At NHEHS we are passionate about inspiring a love and appreciation of the power of reading in all our students, so the English Department has planned five days of activities for this year’s NHEHS Book Week this week.

The theme of this year’s Book Week is “Books from Our Childhood, or To All the Books I’ve Loved Before.”

A busy week of exciting activities kicked off the Monday morning assembly, including the launch of our Book Amnesty for Havelock Primary School where we are asking girls to donate their favourite childhood books to Havelock’s library this week.

We will be on the lookout all over the school for Wally in the English Reps’ “Where’s Wally?” treasure hunt one lunchtime, while all three school Houses will be putting their creative skills to the test with the “Decorate a door” competition, where three double doors will be transformed into book covers!

Author, illustrator & NHEHS art teacher Ms Plowden will be running an illustration/animation workshop to capture the adventures of a small ball around the art room! A special edition BBC (Breakfast Book Club) will be open to all girls to argue the case for their favourite children’s books, while girls will be testing their knowledge with interactive book quizzes at form time.

Girls have been avidly reading the shortlisted Ealing Teen Read Award books and will meet with the judges from Ealing Library Services to debate and discuss which ones are the winners in NHEHS’ opinion (if they can agree!).

The ground flood atrium is being transformed for the whole week with a display of creative work by all girls in Years 7-9 on the theme of children’s books, including sculptures, paintings, storyboards, musical compositions and posters.

On World Book Day itself, visiting author, Katherine Webber will be speaking at assembly then running workshops with Year 10, followed by an author Q&A.

Some Year 13 girls have written bespoke stories with illustrations for the Reception classes based on their suggestions and ideas and will be visiting Reception on Thursday to read their stories in costume!

World Book Day would not be the same, of course, without a dressing up competition. The whole school will be invited to dress up, with prizes for the winning costumes. All girls taking part will donate to Book Aid International, which promotes reading and funds numerous worthwhile projects across the world.

World Book Day finishes on a high with the Staff v Students Quidditch Match!

To round off our Book Week celebrations, we are delighted to welcome the most recent TS Eliot Poetry Prize Winner, and NHEHS alumna, Dr Hannah Sullivan. Hannah studied at both Cambridge and Harvard, and is currently an associate professor of English at New College, Oxford.  Her poetry collection Three Poems is only the third debut collection to win the TS Eliot Poetry Prize in its history. Students interested in English in Years 11 and above will have the opportunity to meet Hannah for a Q&A on Friday morning, where she will be discussing her career path, love of writing and her creative process.

For updates on our Book Week, please follow us on Twitter, where we will be posting throughout the week!