Kia ora tātou, and welcome to Term 4 at Cashmere High Library: Te Whare Mātauranga. 

2024 has been a fast gallop so far, and no one is feeling it more than our Y13 students. It is both heart-wrenching and exhilarating for us to see them spread their collective wings and fly out into the world to begin their futures, whatever form they may take. I hope they take with them warm memories of the staff, students and friends they made here, and I will miss my amazing Y13 Student Librarians tremendously.

The thing that keeps all of us going is the passion we have for our job and the knowledge that there are some pretty terrific students waiting in the wings to assume the mantle of leadership in our team. We look forward to the Y12s marking their mark in 2025!

Speaking of incredible students, I’m delighted to let you all know that we are once again the National Y9 Readers’ Cup champions! Our team led throughout the National finals in Auckland in the last week of Term 3. A huge amount of work went into raising the thousands of dollars required for us to attend the competition, and we were blown away by not only our sponsors’ generosity, but the generosity of our whanau community as well. A huge shout out to our major supporters: Fresh Choice Barrington for gifting us $500 towards our total, to Hell Pizza Sydenham for supplying 25 large pizzas free-of-charge to support our fundraising quiz night, and House of Travel Barrington for the $200 travel voucher and assorted travel related gifts for our raffle!! Thanks also goes to Piccadilly Books, Paper Plus (Barrington and Hornby), Whitcoulls, Sal’s Pizza, Barrington UniChem Pharmacy, Scorpio Books and Brumby’s, to name a few, who helped us out with our raffle.

Extra special thanks go to our fabulous Trainers/Fundraising Team Y10s Lucy M. Moore and Lucy Phillips. Lucy M. and Lucy P. will also be part of the team members from our Y10 cohort to defend our National Championship Battle of the Bibliophiles win from last year early in Term 4.

Wishing our seniors best of luck in their exams this term, and roll on our Summer Reading programme in Term 4!

Nāku, nā

Saskia Hill (CHS Library Manager) hls@cashmere.school.nz

Dylan Walker (CHS Library Assistant) wad@cashmere.school.nz

Asher Jemison (CHS Library Assistant) jea@cashmere.school.nz