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

15th February World Whale Day

Driving through Mona Vale today I saw a sign advertising celebrations for World Whale Day and thought what a pity it was so close to so many other celebrations because children love whales and reading about them and it would have made a wonderful library display. Luckily in Australia we have National Whale Day as well in June so there will be another opportunity to put together a wonderful display of  books about whales.

In fact in the last month or so I have bought several new books for the library that feature whales and these four have especially memorable illustrations and are worth borrowing to read.

• If You Want to See a Whale by Julie Fogliano &  Erin Stead
• The Storm Whale by Benji Davies
• Whale Shines by Fiona Robinson
• Welcome Home by Christina Booth

And of course there's always older favourites that always work well when read aloud such as:
• The Lighthouse Keeper's Rescue by Ronda & David Armitage
• My Friend Whale by Simon James, and
•  The Morning I Met a Whale by Michael Morpurgo & Christian Birmingham

6th November Berlie Doherty (1943) Michelle Magorian (1947) Craig Smith (1955)

British author, Berlie Doherty writes for all ages, from picture books through short stories to novels, two of which have won the Carnegie Award. Here though I want to highlight several picture books that are perfect for the children in my library. A few days ago I walked into the bookshop where I do most of my shopping for school to find ten individual fairy tales by Berlie Doherty with illustrations by Jane Ray. They look stunning. Perusing them I realised I had seen them before and that they were from their anthology Fairy Tales. They are better this way for young children to borrow, carry home, and feel success at reading. Parents can borrow the collection, but I purchased the ten for the children. Two of her picture books that are also popular are The Magical Bicycle illustrated by Christian Birmingham and Jinny Ghost which is also illustrated by Jane Ray.

Michelle Magorian is also a British author and best known for her novels, but she too has some picture books, albeit not as many as Berlie. The one I use the most is Jump! a story, illustrated by Jan Ormerod about a boy who goes to ballet lessons with his sister and has to watch while he waits for her, when he really would rather be doing the dancing. he practises the moves and finally joins the classes. Given that the school I teach at, teaches ballet and boys attend classes I like to have books such as this to provide positive role models and address the boys who scoff.

Read tomorrow's entry for Craig Smith.