Festive Fun – Christmas reading lists, quizzes and more

Here’s a Christmas Animoto giving a flavour of what’s been happening in the Library this Michaelmas term.

I love the end of the year and the Christmas break for the plethora of themed booklists which spring up in all the papers. It’s a good opportunity to seek out the great books you’ve missed from earlier in the year.  It’s also the season of book quizzes.

Reading Times 2013

School librarians are excellent sharers of good ideas. Here’s a lovely idea from Helen Smith, Learning Resources Manager at Eckington School. She has compiled a wonderful booklet called Reading Times 2013 in which she lists all the Christmas TV and radio based on or relating to books. Helen has very generously shared it with all of us. It makes fascinating reading.

Hidden Books Quiz

Caboodle website has two great pictoral book quizzes. Work out the title of the famous books from the pictures. Almost impossible to leave until you’ve cracked all 20.

Teamwork tackling the hidden books quiz.

Teamwork tackling the hidden books quiz. 

The Guardian Children’s Book Website has a vast range of quick online book quizzes – from Elephants in Fiction to Graphic Novels and Comic books or banned books 

Our head of Maths Mr Sproat just reminded me about Sporcle. This is the perfect site for quiz and trivia fans. Try the book cover quiz (identify the book by a portion of its cover) or can you name the book titles given their loosely based antonyms? or name the book titles without vowels or spaces? In fact there are 1000 quizzes relating to books!

Best books of the Year

Here is The Guardian’s Best Fiction List of  2013

The Telegraph: Best Fiction of 2013 …’a vintage year for lengthy fiction’