Year of the Dragon

Dragon made by Mrs Edgar's pupils

Today is the start of Chinese New Year celebrations: Happy New Year. This is a good time to promote some of our books about or set in China. The first that springs to mind and a book I highly recommend is ‘Wild Swans’ by Jung Chang. This is a story told through the lives of three women and also a history of twentieth century China. I read this book a number of years ago and perusing it now, feel ready to read it again. A riveting read, illustrating what people are capable of, for good and bad. This is not an easy or quick read, not only is it a chunky book but also you will find yourself stopping to reflect and reread passages.By the way, Jung Chang was born in the year of the dragon. Another author I enjoy is Amy Tan. Her first novel ‘The Joy Luck Club’ is the story of four mothers and their first-generation American daughters. A title popular with our pupils is ‘Chinese Cinderella’ by Adeline Yen Mah. This is a sad tale of a daughter who was made to feel unwanted all her life. If you prefer adventure stories to sad tales then try Carole Wilkinson’s ‘Dragon Keeper’. Ping is a slave who rescues a dragon from her tyrannical master, the Imperial Dragonkeeper. It is this moment of bravery that seals her destiny as a dragonkeeper and sends her off on many adventures.

Things to Look Forward To

First day back and despite that fuzzy post-Christmassy feeling (you know the one I mean? when you just wanted to crawl back under the duvet, cosy in your now too tight jimjams), I’ve been thinking of some of the things we have to look forward to.

 Firstly, I’m looking forward to finding out what our staff who took up the ‘Christmas Reading Challenge’ thought about the books chosen for them.Each member of staff took home a young adult novel.I’m expecting to receive some interesting reviews.And talking about reviews, January 27th is the voting and review deadline for the Scottish Book Trust’s Scottish Children’s Book Awards. A group of our pupils are reviewing the titles in the older readers’ category. I will be interested to see if they have  a clear favourite  and which title will be the overall winner. January 23rd is Chinese New Year and this year it is the year of the dragon.I can feel a display coming on!

2012 is also the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. My New Year resolution is to read more of his works.Perhaps that’s a challenge for the school community too.But more about Dickens another time.This is also the year the Olympics comes to Britain. There will be so many exciting things happening this year and it will be quite a challenge to keep up with them all.