Welcome to the 2023 NSW Premier's Reading Challenge.
Challenge opens : 27th February 2023
Challenge closes : 18th August 2023
To complete the challenge you must read 20 books:
- a minimum of 10 books must be from the PRC Booklist
- a maximum of 10 books may be your own personal choice.
You must complete your online Student Reading Record by Friday 18th August 2023.
Would you like to join the Premier's Reading Challenge for 2023?
Please see Mrs Harradine in the Library to sign up and receive your welcome pack.
This is a paper copy of your Personal Reading log. You may use this to record the books you have read BUT to complete the challenge you must log your books ONLINE.
How do I login to the PRC website?
Click on the file below for instructions.
Axis360 is a new platform for eBooks and audiobooks.
The College Library subscribes to this platform allowing free access to eBooks and audiobooks for all students and staff.
To access the collection on your laptop:
Click this link:
Click on Login in the top right corner
Then click on St Pats School login (the blue bar).
Browse and tap a cover to borrow a title or place a hold.
To access the collection on your phone:
Download the Axis 360 app - it’s free from the App Store.
Open the Axis 360 app.
In the search My Library bar type "St Patricks College”
Click on St Patricks College Australia
Then click on St Pats School login (the blue bar).
Sign in using your school email address and password (You will only need to do this the first time as you will remain logged in, on that device)
Browse and tap a cover to borrow or place a hold.
As a St Patrick’s College student you have free access to a HUGE range of ebooks and audiobooks.
ePlatform by Wheelers is an eBook and audiobook platform St Patrick's subscribes to, for the benefit of all staff and students.
To install on your laptop, please use the following browser address, then sign in using your College email address and password:
https://stpatricksnsw.wheelers.co/ (Links to an external site.)
Alternatively the app can be downloaded on your mobile device (phone or Ipad). Once the app is downloaded, you can log in using your St Pat's login details and start browsing - step-by-step instructions are pictured below.
Once you are logged in to ePlatform select Saint Patrick's College Campbelltown.
There is a search bar at the top of the screen where you can search for an author or book title. Or if you want to browse just scroll down the screen.
To browse for books on the Premier's Reading Challenge list scroll past Latest additions, New/ Recent Releases, Listening Favourites and Popular titles. You will find the Premier's Reading Challenge 7-9 books at the bottom. Click on View More to see more titles. There are hundreds of ebooks that you can choose from.
Instructions for accessing ebooks and Audiobooks
The 2023 PRC Booklists can be found below.
Please note: you may read books from the 5-6 Book List, 7-9 Book List and the 9plus Book List.
Series Books
If you are reading books from a series please note: only three books from the series can be read as part of a student's official reading. Students may read and enter up to five other books from the series, not as part of their official reading, but in their personal choice books. See Series lists below to find out which series are included in the challenge.
How do I find PRC books in the Library catalogue?
The certificates you can receive for completing the Challenge are:
| First year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Second year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Third year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Fourth year | Gold certificate |
| Fifth year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Sixth year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Seventh year | Platinum certificate |
| Eigth year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Ninth year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Tenth year | Challenge completion certificate |
| Each year from Year 3 to 9 | Medal |
N.B. Only Year 9 students (and Year 10 students in 2023) are eligible to receive a medal.
Senior year is over, and Lucy has the perfect way to celebrate: tonight, she's going to find Shadow, the mysterious graffiti artist whose work appears all over the city. He's out there somewhere--spraying color, spraying birds and blue sky on the night--and Lucy knows a guy who paints like Shadow is someone she could fall for. Really fall for. Instead, Lucy's stuck at a party with Ed, the guy she's managed to avoid since the most awkward date of her life. But when Ed tells her he knows where to find Shadow, they're suddenly on an all-night search around the city. And what Lucy can't see is the one thing that's right before her eyes.
Ashleigh and Aiden are thirteen-year-old twins who promise to always look out for each other. Aiden is more dedicated to the task than Ashleigh, but when it comes to matters of life and death, they both exhibit a fierce protectiveness that will change the course of their lives.
