This afternoon Bill Church aka The Story Traveller visited Bream library for our Animal Mysteries event.
It was a full house and everyone was glued to what The Story Traveller was saying.
Thank you Bill Church!
Big congrats to our Second ‘Bear’s Reading Adventure’ Completer! Congratulations to our Noah for getting his gold star today!
Well Done Noah!
Calling our Build Club members!
New competition has begun. It’s called ‘Can You Dig it?’
You will be building this monster Excavator – but there is a twist! The parents can help build and by taking out books for themselves they can give their child a bonus point.
Don’t miss out next Thursday, oh and please bring empty ice-cream tubs…
🙂
4.9 Stars out of 5
Bream Reading Club met tonight to review Where’d You Go Bernadette? By Maria Semple.
We all agreed that it is a brilliant book, thought provoking, satirical, profound and very well written. One thing we didn’t like was the cover of the book! It gave the impression that the target audience were those who love ‘chick lit’ or something else a bit trivial – something the book very well is not. We all agreed that we would not have picked it up if given the choice. In this case it was me who took a gamble and reserved the book and thankfully I hit upon a gem.
The book touches on many themes, the main one in our view being destruction and reconstitution. The 20 Mile House was the beginning of the destruction, of a house and a life, and it didn’t end until rebuilding truly began at the end of the book.
We saw the dilapidated state of the house at Straight Gate as a mirror for Bernadette herself. The house was barely liveable, certain areas were completely barricaded off because of being so hazardous and Bernadette’s tactics to get by in the house were the same type of skills she was using to get by in life. Ultimately the house would come down, and so does Bernadette, as only in that way can rebuilding begin.
The relationship between Bernadette and her neighbour Audrey is at once comedic and sad and perhaps even stereotypical of the super involved PTA mum not getting on with parents who are not as involved, no matter what their reasons may be. Audrey’s character is obnoxious at best but she does redeem herself and the reading club imagined that Bernadette and Audrey may get along quite well after the change in both their perspectives.
Coming to the relationship between Bernadette and Elgie (her husband) is a show of how a marriage falls apart when partners do not communicate with each other. Bernadette leans on ‘Manjula’ the virtual assistant to get normal life done and keeps it from Elgie as she knows he will only get mad about it. We found her behaviour to be reasonable considering what she had been through and was still going through. She clearly had depression, anxiety and was hiding away from life in general, especially being in trailer a great deal of the time. The only one who really understood her was Bee her daughter.
A moment in the book that irritated us badly was Elgie giving in and sleeping with this assistant. Yes, he was vulnerable and she was hero worshiping him and almost stalking him, but that is still a poor excuse and we labelled him weak willed. We also thought that perhaps in a small way he was getting back at Bernadette over her lying to him about ‘Manjula’ and exposing their identities and finances to a stranger, who in reality was not a virtual assistant but Russian criminals posing as such.
The most steadfast relationship is between Bernadette and Bee. No matter what happens Bee with her astonishing level of maturity sees things for what they are and she is committed to Bernadette’s cause. She appears to be in denial about her mother’s disappearance but in reality she is the one who knows more than the adults.
The trip to Antarctica is where much of the hurt and miscommunication is finally resolved. Bee asks her father what the difference is between Manjula and Samantha 2 (his huge Microsoft project) which helps him to see that Bernadette’s transgression isn’t as unforgivable as he thinks. During the trip Bee and her father’s relationships is mended, and Elgie himself finally sees hope in finding Bernadette and gives himself completely to it. Bee’s belief is completely vindicated. The happy ending is especially poignant because in Bee’s searching for her mother, Bernadette has had the time to find herself.
Come join us for our Animal Mysteries Event on the 11 August at 2.30 pm – 4.00 pm.
The Story Traveller will be making an appearance! Bill Church will be telling some animal stories.
Bream Community Library is privileged to announce that today in Gloucester we were announced as finalists for the David Vaisey Prize.
For details about this prize please visit:Â http://davidvaiseyprize.co.uk/shortlist-announcement-on-august-1st/
Winning the prize would of course be incredible, but to be shortlisted is such an honour in itself, so much thanks need to be said to everyone involved, all our volunteers and Gloucestershire libraries for their continuous support. A special thanks must be said to our Support Officer who takes care of all the community libraries.
Two volunteers from Bream Library attended the function held at Gloucester Cathedral today. The announcements were made in the reception room called the ‘Laud Room’. It is a room dedicated to the Dean of Gloucester (1616) William Laud DD.
After, there was refreshments and some networking to be done and of course pictures to be taken (as I would need them for this blog post 🙂 )
Come join us on Friday the 4th August for some code breaking fun.
Decoder Wheels and Lego secret codes need to be decoded!
Our first Summer Reading Challenge event is over and what a success it was! We signed up over 30 children this afternoon, which brings our total up to 42!
In signing up  quite a number of them didn’t have library cards (or their parents!) so we got them to register online and then issued their library cards. Special thank you to Coleford and Lydney libraries for completing their registrations. At the end of day, 15 joined the library today.
Big thank you to the Gloucestershire Constabulary for coming through and showing the children loads of different policing equipment and of course the fingerprinting. After that was the animal tracks trail to follow, which spelled out….Animal Agents!
Loads of new books for the Summer Reading Challenge
Crime Scene Investigator on the job!
This policing thing is super series work!
Busy busy busy
Signed up over 30 children today
Animal tracks trail spells out…Animal Agents!
Did you know you can raise free funds for us every time you shop online? Simply shop via @GiveasyouLive and each purchase you make will raise money! https://www.giveasyoulive.com/join/bream-community-library.
