The Stacks

So much has happened, and so much to come! Read on to see what is happening in the IRS library.

We had a blast this year with Read Across America! We brought back some fun favorites from last year, including: IditaREAD, Design Your Own Bookmark Contest, Virtual Author Visits, and (my personal favorite) Read Across Mascoma. We also added in some new fun such as an art contest, raffle, and word play contest. The students were excited to participate and were READING all week long!

The students enjoyed the authors, and all of their books were quickly snatched up in the library after their visits!

In honor of the High School's performance of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, IRS celebrated Greek Gods and Goddesses the week of March 13th.

While many students were familiar with the Percy Jackson series, many were newly introduced when we watched the live performance on March 16th. After that, the books on display were in high demand!

Congrats to the high school for their inspiring performance!

The students were tasked with writing a two-sentence story about winter. The submissions were phenomenal! I submitted about 30 stories and CLiF received over 700 submissions total from NH and VT.

We didn't have any winners selected from our school, but here is a message from award-winning author/illustrator and CLiF presenter Jason Chin to everyone who entered the contest. As he says in his video, you all have more stories to tell. Keep writing, keep drawing, and keep sharing!

We used a combination of our most popular titles and some award nominees for our 2023 March Madness Book Tournament. Students are reading and voting and having a blast! We are down to the Elite 8! Who will be our winner? Whose bracket is still in the running?

Click here for a preview of this year's books.

This year's Isinglass and Great Stone Face Award Nominees are available in the library and on Sora! Students that read 6 or more nominated books will be invited to vote for their favorites in April. Happy Reading!

Isinglass Book Award (7th & 8th Grade)

The Isinglass Teen Read Award was begun in 2001 by the Barrington Public Library and the Barrington Middle School in order to promote teen reading, the participation of teens in the creation of their own reading list, and to honor those authors whose works speak to youth.

The Great Stone Face Book Award (5th & 6th Grade)

The Great Stone Face Book Award is sponsored by the Children's Librarians of New Hampshire (CHILIS) and is given each year to an author whose book receives the most votes from fourth through sixth graders throughout the state.

Just in time for National Poetry Month, we will welcome author David Elliot to speak with our 7th and 8th grade students about two of his novels written in verse. The 7th graders have been reading his book, The Seventh Raven, which explores the unintended consequences of our actions, no matter our intentions, and is filled with powerful messages teased from a Grimms’ fairy tale. Our 8th graders have been reading Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc, a story told through medieval poetic forms and in the voices of the people and objects in Joan of Arc’s life, including her family and even the trees, clothes, cows, and candles of her childhood.

Having read these great novels in verse, students will now have the opportunity to interact directly with the author to discuss the books, poetic forms, and the writing/publishing process. Extension writing activities will be offered to students as well.

About David Elliot:

Born in Ohio, David has worked as a singer in Mexico, an English teacher in Libya, a cucumber-washer in Greece, and a popsicle-stick-maker in Israel. In addition to receiving a BA in anthropology and an MA in international administration, he attended New England Conservatory where he studied classical voice.

Currently, David lives in New Hampshire with his wife and a Dandie Dinmont terrier mix named Queequeg.

He has published more than twenty-five books for young people.

He can yodel.

For more about David Elliot, visit: https://www.davidelliottbooks.com/

Be on the lookout for details coming soon!

Library Media and Digital Learning Specialist

Email: jhollander@mvrsd.org
Website: https://bit.ly/IRSLibrary
Location: Indian River School, Royal Road, Canaan, NH, USA
Phone: (603) 632-4357