Nobody likes goodbyes, and you would have to be a cold-hearted misery guts not to find it just a bit emotional waving goodbye to your leavers after their final speech day. But the Perse Prep School leavers of 2019 will have something to cheer them up: a lovely book put together by the Headmaster, James Piper, and his team. The smart, pocket sized book has information on the history of the school and the houses, space for recording memories of plays, trips and sports teams, and a wide collection of poems, prayers and prose extracts reflecting the values of the school.
The Perse Prep School Sorting Cap and the Leavers’ Song are there, along with extracts reflecting the theme of Intellectual Curiosity and Scholarship. Quotes from the likes of Robert Redford and Steve Jobs sit alongside ones from Einstein and George Bernard Shaw. For the section on Endeavour, Churchill, Michelle Obama, Emily Dickinson and Martin Luther King ring out from the pages. In the poetry section, timeless classics such as The Tyger, Ozymandias and If jostle with Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est and Brooke’s The Soldier. The Prayers section includes Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu and Sikh prayers.
On taking delivery of the books, James phoned us to say how delighted he was. Although he had done all the hard work in putting it together, the results were above and beyond his expectations, which was just the sort of result we aim for.
Mayfield School, too, wanted their girls to leave with a nice reminder of their school days, and we were delighted to work with them again this year to produce a customised version of our Now and Forever collection. This contains inspirational prose extracts under seven chapter headings: Purpose, Joy and Opportunity; Success, Failure and Perseverance; Perspective and Overcoming Fear; Open your Heart; Education; Freedom and Liberty; and Right Here, Right Now. With gems of wisdom from Aristotle and Lao Tzu, pithy comments from Mark Twain and Stephen Fry, beautiful poetry from Keats and Robert Frost, this collection is indeed something for now, and forever!
And at Hampton School, this year’s leavers will once more have a personalised edition of the Hampton Leavers Book, complete with form lists, school information, class photographs, team results, reports of plays and trips, all customised to the cohort of 2019 leavers. Bound in a smart yellow, pocket sized hardback, this is sure to outlive the do-it-yourself student produced offering that many leavers end up with, and gives them a properly edited summary of their time at the school on which they can draw in the years ahead.
If you would like to discuss how your school could benefit from a bespoke leavers book, just give us a call on 01983 761389 and we will be happy to talk you through the process. We can’t promise you won’t still need your handkerchief on Speech Day, but at least you might have something really nice to give them next year which will help to cheer them up. And we all know how important it is to a school to have happy leavers.
Read more about Leavers’ Books HERE