Authors Electric

The Summer Reading Challenge, set up by the Reading Agency, has been running annually in UK libraries for over twenty years since 1999. Its purpose is to encourage primary school children to read 6 books throughout the summer holiday. For their efforts each child is rewarded with such delights as stickers and bookmarks. Finally, if the challenge is completed, they receive the ultimate prize of a medal and a certificate. This summer there is a sporty theme with the title Ready, Set, Read! Co-incidentally I found some medals in the draw recently for the Reading Planet. Reading Maze and Reading Rollercoaster. These are some of the earliest medals given out in 2002-2004 when my children were just beginning their own independent reading journeys. Visiting the library with my small children was such a delight, even when our home was already full of other books to read. The library had a copy of Chicken Licken which we didn’t have, it was probably the most frequently borrowed book for a tim...

 Scotland's top-knot When this blog appears I shall be nowhere near any electrical device capable of displaying it. I shall be right up in Scotland’s top-knot and while I’m up there, intend to visit Morag. She’s Nessie’s little known sister, who keeps herself to herself in Britain’s deepest stretch of inland water, Loch Morar. The most reported sighting of her was in 1969 when two local men ran into her, literally, while messing about in a boat. One of them hit her with an oar and the other fired his rifle at her— whereupon Morag sank beneath the water and I’m not surprised . The men described her as being brown with rough skin, nine meters (thirty feet) long and having three dorsal humps. They said her head was thirty centimetres (a foot) wide and she held it forty-six centimetres (18 inches) out of the water— until they so rudely interrupted her. The most recent sighting of Morag was in 2013, by two holiday-makers, who claimed to have seen her three times in two days. If...