Mrs Sirrelle reports: “This week, 1 – 9 February, is National Storytelling Week 2025! We are busy celebrating stories in the library with visits from St Mary’s pupils from Reception, all the way up to Year 6 this term.

We have also launched our brand-new reading competition ‘Bookworms and Boosters’ for students in Year 7 and 8 this week and lots of our readers are already off to a great start, with over 40 students already signed up!

To celebrate upcoming Valentine’s Day, we are promoting Blind Date with a Book (back by popular demand!) where students are encouraged to choose a book based on small excerpts from the blurb or first page, without seeing the front cover. Books cover a variety of genres, and also include graphic novels, Dyslexia friendly and non-fiction titles. We also have our ‘love’ themed spotlight display for those seeking some romance in their reads.

This month we are joining Spark! Book Awards for the first time and will be welcoming students to help us judge a variety of books that have made the shortlist.

Our BFS Toppsta Book Club has been hard at work reading a huge range of materials and writing helpful reviews to encourage other readers to try books out – with their dedication, they have already won 3 brand new books for our school library, with bids on another 7 books still outstanding, well done Toppstas!

Finally, we are incredibly excited for our upcoming March Month of Reading Madness, which will include visits from published authors, non-uniform World Book Day (more details to follow), our annual Scholastic Book Fair and much, much more!”