Book Boffz Begin 2025

Book Boffz kicked off 2025 by exploring beginnings, in the form of opening lines in literature. Pupils were challenged to identify some classic books from just their opening sentences, sparking a discussion on the importance of a strong opening as a hook to draw a reader in.

The group then shifted their focus to crafting their own opening lines. Some chose to write freely, while others drew inspiration from randomly selected picture cards, incorporating the depicted objects into their opening lines. The very popular ‘genre generator’ also provided a fun twist, prompting pupils to create lines within randomly assigned genres. Horror, thriller and science fiction emerged as crowd favourites while romance definitely did not!

Showing great enthusiasm and creativity, here are just some of the imaginative opening lines the boys wrote and shared with the group:

“The mistake I made was that I thought he was blind.”

“I felt my heart throb as she stared at me from the newspaper; then I knew she would be mine, whatever it took.”

“Today was a pretty normal day, until my sister exploded!”

“It is time to drill the last screw into my plan.”

“One day headphones ate my brother’s ears.”

“I don’t remember exactly what happened, I sort of blacked out. The last thing I recall was a scream but I knew that scream, it was oddly familiar… like I had heard it before.”

“I walked through the door, then I died. Again!”

As the session drew to a close, Book Boffz members enjoyed biscuits while engaging in a final challenge: matching the correct opening line to the book from two options, using only the book blurbs of popular junior fiction titles as a guide.

Book Boffz meets on Fridays in the Junior Library from 3.45pm. Thirds and Upper Thirds are welcome.

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