9th July Ada's baptism

I have just come home from a lovely celebration for a friend's baby, Ada Grace. For the last week I have been agonising about what gift to give her. I always give this family books, so I felt quite sure they would expect me to arrive with books, but what to take? I had given Ada's older sister picture book bible stories for her baptism, but felt I had chosen the best of these then. So finally I decided to give Ada some books about exemplary Adas. Well as it turned out I had a lot to choose from, all of which she would grow into at some stage. In the end I bought a current favourite, Ada Twist, Scientist and one of the wonderful biographies on Ada Lovelace, Ada's Ideas, but it could have just as easily been any of these below. The one at the top right is book one of a new series about Ada Lace, an eight-year-old girl with a knack for science, maths, and solving mysteries with technology. It will be out in August and I will buy it for the library.

17th September

Julia Donaldson is a very prolific author of picture books. She creates very memorable characters and with the help of illustrators such as Axel Scheffler some of these characters have become very endearing. The children in my library love the Gruffalo. We have a stuffed toy version of him and he gets plenty of hugs! In the last school holidays many of the children went to see a live stage version of the Gruffalo and came back to school eager to report back about how good it was.It is hard to believe that The Gruffalo was first published over ten years ago. It is still fresh and exciting for young readers.

Many of Julia's books are written in verse or have accompanying song books. She says that this is because she comes from a musical family. It must be wonderful to live in Britain and to have Julia visit your school. I particularly like Room on the Broom and Zog which are also illustrated by Axel. Julia has other books that have been illustrated by Nick Sharratt, David Roberts and Lydia Monks and her newest book Cave Baby is illustrated by Emily Gravett. She certainly has been fortunate to attract such illustrators.