CBCA Book Week: Symphony of Stories

At my school, the library ran a program of activities for Book Week, featuring competitions with prizes on offer.

Our highlights included:

1. Book, Song or Both - A series of titles was listed, and students had to determine whether each title was a book, a song, or both.
2. Bohemian Rhapsody - Words and phrases from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen were scrambled, and students had to decode them
3. Favourite Book or Reading Confession - 10 teachers provided either their favourite book or their reading confession, and students had to decide for each teacher if they had a favourite book or confession and then matched either the book or confession.
4. She Needs a New Book - Students were invited to nominate a character from any book and recommend a book to feature that character in, providing reasons for their choice.
5. 1 Star Character Review - It gave students a chance to list why any character from any book deserved a one-star rating.
6. What's in her bag? - Students nominate a character of their choice from any book and list five items that you would find in their bag. 

We also had a Book Week quiz, which concluded the week on the Friday. 

While our activities may not be as extravagant as other schools, it does show that you can still put on a good Book Week program of activities for students. Some of our competitions received a good number of entries, and even a few Year 12 students decided to have a go to let off some steam after the HSC Trial Exams. 

Take Home Assessments - NSW HSC

From as early as next term, Year 12 students in New South Wales could be barred from undertaking take-home assessments as part of their Higher School Certificate Studies. The first cohort to be affected would be the Year 12 cohort for 2027.

I can understand the reasoning behind the decision - that students have increasingly outsourced assessment tasks to Artifcial Intelligence (AI) and that as a result, students wont develop skills in knowledge, critical thinking but also the ability to locate, select and communicate information. Ultimately it affects the originality of the work submitted; it is not a true reflection of what the student really knows or can demonstrate.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with an English Teacher last year. They knew the students had used AI to prepare their work but couldnt mark their work down, as they could not prove that the work submitted was not truely a students own work. It was a case of there was "nothing that they could do". 

But a different conversation this week also got me thinking too. If universities are now encouraging or supporting the use of AI (as long as its within appropriate and ethical boundaries), shouldn't students be entitled to the same, not to mention the need to be educated on it?

Schools have also begun implementing their own approaches or strategies to encourage the responsible use of AI in assessment tasks. Some even require students to record when AI was used and how it was used to construct their work as proof of originality. 

There was a teacher at my school last year, who asked her students to assess whether or not an AI generated essay would conform to the marking criteria for a question. The students discovered that AI may look on the surface to provide them the perfect essay, but didn't necessarily answer the question. This is like university students who pay others to prepare an essay but still dont receive full marks because the work didnt answer the question. 

I do think we need to educate our students on responsible use of AI, especially as teacher librarians. AI can help in many ways e.g. helping one to organise information, organise notes, provide scaffolds, proof read written work. Shouldnt we encourage it if it helps us collect information and help us organise it. I think even keeping records of chats etc in a chatbot can help. At the end of the day, one should not rely on a chatbot to do all the writing

Member's Reading Room, Parliament House Brisbane

During the recent school holidays, I went to Brisbane to attend State of Origin III, which New South Wales won convincingly, and to spend some time away from home.

I decided to do a free tour of Parliament House in Brisbane. I had previously done the tour back in 2006, but armed with a better camera, I wanted to capture the building itself. Generally, in these tours, photography is allowed as long as people are not in it.

The tour included a visit to the Members' Reading Room, which acted as the original parliamentary library until 1979, when it was relocated to the Parliamentary Annexe Building.

It is located between the Legislative Assembly and the now non-existent Legislative Council. For Queensland MPs, they can use the reading room to make phone calls and undertake work. The books and resources on the shelves have been digitised.

In preparing this entry, I had no photos of the reading room from the 2006 visit. I cannot recall whether I was shown the room back then.

Below are some photos I took of the reading room. 

Nostalgia and Books

Nostalgia is gaining popularity at the moment as people seek a sense of longing for a past period, place, or experience.

It may be in the music that you listen to, e.g., a preference for pop songs from the 1980s and 1990s.

It may be in having a meal at a place that holds good memories, e.g., the revival of Pizza Hut dine-in stores in the United States, decked out in 1980s decor, or a hotel chain seeking to revive Sizzler Restaurants here in Sydney.

It may be reading a book published during a particular period.

It may be rereading a childhood book favourite of yours, e.g. Harry Potter or The Hunger Games.

For those who love their history, like me, it may be books containing photos of Sydney from decades past, such as Retro Sydney or Australia Remember When? series. 

How can we support it in our school libraries? It got me thinking.

My colleague has for many years supported classic novels and has given its own permanent book display. We have permanent display shelves to promote the classics. Not only do they challenge readers, but they also allow one to truly appreciate literary works over time and the period in which they were written. 

If you want to pick a specific time period, e.g. 1980s - Do a display promoting literary works of the 1980s and/or current novels set in that decade. You might be surprised by how many current novels were set in the recent past. Family of Liars (E. Lockart) was set in 1987.   

