22nd September World Rhinoceros Day

I have written about rhinos before here, but I wanted to add some books to any celebration of Rhinoceros Day that you may have. I have been looking at 'true' animal stories while exploring the Book Week theme, Curious Creatures Wild Minds, with one of my classes. We looked at Rhino in the House: the True Story of Saving Samia and  Anna and Samia: the True Story of Saving a Black Rhino. Both of these books tell the story of Anna Merz, a wildlife conservationist and a baby black rhino that she rescues and plans to rehabilitate, ready to send back into the wild. She nurtures the calf, names it Samia, feeds it special formula, and even lets it sleep in her bed. The children were fascinated by what Anna did.          

We then looked at My Travels With Clara, a book that follows the travels of a Dutch sea-captain and a black rhino from India to Venice with many adventures along the way. This story is reminiscent of the story of Zeraffa Giraffa, where a giraffe  travels from Africa to Paris.

Then last Thursday I covered and catalogued a new book called Rhinocorn Rules!  by Matt Carr and was pleasantly surprised to see that this book delivered far more than I thought it would. My readers like Matt Carr books, zany animal books, iridescent colours and unicorns so I picked it up in the book shop. On reading it, I found that the last two pages offered amazing facts about rhinos succinctly but very pertinently, perfect for Endangered Species Day.

See these and other rhino titles here on
my Pinterest page.

7th - 14th February Marriage Week

The week before Valentine's Day is designated Marriage Week. Once I would have thought that wasn't of interest to students under 8, but how wrong would I have been? A while ago one of the preschool classes spent a whole week planning, preparing for and conducting a wedding and reception in their room and the playground. They were so involved. They made invitations, decorations, placecards, the script for the celebrant and designed the outfits using the dress-up box clothes. I even got an invitation to the wedding so I made a gift and went along. The teacher asked me for some books to share with the children so I went looking in the library. We had some but not a lot, so I have added a few more since then. I especially love The Rabbit's Wedding but some of the newer ones have people as characters rather than animals. How to Get Married, by Me, the Bride and Lilly's Big Day will make you smile. The Perfect Flower Girl  is a good choice because it is the story of a Lebanese Muslim wedding and Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding will give you a Chinese perspective. The others cover things that are important to the children, such as being a flower girl or what to do at a wedding. I have quite a display being planned in my head for the end of this week, Love, Kisses, Hugs and Weddings ... so many great picture books to choose from, just as soon as Pancake Day and Umbrella Day are over.

25th April Anzac Day, Walter de la Mare (1873 - 1956) David Kirk (1955)

SOME ONE

Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
I'm sure - sure - sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But naught there was a-stirring
In the still dark night;

Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl's call,

Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.

English poet Walter de la Mare was the first poet I remember learning a poem of verbatim. It was called Someone and I can still quote half of it decades later. It obviously had impact. The children at school love it when I can say a poem without a book or text in front of me. I was also interested to read that he believed that there was no such thing as a good poem for children, only a poem that children could understand.

David Kirk is the author/illustrator of the Miss Spider series of books. Miss Spider is a vegetarian spider who only eats flowers!