The Library Scoop
Year 9 - 12 : Term 2 2024
Fall into Reading during Term 2
As the temperature takes a dip, why not seize the opportunity to cosy up with a good book?
Exciting news - Our shelves are stacked with a bunch of fresh releases! Come in and check one out. Or take your book wherever you go with an audiobook – they're also available for free on Sora.
Got a knack for storytelling?
Join our brand new writer's group kicking off next term and explore the journey of crafting your own book! Register your interest below and while you're at it, enter our AHS Literary Competition.
Calling all budding writers and wannabe writers!
There's lots of different ways to tell a story. Find out how with fun activities held by the library's own resident author, Mrs Pickering. Sign up below to find out more.
Tortured Poets Department
If you're loving Taylor's latest album and it's stirring up all sorts of feels, why not enhance the experience with a good book?
Introducing Swift Reads - a collection of books inspired by Taylor's albums. Dive into the brand new Tortured Poets Department or cosy up with selections from the Folklore or Evermore ranges that set the perfect mood for this season.
You can find them behind the Biography shelves near Makerspace. Just look for the life-sized Taylor 😉
The REAL Tortured Poets Department
We also have a great range of books on the classic poetry that inspired Taylor. Head on up to LEVEL 2 to check them out.
NEW BOOKS
Drama
Future Hopes
Skyscraper farms. Insects for dinner. Guerilla gardening. Nine authors pose ingenious and thought-provoking solutions to the climate crisis in this anthology of climate fiction. Rooted in real-world science and technology, the stories offer a roadmap for a future where our planet can thrive. From a rewilding project with unexpected consequences to a rebellion against augmented reality, these wide-ranging stories will leave the reader feeling a little less powerless in the fight to save planet Earth.
Love and Gelato
Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn't in the mood for Italy's famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She's only there because it was her mother's dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn't around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home. But then Lina is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina's uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother's footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept for far too long. It's a secret that will change everything Lina knew about her mother, her father--and even herself. People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more.
New Year's Eve
(SENIOR FICTION)
Being born on the last day of the year has never done Eve Anderson any favours, but this year her birthday set off a series of rolling explosions rather than fireworks. An affair with a married man just crashed and burned, her career is in tatters, and now there's a phone call from her mother that she can't ignore. Eve is forced to slink back to the outback town she ditched at 18 and face the family she's actively ignored since, the teenage love she never forgot, and the pub (or is that "family home"?-you say potato, I say "po-taa-to"!) that holds too many of her secrets. Packed with heart, humour, and romance, get ready to fall in love with New Year's Eve.
Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Electric Life
Estrella is the 'perfect' society: an immaculate, sanitised, hyper-connected environment where everything is channelled through the digital medium. There is no dirt, no pain, no disease and no natural world. Feelings like boredom are frowned upon and discouraged. Alara is dropped down to London Under and into a new-old world that bewilders and disorientates her. How will she survive in a society where noise, dirt and sometimes pain are everyday experiences, and where food is not synthetic and tastes real? Will she accomplish her mission? Who can she trust? How will she get back to her family and her worry-free life in Estrella? Set in a fictional yet believable future, this story explores important themes and asks some big questions about where our society could be heading.
The Invocations
(SENIOR FICTION)
Zara Jones believes in magic because the alternative is too painful to consider--that her murdered sister is gone forever and there is nothing she can do about it. Rather than grieving and moving on, Zara decides she will do whatever it takes to claw her sister back from the grave--even trading in the occult. Jude Wolf may be the daughter of a billionaire, but she is also undeniably cursed. After a deal with a demon went horribly wrong, her soul has been slowly turning necrotic. Now that she's glimpsed what's beyond the veil, Jude's desperate to find someone to undo the damage she's done to herself. Enter Emer Byrne, an orphaned witch with a dark past and a deadly power. When Emer's clients start turning up dead all over London, a vital clue leads Zara and Jude right to her. If a serial killer is targeting her clients, Emer wants to know why--and to stop them. She strikes a tenuous alliance with Zara and Jude to hunt a killer before they are next on his list, even if she can't give them in return what Zara and Jude want most--a sister and a soul.
Divine Rivals
(SENIOR FICTION)
When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever. After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette. To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish -- into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.
