26th December

It is Boxing Day and I maybe should be thinking about boxes, but having done boxes before for a great display in the library and the box construction club (see http://pinterest.com/kinderbookboard/cardboard-boxes/) I feel inclined to write about something else I have observed lately.

A couple of days ago I bought The Bear with the Sword by David Cali and as I read it and looked at the bear and his behaviour I was reminded of  two other bear picture books I had bought this year,  Bear Has a Story to Tell by Philip Stead and Erin Stead and Bear in Love  by Daniel Pinkwater and Will Hillenbrand. How do illustrators make bears have such human expressions? Each bear is different but so imbued with human mannerisms. My favourite bear is the one in Sebastian Meschenmoser's Waiting For Winter. He makes me smile every time I look at him trying to work out what snow is. None of these bears appear to be 'wild' or 'grizzly'. None are bad-tempered or look as if they could do harm, and for someone who lives in a country without bears (except in zoos) it is so hard to remember that we should keep our distance from these animals. They do not look anything like teddybears either so they have become pseudohumans. They are easy to empathise with, so easy to see their point of view, and so easy to fall in love with and want to hug. Look at their eyes!

Here are some of my favourite bears and bear stories and this is without including any of Barbara Firth's for Martin Waddell, Kady MacDonald Denton's for Bonny Becker or Karma Wilson's.

5th September Father's Day

There are so many books in my library that we put out for Father's Day displays, and the young children are so enamoured of their fathers that they rush to borrow them. Many borrow them to read to their father. Mothers borrow them to read with their children too. The same does not happen when it is Mother's Day! Some of my favourites are pictured here. Dennis Whelehan's The Dad Library is out of print, but may be in your library too. It tells the story of a child who thinks he would like a father with other attributes, only to realise that there is something 'wrong' with every dad. David Cali's A Dad Who Measures Up, similarly looks at what makes a good dad, but this time from the perspective of a young girl who is looking for a dad who needs to be as good as her mum. I like the humour of Tony Bradman's Not Like That, Like This! where a father explains to his son at length what not to do and then does it himself. And I have included Geraldine McCaughrean's Father and Son, in case you are looking for a book for a liturgy or chapel, and this one looks at the father and son relationship of Joseph and Jesus.