Brilliant Books: Brilliant Books...IS BACK!!

Hi everyone, Brilliant Books is back!!

The reluctant readers project started by Empleo (Phil Pidluznyj and me) and working with Seely Primary School in Sherwood, restarted with a bang last Wednesday, hosted by Councillor Jon Collins, Leader of Nottingham City Council.

A new group of sixteen young people have committed eight weeks of their own time to embrace the joy of the written word (when, sometimes, the joy of the joystick calls louder). Councillor Collins talked about his life and history and, in particular, how he ended up in Nottingham "because he thought he would see more snow!"

Follow Jon Collins on Twitter https://twitter.com/cllrjoncollins

Jon Collins Blog: http://www.nottinghamleader.co.uk/

Brilliant Books is kindly funded by the Big Lottery Fund

Books: Jon chose to read from his childhood favourite book, and the kids were enraptured as he read a passage describing the life of a young biplane pilot for the Royal Flying Corps in 1916.

To paraphrase the narrator, offering advice to a new pilot: "if you survive twenty four hours out here, you will be lucky, If you get through your first week, you'll be a veteran"

Even I was enraptured! Then, as usual, the group devoured fruit (too many bananas and not enough apples, Phil! - Ed!) at half time before moving onto the bookwork.

Jon Collins, to everyone's surprise, then offered the kids a trip to Nottingham's magnificent Council House, where they may even get to sit in the august ceremonial throne which overlooks the council chambers.

Then, the kids sat down and came up with their Manifesto for Nottingham some of which we caught on video.

For those of you new to Brilliant Books, one of the major differences between our projects and others is, at the end, the kids, together, produce a book:

The Scribes of Seely - available on Amazon

Last year, the stories were short extracts and an anthology of weekly exercises. this year, we are planning that EACH child writes a short ongoing story, not only in the session, but at home. So this session, I asked the children to go away and come up with a CHARACTER who is going to feature in their story. Together, the book they compile will be known as Scribes of Seely Two.

At the end of the session, the young people took home a book to read for the week. They actually queued up to pick one. I'll take a picture of the selection of books we at Brilliant Books supplied next week.

Next week, Phil takes over, reading from The Silver Sword and the kids will learn about setting and place for their short stories.