Tis the season of the summer blockbuster and holiday read! You want a book that reads itself, a page-turner. You want warm and uplifting, light and fluffy or car chases and shark attacks! You want maximum engagement for minimum effort. You want a holiday read!
Our big summer event is our Summer Reading Challenge, where we challenge children to read six books over the holidays. We’ve got it all in our Libraries this summer! Claymation workshops, 3D Printing, Create your own Kaleidoscope, Write your own video games, Virtual Reality, Scavenger Hunts, Lego and Games!
This month it is no exaggeration to state that our Library team have outstripped all previous suggestions, ever! Hyperbole aside, we have sharks, shaken not stirred, thousands of magazines, nostalgia and young inventors.
Top Fiction: Sharks in the Time of Saviours by Kawai Strong Washburn
Chosen by Percy
As it is summer blockbuster and holiday reads season… what is the blockbuster that began them all? Why, Jaws of course!
Set in Hawaii, a boy falls into the sea and a shark takes him in its jaws – only to return him, unharmed, to his parents. For the next thirty years he and his family struggle with life in the shadow of this miracle.
The writing is so absolutely outstanding, I can’t praise it enough, a book like this is a rare treat!
Top Non-Fiction: Our eMagazine collection
Chosen by Mavis
What is the absolute ideal holiday non-fiction? A magazine! Short, sharp, informative articles about a range of topics, or maybe you just want to wallow in some celebrity slurry! On our Libby and PressReader platforms we have thousands, yes thousands of magazines and newspapers.
We have Cosmo, Top Gear, Newsweek, National Geographic, Inside Soap, Heat, Hello. We have niche concerns like Diecast Collector – the most popular UK model collecting magazine – and we have The Economist – the premier source for the analysis of world business and current affairs.
And if you’d rather cheer yourself up with the daily news we have all the Big Names; The Mail, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Mirror.
eNews and eMagazines on PressReader
Top Audio: The James Bond Series by Ian Fleming
Chosen by Magda
For me, the quintessential summer blockbuster, action-packed, no-brain bonanza is a James Bond film! Forget the fab four, my fab six would be Sean, George, Roger, Timothy, Pierce and Daniel! Yes, even George! Yes, especially Roger!
Warning – the books are much, much darker, Bond isn’t so much a witty quipper as an alcoholic snob and bully boy! On Libby we have all the original books read all the Bonds that never were, all the Bonds that could have been; Jason Isaacs, Kenneth Branagh, David Tennant, Rory Kinnear, Hugh Bonneville, Toby Stephens, Hugh Quarshie, Damian Lewis, Dan Stevens and Rosamund Pike
Top Comic: Stanger Things by Jody Houser art by Edgar Salazar and Keith Champagne
Chosen by Elizabeth
Put on your headphones, slide your Hounds of Love cassette into your Walkman and press play; its time to go Back to the 80s and into the Upside Down!
For those of you too young to remember the 1980s let me say, yes, it was like that. We all drove a burgundy BMW 733i (well maybe our parents did, at least the babysitter did!) and our mums all smoked cigarettes and looked like Winona Ryder (well actually my babysitter did!) and we were forever getting lost in an alternate dimension! All the time – it’s where I lost all my homework between 1981 and 1987!
While you wait for season 5, check out the Stranger Things comic series that delves deeper into the mysterious world.
Top Children’s Fiction: Into the Sideways World by Ross Welford
Chosen by Jim
This is like Stranger Things but round the other way, the Upside Down in this case is a perfect world!
Twelve-year-olds Willa and Manny are swept into an alternate, ideal, world – one where pollution and conflict have been conquered decades ago and even their own families seem happier. But when they return, no one believes them. So, with a global war looming in their own world, their quest for proof of the Sideways World becomes ever-more urgent, in a nail-biting race against time.
And Willa and Manny will have to make an impossible decision: because once you find a perfect world, can you ever leave it behind?
Top
Children’s Non-Fiction: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba
Chosen by Isaac
When a terrible drought struck William Kamkwamba’s tiny village in Malawi, his family lost all of the season’s crops, leaving them with nothing to eat and nothing to sell. William began to explore science books in his village library, looking for a solution.
There, he came up with the idea that would change his family’s life forever: he could build a windmill. Made out of scrap metal and old bicycle parts, William’s windmill brought electricity to his home and helped his family pump the water they needed to farm the land.
Retold for a younger audience, this inspiring story of a young inventor is a perfect fit for our Summer Reading Challenge theme; Gadgeteers.
