the tube system that honeycombs the ancient foundations of London. And delays on the Northern line is the very least of it. Time to call in the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Unit 9, aka 'The Folly'. Time to call in PC Peter Grant, Britains Last Wizard Staff Library