Book Week 2022

Last week the Alexandria Resource Centre (ARC) hosted Book Week and plenty of fun was had by all.

Our poetry competition was won by Abbey Phelan 8R with her poem Dreaming with both eyes open, which was the theme for Book Week this year.

Year 12 student Illyana Baraci won the bookmark competition with her beautiful drawing titled Reading Owl.

Both students won a $30 Booktopia book purchase courtesy of the ARC.

A fun game of Book Bingo and a very competitive Book Quiz also took place with Ajouk Good (7F), Martha Poundak (8O) and Youseff Kolta (7R) also taking home a $30 Booktopia book purchase.

Write a Book in a Day

On Wednesday, the ARC was bristling with energy as four teams of students wrote and illustrated their amazing books during the Write a Book in a Day (WABIAD) competition.

The annual competition promotes literacy, collaboration and creativity and is run by The Kids’ Cancer Project.

This year the College entered three junior teams and one senior team. Students were given a brief and within 12 hours they wrote, illustrated, and submitted a storybook targeted to a youth audience. Completed books are uploaded to an online library to give access to children undergoing treatment in hospitals across the country.

Here is Year 9 student Alanis Furtado’s account of the day.

“We started at 8am, with a run-down of the day and then went straight into planning, writing and illustrating, ending at 8pm.

Once we broke into teams, there was a really positive collaborative vibe in the room as everyone worked out the structure of their stories. It was fun to work out an overarching plot line with my friends and establish a distinct oceanic aesthetic for my team’s story Coastal County.

Every team came up with a story or thematic elements that made their book stand out. We learnt a lot about collaboration, time management and leadership skills through this program, as well as developing our language skills. Not to mention a lot of laughs and team bonding. Write a Book in a Day was a great way to express creativity and imagination for a great cause!"

You can read all the Write a Book in a Day entries below.

Coastal County - Junior Team 1

Timeless Ensemble - Junior Team 2

Owner of a Lonely Heart - Junior Team 3

Cataclysm - Senior Team

Book Fair

Our Book Week celebrations culminated in a secondhand book stall to raise money for the Indigenous Literacy Project. More than 100 books were sold and $100 was raised. Plans have been made to host the event again in summer.

Book of the Year Awards

The Children’s Book Council of Australia’s annual Book of the Year awards were also announced this month. This year’s Older Reader category was won by author Rebecca Lim for her book titled Tiger Daughter. The Younger Reader category was won by Shirley Marr for her book A Glasshouse of Stars. These books and other nominated titles can be borrowed from our library.

We would like to extend a huge thank you to all the staff and students who made Book Week so successful and we invite all students to keep visiting our wonderful ARC as often as possible for other events.

Belinda Brown, Head of Library Services, on behalf of the Library, English and Literacy departments.