Book Week Early Childhood Shortlist: The Wobbly Bike by Darren McCallum and Craig Smith

This book The Wobbly Bike  by debut author Darren McCallum and 'old hand' Craig Smith is a joy and will certainly make you smile. It is fun and very pertinent to this age group.

So often the parents at school will say 'my child can't ride a bike. When will he learn?' in a manner that implies that it is the school's job to teach him, and then they add 'we live in a unit/ apartment'.

I think this is sad because it means that this child isn't outdoors at the park often or that his parents don't see it as their job to make time to ensure he does learn. Learning to ride a bike is about time, practice, perseverance, risk taking, adult belief and investment in their child, but so rewarding when a child shouts 'I can do it!'

Linked displays:

1. books about learning to ride bicycles

2. books set in the Northern Territory and /or Darwin and books by authors who live in the Northern Territory

3. books about Australian birds

4. other books by Craig Smith

Display 1: Learning to Ride a Bike

The library often has a display about bikes. The preschoolers are very keen to borrow books about bike riding. If you are putting together a display, these are popular

• Don't Let Go! by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross   (this would make a perfect companion text)

• Don't Let Go, Dad!  by Mark Wilson

• Hello, Bicycle!  by Ella Boyd and  Taming a big-kid bike

• Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle  by Chris  Learning to Ride a Bike

• Two Wheels  by David Gibb and Brizida Magro  (this would make a perfect companion text)

• Let's Ride a Bike  by Ruth Walton

• I Love My Bike  by Simon Mole and Sam Usher

• Off We Go!  by Will Hillenbrand

• Logan's Big Move by Logan Martin, Jess Black and Shane McG

• Frank and Bert: the One Where Bert Learns to Ride a Bike  by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros

• The Bike Lesson  by Stan and Jan Berenstain

• Duck on a Bike  by David Shannon

• Wild Blue: Taming a Big-Kid Bike  by Dashka Slater and Laura Hughes

• Bike on Bear by Cynthia Liu Kristyna Litten

Display 2: Books set in the Northern Territory 

• Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo  by Alison Lester

• To the Top End  by Roland Harvey

• My Home in Kakadu  by Jane Christophersen

• Dry to Dry: the Seasons of Kakadu by Pamela Freeman and Liz Anelli

• Walking the Country in Kakadu  by Diane Lucas, Ben Tyler and Emma Long

• Collecting Colour  by Kylie Dunstan

• Big Rain Coming  by Katrina Germein

• Too Many Cheeky Dogs  by Joanna Bell and Dion Beasley

• Aunty's Wedding  by Miranda Tapsell and Samantha Fry

• Look See, Look at Me!  by Leonie Norrington and Dee Huxley

• Cyclone by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley

Leonie Norrington, Joanna Bell, Samantha Fry, Rosemary Sullivan, Katrina Germein and Kylie Dunstan have all lived in the Northern Territory at some time.

Display 3: Books about Australian Birds

The teaching notes for the book suggests:

• Have your class work in groups to research different species of birds in Australia. What do they look like? Where do they live? How many birds illustrated in the story can they identify?

Display of books like these would help with this:

Coming in August from CSIRO

Display 4 Books illustrated by Craig Smith.

The library has more than 100 books illustrated by Craig Smith. Time to revisit these two humorous tales:

And these two more serious tales:

19th August Book Week Connect to Reading Part 2

I shared the shortlist for the Picture Book with my four classes of Year 2 students. I agonised over whether to buy The Rules of Summer as I thought the illustrations were quite dark and the rules worded rather negatively and that I would need to do too much scaffolding to do it justice in one or two thirty minute library lessons. I thought I would wait and see if it won and then decide. Well it did win and I am still not sure what I want to do!

The other shortlisted books were fun to share and easy to use the connection theme with. We stared with King Pig  because the students all wanted to read it. They thought it would be funny and they 'love' Nick Bland books. We book talked it in pairs where the students had to focus on what made it funny and discuss whether or not it had a message or theme. They easily recognised the theme but were surprised that a humorous story could have a serious message. This prompted revisiting other books they knew such as Click Clack Moo Cows that Type  and Farmer Duck.

It also led effortlessly to The Windy Farm which also looked as if it would be humorous. Similarly here the students worked out that this was not only funny but had a deeper message. Two of the classes were currently studying the environment and were keen to talk about energy sources and how common wind energy was. This led naturally to the book Energy Island  by Allan Drummond which tells the story of Samso, a Danish island that is powered by wind energy.

I thought Toby the character in Parachute  may have been too young for my Year 2 students to relate to, but in their Book Talk pairs they quickly began to talk about fears and make connections to themselves. The subject of 'security blankets' arose and one class and I revisited Lisa Shanahan's Gordon's Got a Snookie in order to once again look at the connection between humour and serious themes. The other three classes talked more about overcoming fears and we used Sonya Hartnett's  Come Down Cat to make connections, both literally with cats and heights, but inferentially about how to and when to be brave.

And lastly,  Silver Buttons  which was my favourite and the easiest to get the students involved in. We talked about small increments of time and what could be done in them. We timed activities with stopwatches. We looked at what is 'momentous' and what is 'mundane' and argued the story events inclusion or not.  The Book Talk final discussion was to sum up the book in one word. I was amazed by how well the students did this. There was the obvious 'minute', but others were 'time', 'life', celebration', and 'importance'. I used At the Same Moment Around the World and Just a Second as either pre or post reading.

King Pig  and  Silver Buttons were the most popular of the books we read when the students voted.

12th May Kite Day

I read somewhere that it is Kite Day on the 12th May, but on further reading there seems to be a lot of different Kite Days. Flying kites can be such fun for young children and making them even more fun so you probably don't need an excuse to share books about kites at all. In Sydney we have the Festival of Winds in September and I have written about it before here. I wrote here too about my all time favourite kite book, Marcia Vaughan and Patricia Mullins' The Sea Breeze Hotel, but your library might have it. While you are searching look for Marty and Mei-Ling by Phil Cummings and Craig Smith. It too is out of print but also has kite flying as a wonderful community-building catalyst. Two newer books which might inspire you to make and fly kites are:

• Kite Flying by Grace Lim and

• Kite Day by Will Hillenbrand

And while trawling through Google images I found this art work, great to initiate a discussion of the whole role of kites in Japanese culture and to pull out beautiful picture books about Japan.

7th November

Yesterday was Craig Smith's birthday.


Craig Smith is a popular Australian illustrator with more books in my library than any other author or illustrator. When Craig came to talk to the children at school we collected together all of his books and the children were so surprised at how many their were. It became a game counting them, quite a feat for the kindergarten children because there were more than one hundred. This is not surprising given that his first book Black Dog for Christobel Mattingley was done in 1976 and he has been illustrating ever since. On his very extensive website, Craig says that he prefers to do black and white drawings and that he like to create the body language and expression which is an important but often unwritten part of the story. I also found it interesting that from his bibliography he could single books out as favourites. Among my favourites are Just You Wait! by Megan de Kantzow; Game Plan by Emily Rodda; Where's Mum? by Libby Gleeson; Doctor Frank's Monster by Nigel Gray and Billy the Punk by Rebecca Carroll. He is also responsible for many popular series of books - Toocool with Phil Kettle; Emily Eyefinger with Duncan Ball; The Cabbage Patch Fib with Paul Jennings; the family series with Rachel Flynn eg. My Grandma and Me and the series that began with Bob the Builder and the Elves by Emily Rodda.