Meet 11-year-old Bindi. She's not really into maths but LOVES art class and playing hockey. Her absolute FAVOURITE thing is adventuring outside with friends or her horse, Nell. Bindi is a verse novel for mid-upper primary students. Written ‘for those who plant trees’, Bindi explores climate, bushfires, and healing. Written from the point of view of 11-year-old, Bindi and her friends on Gundungurra Country.
Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.
Raina just wants to be a normal sixth grader. But one night after Girl Scouts she trips and falls, severely injuring her two front teeth. What follows is a long and frustrating journey with on-again, off-again braces, surgery, embarrassing headgear and even a retainer with fake teeth attached. And on top of all that, there's still more to deal with: a major earthquake, boy confusion and friends who turn out to be not so friendly.
Bridget 'Bee' Ballentine is 12 and starting her first year of high school in the beach suburb Crescent Bay. Still reeling from the departure of her mother for an ashram in India, Bee talks to Buddha and begs for her first period not to arrive. She's not ready to become a woman yet, whatever that means. Although Bee's yet to find her tribe at school, her best friend forever is surfer Leon McKay, also known as the hottest boy in year eight. As long as Leon has her back, Bee can survive the mean girls, her meddling step-mum, Kath, and her swimming nemesis, The Piranha.
The games Michael is playing have become all too real. Only weeks ago, sinking into the Sleep was fun. The VirtNet combined the most cutting-edge technology and the most sophisticated gaming for a full mind-body experience. And it was Michael's passion. But now every time Michael sinks, he risks his life. The games are over. The VirtNet has become a world of deadly consequences, and Kaine grows stronger by the day. The Mortality Doctrine-Kaine's master plan-has nearly been realized, and little by little the line separating the virtual from the real is blurring. If Kaine succeeds, it will mean worldwide cyber domination. And it looks like Michael and his friends are the only ones who can put the monster back in the box-if Michael can figure out who his friends really are.
Brad has fallen into the lion enclosure, and the big cats are hungry! Charith takes the wheel of an out-of-control bus after an explosion. Iresha hears strange noises... from beneath the seabed. Daniel crawls into a waste crusher after a building collapseand then it gets switched on. Tak's class goes on an excursion to an army base and now an experimental military robot is hunting them. Jack Heaths next 10 nail-bitingly dangerous short stories will fascinate and terrify during each full 40-minute count down, as the dangerous situations play out right down to the last crucial moment. Who will live and who will die? Forty minutes of danger, in 40 minutes of reading time!
Most Australians accept that climate change is real, but many don't know what to do about it and feel powerless to make a difference. In Fight for Planet A, the book of the ABC series of the same name, Craig Reucassel shows that it isn't as scary as we think, and we can make a difference to help protect the world for future generations. The Chaser comedian and presenter of War on Waste sets out solutions and practical day-to-day changes we can make to reduce our carbon footprint, as well as changes our governments need to make without further delay.
Margaret Wild tells the story of Dog and Magpie, who are friends and companions until Fox tempts Magpie away and then abandons her in the desert. It's a stark, uncompromising and deeply moving story, a fable that dramatises human strengths and weaknesses.
Michael is a gamer. And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on the VirtNet than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and its addictive. Thanks to technology, anyone with enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the chance of death, or just hang around with Virt-friends. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules when most of them are dumb, anyway? But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And recent reports claim that one gamer is going beyond what any gamer has done before: he's holding players hostage inside the VirtNet. The effects are horrific--the hostages have all been declared brain-dead. Yet the gamer's motives are a mystery.The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker. And they've been watching Michael. They want him on their team. But the risk is enormous. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid.
