Ardnamurchan flies for World Book Day

WORLD Book Day last week saw pupils and teachers in schools across Lochaber marking the event in some very special ways.

Inspired by the competition title Flying High with Reading, Ardnamurchan High staff and pupils decided to make a kite that would ‘fly’ from the balcony in the school’s central dining area displaying, on its tail bows, their favourite books.

All the building users got involved, including all the high school and nursery pupils, teaching and support staff, community library staff and users, parents and partner charity Ewen’s Room. All chose a book and all have a bow on display.

The kite was designed and painted by an S2 pupil during art classes, with the kite structure made initially during tech lessons and Itealaich Àrd written on the kite, meaning ‘flying high’ in Gaelic.

From the initial brainstorm, the whole project took wing, with pupils from the Craft Club adding a book tree ‘growing out’ of books. The library staff also got on board, linking the display to other World Book Day activities, by creating hot-air balloons from the £1 and £2.50 World Book Day titles.

The variety of titles chosen was amazing, from some Gaelic titles, to Thomas the Tank Engine and Horrid Henry and from A Prayer for Owen Meany to the The Communist Manifesto.

The school has a voluntary reading group dedicated to reading the current shortlist for the Teenage Book Award and at least one pupil has selected Caighlan’s Smith’s novel Children of Icarus as their favourite book ever.

The school was delighted with the news that it is the recipient of Third Prize (Bronze) and £500 of Bonnier Zaffre books.

Debbie White, who teaches English part-time at the school, said: ‘Best of all, though, have been the conversations that have happened, totally naturally as people made their bows, talked about their books and created the display.

‘One member of staff discovered, through the book choice of Isolation Shepherd that one of our cleaners is also a shepherd.

‘As a result, she has been receiving advice on training a new collie pup. Everyone is truly talking books.’

And head teacher Christopher Millar-Craig added: ‘Everyone did extremely well with this project and a particular congratulations to Debbie White and her team of helpers for getting this off the ground and for netting a bronze award for the school.’