HSOG celebrates the power of reading with in-house book festival BookFest

BookFest, our Senior School’s very own in-house book festival, returned for 2024 in October with staff and pupils from across the school getting involved to celebrate reading in all its forms. BookFest is an important week in our calendar allowing us to highlight the importance of our School’s thriving reading culture and put a spotlight on the huge range of benefits that reading for pleasure has - from academic success to health and wellbeing. Hear from Senior School Librarian, Dr Graham Fairweather, who reports on this jam-packed week...!

BookFest began with an assembly from me about the power of reading and storytelling. As well as talking about my love of reading, I shared an experience of meeting sporting legend-turned-author, Fatima Whitbread, whose upcoming picture book for children reflects on her own childhood experiences. Fatima’s story is deeply moving and has inspired her UK campaign to improve the care system and I spoke about learning from Fatima why she opted to use the power of books to help realise her vision.

Across BookFest week, our pupils were lucky enough to meet a selection of authors and experience a range of inspiring talks, workshops and masterclasses. They also had the opportunity to get their books signed by our visiting authors and to ask them many questions about their work.
 

Alastair Chisholm

Our Transitus and S1 students received an interactive author session from award-winning Edinburgh writer, Alastair Chisholm. As well as introducing his books I Am Wolf and Reek, he also shared his passion for all things Sci-Fi and spoke about how his cat helps (and sometimes hinders) his writing process. He spoke about using empathy as a superpower, building that superpower through reading, and had pupils considering the human race from the perspective of an outsider.
 

Manjeet Mann

Manjeet Mann is an author, poet, screenwriter, playwright and actor. She has published two novels to huge acclaim, winning the Carnegie Shadowers’ Award and the UKLA Book Award for Run, Rebel and then the Costa Book Award for Children for The Crossing. With The Crossing being included in our School’s Rights Respecting Reads challenge, it was wonderful for our S2 and S3 year groups to get to hear all about the inspiration behind the book and the research that went into ensuring its authenticity.

Manjeet is a superstar in the young adult literature world – particularly when it comes to writing verse novels – and pupils were very excited to get to meet her in person. She also left us all in awe as she detailed her work with her non-profit organisation Run The World - an organisation that works with women and girls from marginalised backgrounds and helps to empower them through sport and storytelling.

Margaret McDonald

Margaret McDonald, the debut author of Glasgow Boys (a book taking the Scottish literary scene by storm) sat down for an in conversation series with me delivered to S4

and S5 audiences. We spoke about the inspiration behind the book, the process of bringing the characters to life, and the challenges of publication. Pupils also asked questions in each session with some budding young writers enquiring about the publishing industry and how to keep writing on those days when the words won’t come. Margaret left the whole room inspired and stayed afterwards to answer more questions, sign books, and even sat down for an interview with several pupils for an upcoming HSOG Library newsletter.

Rossie Stone

Rossie Stone (class of 2010), former pupil and founder of Dekko Comics, hosted a series of workshops for all year groups (and one for parents too) in collaboration with the Support for Learning team. Here, he introduced an innovative revision technique he’s developed to support neurodivergent learners.

Dekko Comics grew from a technique Rossie first devised while still a pupil at school. He found his dyslexia meant he needed to approach revision differently and so he set to turning wordy information into entertainment in the form of comics, something he loved. By turning learning into something he enjoyed doing and playing to his strengths of drawing comic book figures and creating comic book narratives, he was able to provide a context for learning that he was more likely to remember. He achieved his first academic A grade as a result of employing this technique.

Fast forward to 2016, and Rossie founded Dekko Comics, building it upon the premise of making learning fun and accessible for all. This way of revising works for all learners, but the technique has been purpose-built to support those with dyslexia, autism and ADHD, to overcome motivational barriers in education. Pupils got to try out this technique with Rossie on hand to give them a steer, allowing them to see the benefits of turning words and information into something more visual, engaging and memorable.
 

Lunchtime Library Sessions

Keen readers and writers in the School were also treated to a host of lunchtime events and workshops hosted in the School Library through the week. These included a creative writing workshop with Manjeet Mann, a poetry masterclass with Head of English, Mr Muir, and a crime writing event with the High School’s very own answer to Ian Rankin – Drama Teacher Mr Deans – who writes crime novels in a partnership under the pen name CC Gilmartin. Lastly, no BookFest would be complete without an extra-special ‘Books and Biscuits’ club to round off the week, where pupil’s book knowledge was put to the test in a special book-themed quiz.

We are already looking forward to next year’s BookFest as we continue to grow and expand this HSOG book festival in line with demand from pupils!

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All gallery of images taken on the day by photographer Martin Shields can be viewed below.