18th June Refugee Week

Day 2 of Refugee Week! Australian authors and illustrators have excelled at producing wonderful books on the themes of refugees, immigration, change, and coping in a new environment. Novels include:

• Boy Overboard by Morris Gleitzman

• Onion Tears by Diana Kidd

• No Guns For Asmir by Christobel Mattingley and

• Mahtab's Story by Libby Gleeson.

And two very powerful, outstanding picture books, that are often considered to be graphic novels:

• The Arrival by Shaun Tan, and

• The Island by Armin Greder.

All of these are designed for audiences older than my student clientele, but they are books that all teachers need to know about and have in their library for teaching using children's literature.

26th October Christobel Mattingley (1931) Eric Rohmann (1957)

Christobel Mattingley is a revered Australian author. She is commited to social justice, cultural issues and the natural environment and uses these as themes in her many books. She often writes about the effects of war and refugees. See The Miracle Tree; The Angel With the Mouth-Organ and her trilogy of novels about Asmir which begins with No Gun For Asmir.

Christobel began her working life as a librarian and teacher librarian before becoming a full-time writer. She writes for a wide audience. She has picture books such as The Race which is a story of injustice in a school setting, easy chapter books such as the ones she has done for the Aussie Bites series, Ginger and Hurry Up, Alice and then novels such as her recent Chelonia Green: Champion of Turtles, which is perfect for class discussions about threats to the environment with Year 2 and 3 classes.

Eric Rohmann is an American illustrator. He has illustrated books for others and written some for himself. His beautiful hand-coloured relief prints in My Friend Rabbit won the Caldecott Medal in 2003. He is also the illustrator of the covers for Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.

26th August Hearing Awareness Week

As well as being Book Week, it is Hearing Awareness Week in Australia, so it is a good time to go to the library shelves, find and read Christobel Mattingley and Anne Spudvilas' The Race. This wonderful book was Anne Spudvilas' first, and for it she won the Crichton Award for new illustrators. Since then her books have won many awards. in this story, the main character, Greg is desperate to be included at school and to not always be last. He can run very fast, but even comes last in running races. A new teacher arrives at the school and after observing Greg run, she realises that he has difficulty hearing the starting command. When a visual command is used Greg wins the race and his world is changed!

If your library doesn't have this out-of-print book, you might have some of the titles from two series of books which also feature a deaf main character. Isaac Millman has three books about Moses who goes to school with other deaf children. In Moses Goes to a Concert his class goes to an orchestral concert. This book is particularly good as it allows hearing children to see how deaf children can feel the beat of the music and enjoy a concert in the same way that they do. Elizabeth Levy has written a series of books called Invisible Inc, where a group of children which includes a boy who is invisible, Justin who is deaf and others, have adventures, solve mysteries and have fun at school.