Roald Dahl Funny Prize

Roald Dahl's books are famous enough for him to get an award named after him.
Yes, it's called the Roald Dahl Funny Prize.
And funnily enough, all of the books which are entered have to be funny!
Just like a good Roald Dahl story, these books should have you in stitches.

One of my favourite children's book author/illustrators - Ed Vere - has been nominated with his new book Bedtime for monsters (yay!) Ed has done a few great books now. One of my favourites is about a monkey and a banana - it always makes me smile. And pretty much every student who's seen it seems to like it too! The Getaway is also fun - an interesting take on robbery starring a cheese obsessed mouse.

Marshall Armstrong is new to our school by David Mackintosh is another of this year's nominations. It's a good choice - had me chuckling when I catalogued it. The illustrations and text work together well.

I love that there is an award for funny books. Sometimes it feels we're too serious about books. About life, about everything!
It's great to laugh. It makes you feel better and makes you and other people happy.
And sometimes, it's hard to find a truly funny book. Or for some reason, it's easy to forget the funny ones to focus on the more serious. Which is a shame.

So, why not celebrate new and funny books in the name of a master of children's book hilarity? I'm looking forward to reading all of the nominations!

Artistic license

Tuesday was Roald Dahl day.
Roald Dahl was a man so famous his garden shed will be put in a museum! Creator of masterpieces like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, George's Marvellous Medicine and James and the Giant Peach, Dahl's name means a lot to children (and adults!) all over the world.

When doing a bit of Roald Dahl themed research, I found a mention of how Roald Dahl really disliked the original film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. No, not the Johnny Depp version, the one starring Gene Wilder.

What kind of say do authors get when they sell the movie rights?
It probably all depends on the contract.
It's interesting to think about though - if you were a famous author, would you sell your book, even if it meant you would have no control over what the movie makers did to your story?

The life and times of the Harrow Library...

There are lots of different things that us librarians love. As one of the students pointed out today when we watched the Cookie Monster video - "the library has more than just books. We have other things too! What about DVDs and all that other stuff over there?"

And that's only the physical sources you can see in the Library. We also have some great electronic resources like Tumblebooks, EBSCO and Encyclopaedia Britannica.
You can access these through the library part of the Harrow website.
Just click on Harrow Bangkok, School Life, The Library and choose Electronic Resources.

You will be prompted for a login - if you don't know what it is please ask one of our Library team.

And of course, there's also the internet.
It's a magical place. It can be full of shonky information though. If you're not sure how to search it to find the best results, please let us know. We can help. We're librarians, it's what we do.

You can find so much more information than you could only a few years ago.
It's also good for ridiculous diversions. One of my favourites being LOL cats.
You can also see other LOL animals here.
For those of you who don't know what LOL means (where have you been?!)maybe you could ask the Oxford English Dictionary! (Wow, that's pretty impressive - one little piece of internet slang making it into one of the world's most well known dictionaries!)

One picture book and a box of cookies please!

This is the most awesome video I've seen in ages!
It's Cookie Monster on a trip to his local library.
The library is pretty old school - and the librarian says they only have books. (These days we'd say we only have books, DVDs, CDs, book and CD sets, Kindles, Ipads...) But unfortunately, we still don't have cookies. (In our school library at least!)

Enjoy! :)