Creepy House

Apologies for our extended silence, some of us have been on holiday and with the excitement of the St Magnus Festival, June just flew by.

Here we are in July and the start of the school summer holidays can only mean one thing - the start of the  library Summer Reading Challenge 2013.

This year young readers are invited to join a gang of explorers as they discover the secrets of the Creepy House - collecting stickers as they read books from the library and adding them to their own special Creepy House fold-out poster. 

There are three floors of the house to explore and for every two books read there are stickers to complete one of the three stages:

Stage 1: The Awful Upstairs, 

Stage 2: The Gruesome Ground Floor 

Stage 3: The Spine-tingling Cellar. 

Read six books over the summer to collect all the stickers and complete all three levels -  you'll also get a certificate at the closing event in Kirkwall Library on Saturday 17th August. 

The stickers have special codes which will unlock extra features on the Creepy House website www.creepy-house.org.uk  . On the website you can share your favourite books, send messages, meet some famous authors, and even enter a competition to complete a short story started by a famous author  and win fabulous prizes.

Are you brave enough to enter the Creepy House? Beware -  those stinky stickers really are smelly!*

* No really, they are. We have to store them in a special sealed box and wear hazmat suits to handle them**

** Okay we may be exaggerating a bit -  but they are really pongy

Roll up, roll up, the circus is in town!

So the summer holidays are here at last, hopefully to be accompanied by the summer weather we have all been patiently waiting for!

For our younger readers the start of the summer holidays also means the start of this year's library Summer Reading Challenge and this year we are off to the circus with Circus Stars.

The challenge is to read six books during the holidays.  For each two books you read there is a set of stickers to collect which you can use to decorate your very own circus stage and help the Circus Stars to progress  through Practice and Rehearsal to their ultimate goal – Showtime!

Visit the Circus Stars website at www.circus-stars.org.uk to join in the fun with games and activities. Register with the site and create your own avatar, keep track of the books you are reading and share your thoughts about them with other Circus Stars, you may even meet some famous authors.

So come along to the library and pick up your Circus Stars joining card and stage set,  get practicing those circus skills - and enjoy reading some great books this summer.

We're all going on a (Reading Group) summer holiday .....

We hope you've all been enjoying the lovely weather Orkney has been experiencing recently - okay we know it's raining today but maybe it's just a shower?! After spending a fine spring evening engaged in a lively discussion of The Junior Officers' Reading Club  the Stromness Library Reading Group has decided to avoid the dilemma of choosing to spend further precious sunny evenings in the library by taking an extended summer break.

Therefore there will be no Reading Group meetings during May, June or July - our next meeting will be Wednesday 31st August at 7pm when we will be discussing The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

In the meantime let's hope we have many more long summer evenings of reading in the sun to look forward to!