This is a great opportunity for anyone who is a fan of Alex Rider.  The Boswell Book Festival takes place at Dumfries House, near Cumnock, 4-6 May 2018.  There are still tickets available for this event as well as his event on Sunday for adult and older writers.

Our World Book Day celebrations began a week early, on Thursday 25th February.  A group of 15 S3 pupils accompanied by Miss Owens and Mr Drinnan set off to hear the award winning author Claire McFall speaking at Carnegie Library, Ayr.  Claire gave an engaging, entertaining talk about her most recent book, Black Cairn Point, highlighting to pupils that inspiration for a novel can come from anywhere, even having car trouble on the A77. As well as talking about the writing process Claire read excerpts from her three books and let us in on a secret about the book she is currently writing…. 

The talk was interspersed with three book related quizzes, which were all won by Marr pupils. Well done to the winners, one being so fast Miss Owens hadn’t even finished reading the riddle on the screen!  Claire was happy to sign books and chat about writing with pupils after the talk, giving some personalised advice to our budding writers.  Miss Owens would like to thank South Ayrshire public libraries for organising and hosting this event and for inviting pupils from Marr along. 

The pupils really enjoyed the afternoon and had this to say:

“Great, entertaining experience.  I loved every second of it!”
“It was very inspiring to listen to someone local talk about how she has become successful.”
“A great trip, learnt loads”
“One word – in capitals: AWESOME!”
“Interesting hearing about the process of publishing” #myinspo!
“A fun afternoon and time well spent.  I love Claire”
“Had a great time, was fun to meet Claire and enjoyed listening to her stories and novels”

The author talk was just the beginning.  Staff across the school had been busy decorating their doors forWorld Book Day and starting on Monday 29th February pupils were able to vote for their favourite.  Inspiration for each of the doors had come from a book, either their favourite as a child, or the book they last read or indeed their child's favourite book! Teachers, pupils, school assistants, office staff, the librarian and even the head teacher all got involved.  Voting for their favourite was a hard task for everyone with 26 doors to choose from. 

On World Book Day itself, Thursday 3rd March, the winner was announced at a special Book Bonanza in the library.  Pupils and staff competed in a big book quiz, the library was buzzing with chatter about books and 5 pupils won a goodie bag from a prize draw.  Overall Wold Book Day was a fantastic celebration of books at Marr College and the decorated doors with stay for a few weeks yet, continuing the book chatter. 

The new Children's Laureate for 2015-2017 has been announced and it is another of my favourite authors: Chris Riddell.  You can read his full biography here.  I loved his books about Ottoline and the Yellow Cat and I know some of you are fans of his Goth Girl series.  Well done to Chris Riddell and to Malorie Blackman for being very supportive of Young Adult books and school librarians during her term as Laureate.