has arrived! After maybe the longest ever summer, autumn arrived this week. We’ve already had a few cool mornings, but the sun has been shining everyday and it’s usually been really warm walking home after school. But now the rain has come, and with it, that cold to your bones feeling. While I don’t like the cold, I do like woolly clothes. And we really need the rain. The changes Read More …
I often have people come and ask me if I “can recommend a good book”. Wow. That is a really tricky one. I can recommend many good books – or at least books that I think are good. That I have enjoyed. With the kind of story I like. But that’s where it gets tricky. Because the type of story I most enjoy might not be what you enjoy. And Read More …
This week we are taking time to stop and consider what Truth & Reconciliation means and why it is important. What are truth and reconciliation? What do they have to do with me? Why wear an orange shirt? These are all important questions and each one of us needs to contemplate our own role. When it feels too big, too difficult, think on these words of Lee Maracle, a local Read More …
Another new school year has begun. The sun is still shining but it’s chilly in the mornings as I walk to school. As I was considering what to do for my first book display, I thought about the books I love and how I like to share them with others. So… Ms. Griffith and I pulled some of the Books We’ve Read; We’ve Loved & [have] Given Us Joy. What Read More …
This Saturday was Independent Booksellers Day and I went over to one of my favourite, Iron Dog Books. This is a small, but busy, bookstore. The owners started with a bus, but now have this great little shop on Hastings. I have other favourites as well. Over in North Van, Edgemont Village, a great little community, is bookended by 2 stores; on the north end, 32 Books, and at the Read More …
April is Literacy Month here at Burnaby Mountain. While we’ll be saving the school-wide celebrating for April 11 – 14, here in the Library Learning Commons, we’re going to make a full month of it. So we’re starting with a week that encourages you to think about your Freedom to Read. Books can take us to different times, different places, just … different. Sometimes we see our own lives in Read More …
Welcome to a new year – 2022. I still remember the excitement of the new millenium, the 1900s sliding into the 2000s. When I was young, looking ahead to that, it felt like the future. But here we are, 22 years on, and things don’t feel all that different. Except maybe the masks… I hope you had a good holiday. It was one of my best. A lot of reading, Read More …
In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. This classic Charles Dickens story, published in 1843, is as relevant to our world as it was to the Victorians. Ebenezer Scrooge has, over his adult life, slowly grown to love money to the exclusion of all else. It will take a review of his earlier life and a view of the future to help him recognize what he has become and Read More …
The Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was issued by the UN General Assembly in 1993. It defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.” Nearly 1 in 3 Read More …
The Queen of Crime. Outsold worldwide by only The Bible and Shakespeare. Dame Agatha Christie’s first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and her last, Postern of Fate, in 1973. Known best for her detective mysteries, Christie also wrote plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, ran in London from 1952, becoming the world’s longest running play, closing only in March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic Read More …