“You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, but do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?”
In this year’s Advent Reading Challenge, students are joining Santa and his reindeer on their journey across the globe! Every form has been given a map divided into time zones, each student will then be allocated a temporal location and asked to read a book with a connection to that space.
For -10:00 UTC our fictional travellers might read Life of Pi with its Pacific Ocean setting, while those visiting +1:00 UTC could choose to read a novel by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Individuals are also welcome to fly solo and book suggestions are daily being added to the Library SharePoint to help our readers on their adventures. Plus, there are house points on offer (and, lest we forget, doughnuts).
But, that’s not all!
The Book of the Month for December is Nancy Campbell’s Fifty Words for Snow, which explores the meanings behind the words chosen for the white stuff in fifty tongues. Did you know, for example, that Huka-rere – a compound word for snow in the Māori language – comes from one of the twelve names give to the snow and frost children birthed by Te Iho-rangi, the spirit of rain, and Huru-te-arangi, the spirit of wind in Polynesian mythology?
In response to this book, our Library volunteers have put together a snowy display from scrap paper to celebrate the diversity of languages and we invite every member of our community to come and contribute a snowflake and share their stories about snow. Hopefully, our cabinet will overflow. Discover more below…
Advent Reading Challenge Instructions
Sarah Lawrence, Librarian
