World Book Day Quizzes: the final rounds ...

 Thanks very much to all of you who had a stab at Mr Green's anagrams yesterday: we'll be revealing the answers in a moment ...

But first, it's the final day of quizzes, and today, there are TWO rounds. It's International Women's Day on Saturday, so to celebrate this, Round 6 - see here - brings you ten questions about women writers.  

And our final round is Mr Gardner's annual, fiendish cryptic crossword: be afraid - be very afraid ... 

He's asked us to publish a disclaimer, because this one is really difficult.  But perhaps he's under-estimating you - see if you can prove him wrong? Here's the grid: and you can find the clues here - good luck!

A quick reminder that it's also the final day to enter the Kayton Library's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?' quiz, and win those fabulous Nando's vouchers. Visit the table outside the library, if you haven't already done so, to see if you can identify all the literary guests, or hop back to yesterday's post here and look at the photos. 

Meanwhile, those anagrams. We have to be honest: many of you were clearly baffled.  But come on - Mr Green helped you out with the publication dates, plus occasional clues in the anagrams themselves: so they weren't entirely impossible. Just challenging. Seriously challenging.  And here are the answers.

IWD and World Book Day Quiz

There's a lot to celebrate this week. It's International Women's Day on Friday - 

and there are loads of fantastic events taking place, including today's Classics Society presentation on Female Writers in Antiquity (it's not just Sappho, you know), Wednesday's Senior English Society meeting, with Miss Trepanier discussing feminism and narrative form, and Thursday's Sci-Fi/Filmsoc mashup, on women film directors to watch. You can find out more about all the events taking place here.  And as if that wasn't enough excitement for one week, Thursday is World Book Day!!!

This year's festival of all things book-related includes the Kayton Library's second 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' quiz (you can find out more about last year's here). The library also asked teachers some book-themed questions - including 'which book would you save from a burning building?', 'which book influenced you as a child?', 'which book did you throw across the room?' and 'which book have you always wanted to read?' Watch out for the posters based on people's answers: they'll be popping up all over the school.

 
Here on the book blog, we're running a week of 'match the teacher to the shelfie' quizzes.  What is a 'shelfie'? we hear you cry. Well, this photo can probably help you figure it out:

Every day, we'll be posting some shelfies and challenging YOU, the Pauline reader, to work out which bookshelf belongs to which teacher.  Today, Maths, Geography and History go head to head: Miss French, Mr Allon, Mr Isaac, Mr Poyner, Mr Fagan and Miss Milanova have bravely sent in their shelfies.

So, click here to try today's quiz: on whose bookshelves do George Orwell and Pat Barker stand side by side? Where does Alex Bellos hang out with Laura Bates? Ben Stokes and Robert Webb jostle with nineteenth century explorer Richard Burton? Who delivered our first ever digital shelfie? And who hasn't taken their Christmas decorations down yet???

Answers will be revealed tomorrow ... !

International Women's Day

It's International Women's Day on Wednesday, so today's 'Book of the Week' post features recommendations of books in relation to this year's theme, #EmbraceEquity, and to women's writing and writers in general.

Top Girls by Caryl Churchill
Recommended by Mr Dormandy

Sarah Lam, Lesley Sharpe, Lesley Manville and Deborah Findlay in the Royal Court's 1991 revival of Top Girls 

The best known and most influential play by England's greatest living playwright (sorry Tom Stoppard!), Top Girls is at once a theatrical and human delight - rich, layered characters; effortlessly natural dialogue; exhilaratingly unpredictable tone - an endlessly intriguing exploration of female experience and gender politics, responding to the complex challenges posed to feminists by Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, and an epoch-making series of experiments in dramatic form.  Its influence, especially on contemporary European dramatic writing, is hard to overstate.  An all-male school version of this all-female play would be a blast!

Books of the Week: #BreakTheBias

Next Tuesday 8th March is International Women's Day, which is the centrepoint for a two week programme of talks, events and lectures at SPS, all linked to this year's theme #BreakTheBias. 

So this week and next week, we're dedicating our Tuesday Book of the Week post to women writers and their work. Today, Mrs Cummings explores how you can use your reading choices to Break The Bias and try something new, Mr Harris shares his enthusiasm for the work of Virginia Woolf and Dr Cocks recommends two novels by contemporary women writers.