Having applied for the Robert Dunbarr Memorial Library Fund organised by Children’s Books Ireland, St. Aloysius has been awarded 200 new books for our library. As St. Als is one of only six schools in the country to be chosen, it shows that CBI read Ms. Walsh’s application and were very impressed by our brilliant school and our enthusiastic students, finding us deserving of this exciting award. These books will be launched early next year and are being chosen based on what our students like to read and what they have requested from Ms. Walsh each Tuesday in the library or during their reading classes with their English teachers. This is a great opportunity to grow the wonderful library that has been loved by so many generations of Aloysians.
Anyone who may not yet have found the perfect book for them in our library will now get the chance to find it in this shipment. The book that will make you fall in love with reading may be whizzing its way to St. Als. The excitement of this award did not stop there though. Children’s Books Ireland arranged for Sarah Maria Griffin, winner of the 2019 Irish Book Award for Young Adult books, to become our Champion of Reading. During the lockdown of April and May, Ms. Griffin ran video workshops with our students. These took the guise of two videos on zine making, reading and publishing while a third video featured a conversation between Ms. Griffin and Dave Rudden. Rudden is a favourite author of St. Als students since our first years met him last year in Cork City Library. He later reached out to the school on Twitter to check in on their short story writing.
These videos and Ms. Griffin’s challenge to create our own zines gave our school community a great creative outlet during the enforced lockdown due to the pandemic. Our Champion of Reading will also launch our new collection of books for us in 2020/21.
For further details on this please visit https://childrensbooksireland.ie/robert-dunbar-memorial-libraries-school-shortlist-announced/