Friends of Batley Library

Time stood still in Batley Library. The Hatter had nodded off with the Dormouse at his tea party while the March Hare was away doing ‘harey things’ in the woods. Alice was nowhere to be found, but the tea party was rudely invaded by a variety of costume festooned characters. Children and adults alike were encouraged, nay forced, to chemically conjugate a cup of green tea for the Hatter to bring him round from his sleep for the quest to begin. The Hatter was woken not once, not twice, not even thrice, but fourice times from his slumber by groups of potential escapees, all of whom had entered the library with the sole intention of getting back out as quickly as their powers of riddle and puzzle solving would allow them. ‘NO ROOM! MOVE!’ cried the Hatter, and the game began.

‘SPARKLE!’ Shouted the Hatter and many did, though sadly, not all. With a forty-minute time limit to solve the six Wonderland challenges, time was short and so was the Hatter’s temper. A quest began to find number, word and directional lock combinations, collecting red rose clues as they went. The groups encountered the invisible and the visibly reversed. “Curiouser and curiouser,” a trick of the looking glass, nothing was as it first seemed. With time and the groups’ credibility running out like an hour glass with an enema, the pressure was palpable. Beads of sweat were forming on the Hatter’s forehead as the obvious was ignored in favour of the unfathomably wrong! With the mercury streaming through his grey matter, the Hatter was relieved and a little saddened by the ultimate success of every group, with the fastest group coming in two minutes under time and the slowest group coming in 25 seconds under time. No one was ultimately locked in the Library for the rest of Halloween, and all participants had a lovely tea party of their own in the basement with tea, beverages, jam sandwiches, an assortment of fancy cakes and jam tarts.

‘BRING ON THE NEXT CANDIDATES. I WANT MORE!’ exclaimedthe Hatter.  So watch this space!

The Mad Hatter

The Mad Hatter

« ‹ 1 of 13 › »

The Harry Potter night organised by The Friends of Batley library on the 23rd October was a great success. Over 50 children & adults attended the event in fancy dress. It started with a sorting ceremony where the children were put in to Hogwarts houses then everyone took part in various activities including a potions class, crafts and meeting real owls. The library had it’s own version of Diagon alley where you could visit Gringotts Bank, Ollivanders and Flourish & Blotts.

« ‹ 1 of 3 › »

This summer we have been encouraging children to take part in the Reading Agency’s Summer Reading Challenge. This year the theme was ‘Animal Agents’ and to celebrate we hosted a selection of our furry friends at the library!

There is still time to get involved before the summer holidays end, so if you’d like to take part all you need to do is return two books to the library and ask to join the Summer Reading Challenge. Finish six books and you will win a medal and a certificate!