secondary school library
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Rethinking Learning Spaces
Source: Rethinking Learning Spaces A trait that I admire above all things is someone who is a creative risk-taker. When Mark Carbone reached out and asked me to talk live about my experience with redesigning learning spaces, my introvert hesitated for about 15 nanoseconds, before I responded “yes!”! Mark and Jamie and I come from…
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The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins My rating: 5 of 5 stars An instant classic, The Girl on the Train is delicious from start to finish. With multiple narrators involved in the same crime, readers are sure to enjoy the twists and turns of reliability and complete dysfuntion that each voice brings to…
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Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman My rating: 4 of 5 stars Rachel Hartman takes us further down the rabbit hole in Shadow Scale as the political game between humans, dragons and the world in between. Our deeply mysterious protagonist, Seraphina, gets caught up in the brewing wars and must learn to master her own telepathic…
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A Game for Swallows and I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached
A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to Return by Zeina Abirached My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is such an important book because the voice of young Zeina is so authentic. She doesn’t know that life inside Beirut in the 1980s is unusual as it is as it has always been. The…
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Saga by Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples
Saga, Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan My rating: 4 of 5 stars I find it amazing how quickly Brian Vaughan’s characters can be developed in this short graphic novel. As usual, Vaughan’s visual aesthetic does not disappoint. However because there are about 4 pages of nudity and sexuality that are outside the limitations of…
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Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith My rating: 3 of 5 stars Andrew Smith ‘s book Grasshopper Jungle came highly recommended to me as a secondary school teacher-librarian as something that would connect with those elusive, hard-to-read teens. Scientifically it checks a number of those ‘should-I-buy-it’ boxes: involves issues of gender-identity, bullying, marginalized characters, and it’s…
threadbare beauty 