World Book Day

EHS Celebrate World Book Day

Eltham Hill School had an exciting week celebrating the pleasure of reading and marking the 27^th World Book Day on Thursday 7^th March. In true Eltham Hill style, students and staff across all key stages threw themselves into a wide variety of competitions and fabulous events organised by the English Faculty and Library. World Book Day is a charitable organisation and UENSCO recognised international celebration with a clear mission; to ensure every child in the UK has access to a book and the promotion of reading.

The celebrations began with a series of assemblies, promoting the impressive and rich literary heritage of the school. Bernardine Evaristo’s visit to Eltham Hill in 2021 was remembered fondly as well as recent successes in local and national competitions including the Greenwich Literary Quiz and the beautiful poetry competition entries.

On Wednesday 28^th February our first guest speaker, Efua Traore, author of “One Chance Dance” presented to our Year 7 and 8 students. Efua, a Nigerian-German author, spoke to our very enthusiastic Book Club attendees and inspired them to continue reading and writing for pleasure. On Wednesday 6^th March Jodie Garnish, author of “The Spectaculars” presented to an excited Year 7 audience whilst some luck Year 7s also had the opportunity to attend a workshop with the current Children’s Poet Laureate Joseph Coelho.

A real highlight was the fantastic visit from Shani Akilah, who grew up locally, and will soon be publishing “For Such a Time as This”. Her brilliant talk with both Year 8 and 9 students, traced her journey to becoming a fully fledged, successful author and what inspired her growing up in Eltham.

Later in the week, we officially celebrated World Book Day with a staff and student costume competition and there were some impressive entries. Highlights included characters such as the Inspector from ‘An Inspector Calls’, Cinderella’s slipper and the whole cast of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Staff equally jumped into character with Ms Ward as Narnia’s The White Witch winning first place. Students also heard ‘A Story in a Day’ across all of their lessons and enjoyed ‘The Invention of Peanut Butter’ by Matt Haig.  

We also had a series of competitions where EHS students really stepped up to the challenge. Across the school, form groups transformed their classroom doors into an array of magical and fantastical book covers. The effort was superb and clearly reflected a real love of reading from a young age. Well done to 7L’s lovely ‘Winnie the Pooh’ entry, 7A 3D ‘Jaws’ entry and the very clever ‘Harry Potter’ Dumble-Door entry! The Recreate a Book Cover Competition was also a real hit. Students got creative and demonstrated their artistic skills. Congratulations to Summer Ricketts in 7E for her imaginative recreation of Malorie Blackman’s ‘Whizziwig’ cover, Laila Owusu-Ansh in 8M with her real-life recreation of ‘Tortoise Trouble’ by Joan Lingard, Iris Hind in 9S and her wonderful take on ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ by Suzanne Collins. Joint winners Jessica Atori 10A with “Born Free’ by Joy Adamson and Kelly Mead 10E with ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ were also creatively executed, alongside Hadya Amiri’s 11H recreation of ‘Children of the Quicksand’.

Finally, we ended the celebrations on a wonderful note with a visit from acclaimed writer of the New York Times bestseller ‘Ace of Spades’ Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé. Year 10 students enjoyed a student led interview exploring Faridah’s inspirations and influences throughout her writing career.

Students, inspired by the week’s events, can follow up by entering the Greenwich 500 Word Competition and by using our recommended reading lists from staff and students. The passion and excitement seen around Eltham Hill School for books and reading this week has been fantastic to see.