History and Mystery
Those Girls
The poster had a picture of a tanned, healthy girl, wearing a regulation uniform hat and shorts that were, surely, anything but regulation. When Hilly volunteers for the Women’s Land Army in 1942, she’s sixteen years old. She expects to be picking sun-kissed fruit and bottle-feeding fluffy white lambs, all while she's wearing a flattering outfit. Travelling to farms across Queensland, Hilly encounters backbreaking work, but also friendship and fellowship with other Land Army girls, Aileen and Glad, all seeking independence for their own reasons. War is a chance for a life away from family and familiarity, offering adventure and romance. But the poster didn’t mention crutching sheep or 4 am starts. Or the prejudice they would face, and that some men needed to be fought off, rather than fought for. In the midst of adversity, Hilly finds exactly what she is capable of … and it might be more than she ever thought possible. She is one of ‘those girls with grit’.
Catch Your Death
When three girls are stranded at the grand Bramble Estate in the middle of a snowstorm, they stumble into a murder plot. Someone has poisoned wealthy Emily Vanforte in the middle of a family dinner - which means Devi, Lizzie and Jayne are trapped in the house with a killer and a mystery to solve. With knives under floorboards, vanishing guns and secret passages in the walls, no one is safe and everyone is a suspect. But in a house of liars and corruption, will the girls save themselves...or learn to fit in?
These Deadly Games
(SENIOR FICTION)
Let's play a game. You have 24 hours to win. If you break my rules, she dies. If you call the police, she dies. If you tell your parents or anyone else, she dies. Are you ready?
When Crystal Donavan gets a message on a mysterious app with a picture of her little sister gagged and bound, she agrees to play the kidnapper's game. At first, they make her complete bizarre tasks: steal a test and stuff it in a locker, bake brownies, make a prank call. But then Crystal realizes that each task is meant to hurt--and kill--her friends, one by one. But if she refuses to play, the kidnapper will kill her sister. Is someone trying to take her team out of the running for a gaming tournament? Or have they uncovered a secret from their past, and wants them to pay for what they did?
AHS Literary Competition
AHS Literary Competition Guidelines:
- Grade 5 - 6: 400 - 800 words
- Grade 7 - 8: 500 - 1200 words
- Grade 9 - 10: 500 - 1500 words
- Grade 11 - 12: 600 - 1500 words
- Grade 11 - 12 non-fiction prose: 600 - 1500 words
- Open (teachers): 800 - 2500 words.
There is no word limit for the poetry categories.
Each entry must be that of an individual (no joint work) and the original work of the entrant.
The entry is to be typed as a WORD or PDF document
- Years 5-6 email your entry to library@ahs.qld.edu.au
- Years 7-12 submit through TURNITIN.
Competition organisers retain the right to publish the works and display the stories and poems in the library with the author’s consent. Copyright remains with the author.
Diversity Matters!
#WeNeedDiverseBooks
Whether you're grappling with a rollercoaster of emotions or navigating life with unique challenges like dyslexia or autism, we've got you covered.
Discover characters who resonate with your experiences, tackling issues like anxiety and disabilities with courage and resilience. And that's not all - our shelves are also brimming with titles that delve into the complexities of feelings and mental health in ways that are truly relatable.
So, if you're up for it, come check out our library! There's a whole world of stories waiting for you to explore. Who knows what awesome things you'll discover?
CLICK ON EACH BOOK BELOW TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEM
Neurodiversity
Frankie's World
GRA F DOO
Physical Disability
The Theory of Hummingbirds
J DRA PIC F KAD
Wellbeing
Finding Audrey
O DRA F KIN
Dyslexia-friendly
The Front Room
J DRA F MAG
Deaf character & author
The Whispering Dark
O FAN F AND
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Term 2 Topics
School Spaces Design for Wellbeing
Year 11 DTH
Australia's Frontier Wars
Year 11 MHI
References
Images for books are sourced either from the author's websites or are book and film covers, used as permitted under copyright for promotion. Reading memes sourced via Teeturtle on Instagram. Other images were created by the author using Canva.
About AHS Library
Blog: All Hallows' School Library (allhallowsschoollibrary.com)
Instagram: @ahsbrisbanelibrary
Email: Library@ahs.qld.edu.au
Website: https://allhallows.libguides.com/home
Location: 547 Ann Street, Fortitude Valley QLD, Australia
Phone: 32309531