KAA’s Literary Festival 2019

by Vashti Turner  on March 9, 2019  in  Literacy Reading

We had a fantastic Literary Festival from Monday 4th March to Friday 8th March at KAA to promote the love of reading throughout the school and celebrate World Book Day.

On Monday 4th March all students were given a World Book Day token. These can be exchanged in bookshops for one of the limited edition World Book Day titles, or used as a £1 book voucher off the price of any book. To find out more about this year’s World Book Day titles, students can visit https://www.worldbookday.com/books/.

On Monday 4th March author Andy Robb visited Year 8s to speak about his Geekhood series. On Tuesday 5th March we were visited by Saci Lloyd,  author of the Carbon Diaries series and Andy Mulligan, author of Trash. Students then took part in a competition to create a ‘trash city’ out of recycled items. On Wednesday 6th March year 7 met Roland Chambers, author of the Magicians series.

Student creating ‘trash’ cities in conjunction with Andy Mulligan’s author visit 

On World Book Day on Thursday 7th March, Year 10 and Sixth Form had lectures delivered by Kate Moore, author of the New York Times bestseller The Radium Girls. Kate spoke to students about her narrative non-fiction account of the Radium Girls: the American women from the Roaring Twenties who were poisoned by the radium paint they worked with, and courageously fought for justice. Kate’s lectures resulted in every copy of the The Radium Girls being borrowed from the school library.

Kate Moore reading an extract of her book The Radium Girls to the sixth form

Finally, on Friday 8th March Lindsay Barraclough visited year 7 classes to speak about her historical novel The Mark of Cain. Friday was also the day of our annual staff fancy dress day with teachers competing for the best literary inspired costume. Book themes this year included The Hunger Games in the English department, Lord of the Rings from the science teachers, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the psychology department, The Three Musketeers in the MFL department and 101 Dalmatians from the geography team. Special mention must go to Mr Meighen and Mr Boney for their ‘the one ring’ and Sauron costumes.

Ms Blount marking books in character as Cruella De Vil 

The English department completed the fun-filled week with a Spelling Bee during lunch time on Friday. Students and teachers competed in the interim house competition in the theatre, with Honeyball and Franklin sharing first place. Congratulations to our Honeyball and Franklin spellers!

Our thanks to our librarian Miss King, Miss Kitteringham and the rest of the English department for organising the wonderful KAA Literary Festival and to the donors of the KAA Intrepidus Trust for making this year’s Literary Festival possible.

The English department has the districts in the Hunger Games