Promoting 'Wonder' as Island's Brilliant Book

The Book called "The Whale Rider' is the current book on the Year 9 reading list. They have to read the book over the summer holidays and come back to school having read to be prepared to evaluate and write an empathic response to it. However, as long as it has been in the school's curriculum there have been many negative responses to it as many people didn't really enjoy reading it. I personally didn't enjoy it that much because the plot and story-line wasn't interesting and was really boring. Although the Whale Rider had many themes involved in which made it easy to write about when the time came to write your empathic pieces. Because so many people hate the book, the Elements course "Brilliant Books' has chosen a new book to be Island's Brilliant Book and to replace the Whale Rider. Here are some suggestions on how to promote the book and to let people know about it:

• Letter
• Powerpoint and presentation
• Pecha Kucha
• Video
• Book trailer
• Poster
• Ad Campaign 
• Display for the library
• Draw my life
• Speech
• Press release
• Dramatisation

The best idea to promote the book around Island School is probably to have a speech about it in assembly to get people to know about it and start reading it. This is because people usually do things when it is recommended or when they get views from other people about it. People normally ignore the posters that are put up around the school because they have a right to just walk past it and get on with their day. However, when it is told to them everybody knows about it. 

Thinking Hats

Comparing and Contrasting between Wonder and The Whale Rider:

Red Hat (feelings) - How do we feel about the books?	Both books give a warm feeling of family. Wonder gives you more sympathy and teaches you different morals- “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover- Don’t judge a boy by his face.” This book also can show to younger readers that everyone is different in their own way, and we should accept it and not judge by the looks but who they truly are inside. We enjoyed this book and we feel others will too
Blue hat (thinking)	Wonder applies to all students as some of them might be bullies themselves. It doesn’t just focus on one type of audience, but all types of readers. Wonder also provides opinions and points of views of the topic from all of the characters-not just one character.
Yellow hat (Strengths)	Wonder has some special characteristics in terms of literature i.e. different character viewpoints, jumping from different times etc. Appropriate for all ages, generally family-friendly
Black hat (weaknesses)	Wonder has relatively less themes to study. Also, for the empathic piece, students don’t get many choices to write in a character’s voice as it has already been written in the book. It is therefore, difficult to chosel The book is also quite long so it may be hard to choose specific parts to study.
White hat (facts)	Wonder is a children’s novel. It is on a very serious topic that shouldn’t be made fun of.
Green hat (Creativity)	If Wonder is not chosen, we can study alternative books instead that have similar themes eg. themes of bullying, family, friends,