Michael completed the Path. What he found at the end turned everything he'd ever known about his life and the world completely upside down. He barely survived. But it was the only way VirtNet Security knew to find the cyber-terrorist Kaine and to make the Sleep safe for gamers once again. And, the truth Michael discovered about Kaine is more complex than they anticipated, and more terrifying than even the worst of their fears. Kaine is a tangent, a computer program that has become sentient. And Michael's completing the Path was the first stage in turning Kaine's master plan, the Mortality Doctrine, into a reality. The Mortality Doctrine will populate Earth entirely with human bodies harboring tangent minds. Any gamer who sinks into the VirtNet risks coming out with a tangent intelligence in control of their body. And the takeover has already begun.
Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks - and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday. But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters on horseback, he whisks her away into the safety of a secret, magical city called Nevermoor. To stay in the safety of Nevermoor for good, Morrigan will need to pass four difficult and dangerous trials - or she'll have to leave the city and confront her deadly fate.
Morrigan Crow has escaped her deadly fate and found a new home in the fantastical city of Nevermoor. She has also discovered that she has a strange and magical ability. But will her unique talent be a blessing or another curse?
Strange things are happening in Nevermoor... Morrigan Crow and her friends have survived their first year as proud scholars of the elite Wundrous Society, helped bring down the nefarious Ghastly Market, and proven themselves loyal to Unit 919. Now Morrigan faces a new, exciting challenge: to master the mysterious Wretched Arts of the Accomplished Wundersmith, and control the power that threatens to consume her.But a strange illness has taken hold of Nevermoor, turning its peaceable Wunimals into mindless, vicious unnimals on the hunt. As victims of the Hollowpox multiply, panic spreads. And with the city she loves in a state of fear, Morrigan quickly realises it is up to her to find a cure for the Hollowpox, even if it will put her - and the rest of Nevermoor - in more danger than ever before..
While searching the clues to her missing mother's whereabouts, fourteen-year-old Enola Holmes, the younger sister of Sherlock Holmes, suddenly gets involved in the kidnapping of a young Marquess and must put the search for her mother on hold in order to save the spoiled girl from her dangerous captors.
Pursued by her much older brother, famed detective Sherlock Holmes, fourteen-year-old Enola, disguised and using false names, discovers a hidden cache of charcoal drawings, and the girl who drew them - Lady Cecily - has disappeared without a trace. Enola must unravel the clues to find this left-handed lady, but in order to save her, Enola risks revealing her own identity and losing her freedom forever!
Everyone knows Dr. Watson is Sherlock Holme's right-hand man - so when he goes missing, it's a shock, even to Sherlock. Though Enola is in hiding, she can't help but investigate, and when she finds that flowers symbolising death have been delivered to the Watson residence, she knows she must act quickly. Enola must use all her wits to outsmart a sinister villain and save Dr. Watson's life-all while staying one step ahead of her famous brother, who's following hot on her trail.
When Enola Holmes encounters her friend Lady Cecily hiding behind a pink fan, she finds it peculiar. Cecily is being held hostage in an abysmal orphanage, forced into a miserable marriage. Enola joins forces with the much older famous brother Sherlock who she has fought desperately to elude, and risks her own freedom to rescue her friend.
Enola's landlady, Mrs. Tupper, is the closest thing Enola has to family these days, besides her occasional run-ins with her brother Sherlock. Even though Mrs. Tupper is nearly deaf and can barely cook, she's an endearing presence as Enola longs for her absent mother. So imagine her horror when Enola comes home to find Mrs. Tupper kidnapped! Who would take her, and why? And what does Florence Nightingale have to do with it?
In the series conclusion, Enola searches for missing Lady Blanchefleur while her brother Sherlock seeks her, with a message from their long-lost mother that only Enola can decipher. Sherlock and brother Mycroft follow Enola into London's dark underbelly to solve a triple mystery. Where is their mother, Lady Blanchefleur, and their connection?
Premier's Reading Challenge Banner. (2023, January 31). Premier's Reading Challenge 2023 banner. [photograph]. https://online.det.nsw.edu.au/prc/home.html
Empowered Health. (2018, February 12). [Teenager looking at laptop screen]. [photograph]. https://www.empoweredhealth.com.au/feeling-sluggish-periods/