“Chinese Cinderella” by Adeline Yen Mah, is a book you must read! You may shed a few tears but it is worth it. We studied this amazing book in our first term of English.  I would definitely recommend this book to all girls. 

This book is an autobiography by Adeline Yen Mah; it tells us about her cruel childhood as the fifth child of the family. Her life started in the1940s . She was considered very unlucky by her father, stepmother and siblings as her mother died after she was born. Adeline says “My mamma would have been alive, if I was not born”. The book outlines Adeline’s struggle to find a place where she feels she belongs. She finds some comfort in relationships with her grandfather Ye Ye, and her Aunt Baba but they are eventually taken from her.

She does well at school, achieving various medals and throughout her studies she strives to attend a university in London but her family, especially her father, do not encourage, congratulate or help her in any way. Instead of being proud of Adeline they are ashamed of her.  

This book carried a powerful message.  During our childhood we should enjoy being young and have lots of fun. I believe no one should suffer like Adeline did. We should be able to take advantage of our childhood.

By Serena Hundle 3S

Over the next 2 weeks 3K will be holding a Car Wash/ Cake Sale. As from Monday 8^th March, we will be getting our hands dirty at lunch-times to wash all of KEHS staff cars. In addition to this, we will be convening a BRILLIANT cake sale!

The car wash will cost £3 per car; the cakes available during the car wash will cost £2 per cake. Don’t worry… You will be getting a real bargain. The cakes we sell, you will be able to share with your family as they are quite large.

There is also an offer available if you want both things. The car wash + one cake will cost a total of £4. If you came to our smash-hit ‘Fireworks’ themed cake sale last year, you will realise that our standards are quite high, and you will not be disappointed. So if you don’t want to miss an AMAZING Car Wash/ Cake Sale come to us in the next 2 weeks… Everyone’s going to be there!

Posted by Shruthi Rayen

5^th of February was 3H’s very first cake sale. We raised £91.60 for our chosen charity, Marie Curie Hospices, and it was a great success! We sold cakes, as well as sweets and cookies! We had everything from huge chocolate cakes to tiny little mini muffins. Of course, most of the sweets had already been sold within the first 10 minutes. At the end, there was just the one strawberry tart left over- but then someone came and bought it! I hope everyone enjoyed it, and please come to our next cake sale on the 5^th of March!

Come to the Dance Production! It will be brilliant. The dance group have been working very hard to produce hopefully three wonderful and exciting evenings. The tickets are going ever so quickly, but don’t worry! There are still some tickets. However, if you don’t hurry the last few tickets will vanish just as fast as the first ones!

See you there!

Mrs Moloney has kindly given each of the classes an old book to look after for the week. All the classes are trying to produce an exciting week for their book. All of 3H have been taking it in turns to look after the book and have been taking pictures of the book doing interesting things. At the end of the week the class who has the most interesting week for their book will win a prize. I think this is a good idea to get involved in World Book Day and a chance to remember some classic stories.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. (Thomas Carlyle)

Well the books have been released and now we wait for news of the exciting times they will be having!

 My form, 3S, have already planned some exciting activities for their book, Alice Through the Looking Glass, including taking it to a comfy leather chair in the library to be read lovingly and a Mad Hatters’ tea party on Thursday!

In U4B’s English lesson we discovered that their book of fairytales was as old as me, but certainly much better preserved! Each girl in U4B plans to read one of the twenty four tales contained within.

Please  get blogging about how your form’s book is being treated.

I started half term with a list of books I wanted to read, all of which I had been looking forward to for weeks.  I finished the first one – Eric Hobsbawn ‘The Age of Capital’ which is a really good interpretation of what happened in this country in the middle of the nineteenth century and then I went to London for a few days to see some friends.

