3rd July Kate Messner (1970 - )

Yesterday was Kate Messner's birthday and it is a long time since I have done a birthday blog.

I am always interested in what children's authors did before they became full-time writers. Before becoming a full-time writer, Kate was a TV news reporter as well as an educator who spent fifteen years teaching middle school English. Her website says

'New York Times bestselling author Kate Messner is passionately curious and writes books that encourage kids to wonder, too. Kate's titles include both fiction and nonfiction; she writes award-winning picture books, easy readers, chapter book series, and novels for young readers.'

Three series of hers that we have in the library are:

The Over and Under series of picture books which she does in collaboration with illustrator Christopher Silas Neal are amazing examples of how good a nonfiction picture book can be. There are six of them now.

The series of early readers about the mice Fergus and Zeke, one of whom is the classroom pet, the other a streetwise mouse from beyond the classroom. We don't have the whole series because their choice of topic is sometimes too American for our audience. We have the first three

Her series of chapter books that are also school and science based about Marty Maguire are just right for my able Year 2 readers who are looking for a book about a third grade girl who would rather get dirty digging worms or  playing in the water with frogs than to dress up and do 'girly' things.

The library has other stand alone picture books too including

• Tree of Wonder illustrated by Simona Mullazzani

• The Brilliant Deep illustrated by Matthew Forsyth (biography)

• Sea Monster and the Bossy Fish illustrated by Andy Rash

• How to Read a Story  illustrated by Mark Siegel

I would have liked to have purchased her newest picture book

• Once Upon a Book illustrated by Grace Lin. Its blurb 

Alice loves to imagine herself in the magical pages of her favourite book. So when it flaps its pages and invites her in, she is swept away to a world of wonder and adventure, riding camels in the desert, swimming under the sea with colourful fish, floating in outer space, and more! But when her imaginative journey comes to an end, she yearns for the place she loves best of all...

tells me it would be perfect for the Book Week slogan READ GROW INSPIRE but given the cost of American hardback books for us at the moment, ordering it at is not going to happen. It is $39. The only good thing about all of this is that we need to make sure that the American hardbacks we have already are savoured. See the art work here.