I'd also recommend that libraries purchase books such as Retro Sydney or Australia Remember When? . They are good for students to understand what Australian Society was like and how it has evolved over time. Interestingly, some books are spin-offs of social media pages tracing history. The Australia Remember When? series is inspired by the Facebook Group of the same name. 

And finally, my website - Fab Sydney Flashbacks has its place in nostalgia as well. It's a resource in itself with newspaper clippings of how Sydney has evolved since the end of World War II. It focuses on Urban Development, but each week I post an old real estate advertisement that was published in newspapers, giving an insight into how affordable housing was in the past (even if it didn't feel like it because in the old days, it was much harder to get a bank loan and for those who lived in the 1980s, Interest Rates of 17%). 

I even run a Remember This? series twice a year, focusing on old retail advertisements, advertisements for television and radio shows and stations or even events of interest. 

Students doing studies of the urban setting in Sydney for Geography will enjoy learning our recent past, and those with a love for history can enjoy what life was like a generation or two, or even three generations ago. 

The pitch to sell your book

During the School Library Association of NSW (SLANSW) Summit at Abbotsleigh last month, one speaker, Kate Temple (author), outlined obstacles she felt were preventing modern classics from being created.

One of the points raised was that publishers have overwhelmed booksellers with titles they should sell. For example, Kate mentioned that Gleebooks (Glebe) receives visits from 14 sales representatives per month, pitching up to 100 children's books per publisher. 

In this instance, if each of the 14 agents pitches 100 children's books, that would be around 1,400 books per month, or up to 16,800 per year.

Amazing figure?

I can understand how the booksellers feel, because how is one able to fit so many new titles in and amongst the shelves of their store, and amongst existing titles, particularly if floorspace is small or if they want to focus on specialising in the sale of specific books, as a number do, especially independent book stores.

But at the same time, it reminds us that there are, in fact, more people than we think who are actually pursuing writing, whether it may be creative or sharing their knowledge of a topic that is very dear to them. It is a positive for society, and we are in fact richer for it

Consider how many are rejected when they submit a book manuscript, just to be considered for publication. 

Sadly, though, the competition it creates means that few will "make it", particularly given limited shelf space. It's the same with any cultural pursuit, whether it is in music or art. 

Some might say that the push to publish many different titles and to increase turnover in what is stocked is a barrier to books published today becoming classics.

I'll let time be the judge of whether a book is a classic. Did anyone foresee that Harry Potter would become what it is now, a classic, thirty years ago? Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was rejected by 12 publishers and initially had a print run of 500 in 1997. At the time, its publisher, Bloomsbury, was an unknown publisher. It has since sold 600 million copies, and Bloomsbury is a well-known publisher with Harry Potter as its flagship product

I was in Year 8 in 1999, and I first heard of Harry Potter in an English Lesson with my teacher, Mrs Morrissey, who mentioned she had read it and encouraged those in my class to read it. I don't remember any active advertising of it. By 1999, three books in the seven-book series had been published. 

It gained momentum from there, with the first major coverage in the press as I recall for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in 2000. It spawned films, merchandising and even its own series of Lego sets.

The market may be overloaded with books, but there will be ones that stand out and will be passed down to future generations. I come from the generation that grew up with Harry Potter, and I do recommend the books to my Gen Z students. 

And how old was I when I read Harry Potter? 33 . I am not a fan of fantasy books or a fan of magic, but the reality of my work sometimes forces me to leave my reading comfort zone because I do need to be able to recommend books to my students.  I was motivated by the continued appeal, as I saw kids continue to read the series decades later, and by my mid-thirties, I had come to appreciate how significant it had become to my generation growing up, but the writing itself and being able to read a masterpiece. 

SLANSW Summit - May 2026

Back on May 16, I attended a School Library Summit at the senior campus of Abbotsleigh School at Wahroonga.

I have not missed a summit since they began in their current format in 2018, and this one would rate as the best I've attended to date.

The summit was literacy-focused on the theme All the Literacies: Read, Discern, Discover. 

The speakers were excellent and made us reflect on how we promote literature, how we promote a positive reading culture, the benefits of reading (educational and well-being), how we promote deeper reading, and, for me, how can we improve information literacy to help our students counter misinformation. 

For me, the key "take-away" points from the summit were:

• Focus on developing the cultural diversity of my school's picture collection, given the wide range of cultures represented in my school's student population.
• Use picture books to promote intercultural understanding.
• Acquire and promote picture books that promote diversity across society, e.g. disability.
• Experiment with fun and engaging strategies to encourage students to read. Consider running an audit of how reading is encouraged at the school.
• What strategies could I identify to improve information literacy to effectively counter misinformation?
• Poor reading is associated with lower well-being, according to research. The question I need to ask back at school is how I can respond and apply a research model focused on six strategies to support reading engagement.
• Books of nostalgic appeal are gaining popularity. We have a classics display stand (permanent display) with a selection of classic novels. How can we enhance the appeal of classics, or even popular reads from certain periods, e.g. Millennials or Generation X?