16th July World Snake day

It's World Snake Day! I'm certainly not enamoured of snakes, but the students I teach are. In fact the snake books in the library are nearly as popular as the shark books. Usually they want to borrow expository texts and marvel at the photos. We have many books that satisfy this need, the most popular probably being Damian Goodall's The Snake Book: Slip Sliding Away, but if you are looking for some picture books, these are some of the newer and more popular ones in the library:

• I (Don't) Like Snakes by Nicola Davies and Luciano Lozana
• Python by Christopher Cheng and Mark Jackson
• There's a Snake in My School!  by David Walliams and Tony Ross
• Boa's Bad Birthday by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross
• Anna and Otis  by Maisie Paradise Shearring
• I Saw Anaconda by Emma Dodd and Jane Clarke

If you want to share a short novel, try:
• Akimbo and the Snakes  by Alexander McCall Smith
• The Snake Who Came to Stay by Julia Donaldson
• Snake and Lizard  by Joy Cowley

I have written about snakes before here.

20th July 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing (Part 2)

In the book Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon author Catherine  Thimmesh gives  a rare perspective on a story we only thought we knew. 'For Apollo 11, the first moon landing, is a story that belongs to many, not just the few and famous. It belongs to the seamstress who put together twenty-two layers of fabric for each space suit. To the engineers who created a special heat shield to protect the capsule during its fiery reentry. It belongs to the flight directors, camera designers, software experts, suit testers, telescope crew, aerospace technicians, photo developers, engineers, and navigators.' 

I love picture book biographies and the subject of the moon landing has been well written about for children. There are biographies about Armstrong and Aldrin, but perhaps you haven't seen some of the other amazing biographies that tell the stories of other people who have been involved in the quest to get to the moon either before Apollo 11 or after. Many of them were woman and continue to be women. They help to show what Thimmesh contends, that there are so many other people involved.




• Reaching For the Moon by Buzz Aldrin and Wendell Minor
• Look to the Stars by Buzz Aldrin and Wendell Minor 
• One Giant Leap: the Story of Neil Armstrong  by Don Brown



• Margaret and the Moon: How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing  by Dean Robbins and Lucy Knisley






• Hidden Figures: The True Story of  Four Women and the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly and Laura Freeman



• Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13  by Helaine Becker and Dow Phumiruk

• A Computer Called Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Helped Put America on the Moon by Suzanne Spade and Veronica Miller Jamison

• Mae Among the Stars by Roda Ahmed and Stasia Burrington

20th July 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing (Part 1)

Fifty years ago, on July, 20th, 1969 everyone watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon. I was one of the watchers. I was in my first year of high school and the whole school gathered in the school hall to watch a very small black and white television that was on a trolley on the stage. We sat in age order, the older Year 12s at the front of the hall back to Year 7 at the back. As you can imagine I saw nothing, but the significance of the moment was not lost on me. After all the moon is the only place in our solar system that humans have visited. Recently I had lunch with a group of girls I went to school with and we laughed as we reminisced about this occasion. 

Several new picture books have been published to commemorate this occasion, so I put together a large display of books in my library to share the occasion with today's students and their parents. They have been very slow to move out of the library and I am hoping that once they have been exposed to more of it on the television and internet, that they will come back after the school holidays and be more enthusiastic about borrowing them. In the past the young students I teach have been very interested in space, but not so much anymore.

Among the new books are

• Moonwalkers  by Mark Greenwood and Terry Denton
• Touch the Moon  by Phil Cummings and Coral Tulloch
• When We Walked on the Moon by David Long and Sam Kalda
• Moon! Earth's Best Friend by Stacy McAnulty
• Moonshot by Brian Floca (an expanded and reissued version of a book published ten years ago)
• Moon's First Friends: One Giant Leap for Friendship by Susannah Leonard Hill and Elisa Paganelli
• Go For the Moon: A Rocket, a Boy and the First Moon Landing  by Chris Gall
• The Usborne Book of the Moon  by Laura Cowan and Diana Toledana

And if you don't have access to these new books perhaps revisit some of the gems from the past like
• The Sea of Tranquility by Mark Haddon and Christian Birmingham
• One Giant Leap by Robert Burleigh and Mark Wimmer
• If You Decide to Go to the Moon  by Faith McNulty and Steven Kellogg
• Grandpa Takes Me to the Moon  by Timothy R. Gaffney and Barry Root
• Armstrong: The Adventurous Journey of a Mouse to the Moon  by Torben Kuhlmann

12th July Paper Bag Day

Millions of people use paper bags every day. Readily recyclable, paper bags have been around for many years.  American inventor, Francis Wolle, received credit for his patent of the first paper bag machine in 1852. Margaret E. Knight became known as “the mother of the grocery bag” after she designed the square, flat bottomed bag and the machine that would fold and paste them in 1870.

Margaret E. Knight invented many things and had 27 patents to her name. Her obituary called her a 'woman Edison',  high praise maybe but not necessary as if you read about her she certainly was a pioneer in a field commonly thought of at the time as a male domain. There is a wonderful picture book biography called Marvellous Mattie by Emily Arnold McCully, which certainly creates some wonderful discussion among my students. Read it for growth mindset, Girls and STEM, to highlight themes of resilience, perseverance and creativity.

If you plan a craft activity or just want to talk about uses for paper bags, read Baghead by Jarrett J Krosoczka.

3rd July Plastic Bag Free Day

There has been so much talk about going without plastic bags that even the five year olds I teach can tell you why we should. We live near the water, so these children spend a lot of time at the beach, on boats and in the water. They know about the damage they cause in the ocean especially to turtles, but it is always a topic that needs revisiting, so when I saw this new book at the bookshop I purchased it for the library. Someone Swallowed Stanley by animal behaviourist and wildlife expert Sarah Roberts reiterates this important message about turtles and plastic bags and it has a child as the wildlife hero. It also has fun illustrations by Hannah Peck who seems to have enjoyed giving all the sea animals anthropomorphic mannerisms. If you are looking for other books about plastic bags see this earlier entry in my blog.