Journey to the river sea

Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson

It is 1910 and Maia, tragically orphaned at 13, has been sent from England to start a new life with distant relatives in Manaus, hundreds of miles up the Amazon. She is accompanied by an eccentric and mysterious governess who has secret reasons of her own for making the journey. Both soon discover an exotic world bursting with new experiences in this highly colourful, joyous and award-winning adventure.

Maia is sent to live with relations in a town on the Amazon in Brazil. Nothing turns out as she had expected and she has a pretty miserable time until she makes friends with Finn who lives in the jungle near her house and Clovis a child who works in an  acting company on tour in Brazil
This was the last book we read before the Summer holidays, I love this book as it has lots of twists and turns, the characters are interesting and it's a really great story. It wasn't everyone's  favourite as it is quite long and there is a lot going on in the plot. Some people found it a bit confusing to keep track of everything that is happening. Some of our group would recommend it though.

As this was our last meeting before the summer we had a vote to see what our most popular books during the year were. Our top three reads were:

1st "Beyond the Cherry Tree" by Joe O'Brien

2nd "There’s a boy in the Girls Bathroom" by Louis Sacar

3rd "The Firework Maker's Daughter" by Phillip Pullman

Everyone loved Joe O' Brien's book "Beyond the Cherry Tree" We were lucky enough to have a visit from Joe for one of our meetings where we got to quiz him on the characters and story. Louis Sacar and Philip Pullman were close and highly recommended as well

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone by J.K Rowling

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harry's eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

Just wondering if anyone has tried the Harry Potter Books? Would really recommend them, I think some of our book club members would love them if they haven't read them already. We  had a really fun time here in the library at platform 9 and three quarters for #HarryPotterBookNight ! on February the 5th and got  lots of brand new copies of the Harry Potter Series for the event. The events were open to anyone who wanted to book in but I  thought our book club might like to hear about it : )

 
 
 
To start off with we had a Harry Potter story time with Helen & Mark from "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" which lots of kids came to and some even dresses up as witches and wizards!

Afterwards we had a spell book & Potion making class with Professor Sarah where everyone designed their own spell books and made magic potions





Then we had a sorting ceremony where everyone put on the sorting hat and were sorted into their houses-Griffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin and Raven Claw, each Hogwarts student got a sticker with their house on it


Once the sorting hat had finished we started our
quiz with teams from the
different Hogwarts houses Our questions were pretty hard but everyone must have been reading up on Hogwarts as the houses got so many of the questions right . The quiz scores were really high but in the end there was a winning team, can anyone guess who won? !

Don't forget our next book club meeting is tomorrow Thursday the 25th of Feb at 3.30pm here in Ballyroan Library, we are reading "The Firework maker's daughter" by Phillip Pullman,  hope to see you there!