We went to the National Portrait Gallery and there I found a book that simply had to take precedence over the others on my list.  It’s called ‘Brilliant Women’, written jointly by Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Peltz and is a fascinating account of the group of women in eighteenth century England often called Bluestockings.  The book looks at how the term Bluestocking was used, first as a term of approbation and then as a term of almost abuse.  It records through their writing and most interestingly through their portraits (Lucy Peltz is the Eighteenth Century curator at the National Portrait Gallery) how the women were seen in their time and how they wanted to be seen.  Here was a group of women who were highly regarded in academic, creative and literary circles both in England and Europe and yet have been more or less forgotten.  The book looks at why women have been ‘hidden by history’.  Thoroughly recommended!!

Didn’t the first part of our Redress, Remake, Remodel campaign go well?!  It was wonderful to see so many of you in the Hall promoting our clothes recycling initiative.  I was very impressed with all the hard work the Sixth Form had put into making such a professional job of proceedings.  The tea and cup cakes were a perfect touch.

I know this is just the first stage.  I’m very much looking forward to hearing from Miss Proops how to re-create clothes and put together different pieces.

All the economic news sounds rather grim for the immediate future so it’s good to think KEHS girls are going to be well prepared and making the most of everything they can.  I think our Recycle, Remake, Remodel could be an example that we could share widely.

Horse riding lessons are going reasonably well!!! Having had some Saturdays out of the saddle because of the frosty weather, I am now on my own. The lead rope has gone and I am in control of a huge horse with all the potential to take me anywhere she fancies. She, being Sasha.  Yes, a different horse, more obedient and gentler. Until 2 weeks ago I felt I was in control although Sasha knows the ropes and follows behind the lead horse until it’s our turn to trot. At this point I committed the ultimate horse riding sin. With the immortal words “Shorten the reins” ringing in my ears Sasha took off around the arena doing her own thing with me trying to shorten the reins and steer her around the corners. I achieved neither and so tried to bring her to a halt. In my panic the reins were going up instead of back so she only stopped when Kerry (riding instructor) stood in front of her. That shook my confidence and I nearly gave up, but I am not one to give up when ‘the going gets tough’ so off we went again with short reins and me more in control.

I felt quite confident when I got to the stables last Saturday. The sun was shining and I was determined to do all the right things this week. Unfortunately Sasha had other ideas. No matter how short the reins where, how much I pulled left or right, she did her own thing. Kerry said I needed to relax as Sasha picks up the vibes of me being tense and she was taking care of me. I was reassured by that, but I still need to feel that I am controlling her and not the other way round.  Never mind, I won’t give up and in the end I will win. Maybe a carrot bribe might help. Bring on next Saturday!!

I really enjoyed our two assemblies last week, one taken by Miss O’Hare and one by Mr Duncombe.

I remember Miss O’Hare when she was here at school and it was lovely to listen to her memories of school days.  I’m delighted she is going to be a teacher.  Very few girls seem to want to teach when they leave school – I wonder why?? – but it seems as though when they have been away from schools for a bit, quite a number do decide it might be just the career for them.  I am always so pleased when this happens because not only do I think teaching is the most satisfying career in the world but I think KEHS girls will make wonderful teachers because they have the example of their own fantastic teachers to look back on!

Mr Duncombe decided that as he was new to KEHS, an assembly would be an excellent means of introducing himself to us all.  And what better way to tell us about his life than to produce his totally captivating one year old daughter, Francesca.  We learnt that charming though she was, she and her elder brother were keeping their father awake at nights, preventing him playing and watching sport, limiting his social life and outings dramatically and that the two of them meant life was no longer the carefree romp it once was!  When confronted with the devastation she can create, Francesca seemed unrepentant and far more interested in trying to catch hold of the microphone and wave at her large audience than indicating that she intended to make less demands on her poor father!  But this was not a talk to put girls off ever having children, because Mr Duncombe reassured us that choosing to have a family was the best choice he had ever made.

Both Miss O’Hare and Mr Duncombe were talking about what KEHS stands for.  Miss O’Hare said that it was community service and fundraising events that had stayed most in her and her friends’ minds, a stress on the importance of relationships build on care for other people and Mr Duncombe reminded us that school is about qualities and states of mind-serenity, wisdom and courage; qualities that will stay with us forever and help with the big decisions in life.