City of York Council’s new road safety campaign ‘Be Bright, Be Seen’, is being launched next week to reduce accidents during dark winter nights.

During the week of the 5 November the council will be selling a number of different road safety items, including high visibility rucksack covers and bike lights.

Residents can also pick up free yellow, circular, prismatic reflectors (one per person, whilst stocks last).

Items can be bought from 9 St Leonards Place between 9-11am all week. For more information visit: www.itravelyork.info/

The final chapter of York Libraries’ first Children’s Book Awards came to a close last weekend, when the overall winners were announced at a grand ceremony at York Explore Library Learning Centre.

Two leading authors joined staff and residents at the inaugural Book Awards event on Sunday 28 October.

After over 1,000 votes, the favourite picture book was You Choose by Pippa Goodhart and illustrated by Nick Sharratt (http://www.pippagoodhart.co.uk/books.htm), and the favourite story book declared as the ever-popular Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

The awards were launched in March when children under the age of 14 were invited to nominate their favourite story and picture books of all time. Following the nominations, a short list of five in each category was announced, and children had until 16 September to vote for their favourite.

The short-list was:

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Acomb Explore Library

The Library Service have issued the following statement, “To improve the service we offer customers we will be upgrading our IT systems from 5 November to 10 November. There will be some disruption to our normal service during the updgrade.

Between Monday 5 November and 9 November:
you will not be able to place a request for a book
staff will not be able to process any books that you have previously requested
our computers will not be bookable, although access will still be available on a first come first served basis

In addition, from the 5 November we are permanently withdrawing our 24 hour telephone renewals service. Telephone renewals will still be possible by contacting any library within opening hours.

You will be able to borrow and return books as normal and use the library’s online catalogue to search for books during this period.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused during this time.

New library website and catalogue

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The Lord Mayor of York and Play Team are launching an exciting new award to recognise and celebrate the achievements of children and young people around York.

The awards are looking at how children in York have had made a postive impact to their local community. Whether they have made an actual difference or if they are inspiring other people to get more involved in local life.

There are 10 awards, which are separated into five different catergories which are Parks and Environment, Sport and Active Leisure, Arts and Culture, Libraries and Archives, and Play.
Anyone can nominate a young person who is between the ages 5-14 years old.

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