October International School Library Month

International School Library Month (ISLM) is an opportunity for those in charge of school libraries around the world to choose a day, week, or the entire month in October to celebrate the importance of school libraries and to celebrate everything great about them.

Here in Australia, ALIA is proud to celebrate International School Library Day. This day celebrates school libraries and their staff and the work that they undertake to support students. This year we are celebrating on 19 October with the theme 'Growing Global Citizens'.

Given that the students at my school have not had access to their library while we have been in lockdown due to COVID, when they are all back at school on Monday 18th October, many of them will be super keen to borrow books. During Zoom sessions there has been a constant lament...I need something new to read.

Yes, my students did have access to online reading resources, plenty of them, 'but it's not the same' they kept saying. Also every time I thought of something I wanted to use or recommend I couldn't just leap up, find it and give it to them. The libraries at the school I work at are very well-resourced and the students have plenty of choice, but they did take it for granted and so did their parents. Students under 8 years old need books! It is very important when learning to read to be able to touch the words, turn the pages, examine the illustrations closely and just 'soak' in the book.

I have been putting together a poster for the pinboard just inside the door , something to this effect. Once before I collected all the library toys together and sat them on the mat reading, took a photo and told the students that this is what happens in the library when you're not here. For some of my avid Year 1 and Year 2 readers I will put a post-it heart and their name on the book with a suggestion from the book saying that they might like to read it.

Another interesting outcome from Covid is the number of parents who emailed me saying I want  to order some books for my child, what would you recommend? Parents borrow a large number of books from the school library to supplement their child's reading or as bedtime reads for their children, so as soon as the library is staffed again we will be putting together book bags for parents. We do this in two ways. They either email us with requests or we supply a 'lucky dip' bag of ten books where we include a selection of picture books, together with a chapter book, a nonfiction information book, a biography, a graphic novel, a textless book, an indigenous title and a poetry book. In this way they get to sample things that they might not otherwise choose to borrow.

To match the theme of 'Growing Global Citizens' we will make sure that the choice is very international. We have a large collection of books that are translations from other languages. We can provide books by authors and illustrators who do not live in Australia and who do not write about Australia. We could highlight some picture books that show children using libraries that are nothing like theirs. They would need to make a bigger effort to access these:

 My Librarian is a Camel by Margaret Ruirs The Book Boat's In by Cynthia Cotten & Frane Lessac That Book Woman by Heather Henson & David Small Biblioburro  by Jeannette Winter

 Waiting for the Biblioburro by Monica Brown & John Parra Planting Stories  by Anika Aldamuy Denise & Paola Escobar

 Inside Books  by Terri Buzzeo & Jude Daly

The Librarian of Basra by Jeanette Winter

     The Library Bus  by Bahram Rahman & Gabrielle Grimard

And for fun

  

Leilong the Library Bus by Julia Liu & Bei Lynn

Now back to thinking about my school library, what can we do to make it more flexible, innovative and contemporary?

12th February David Small (1945) Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

It is American author/illustrator David Small's birthday today. I do not know his writing well as my library only has one of his authored works, Imogene's Antlers. This is a humorous story about what happens to Imogene after she wakes up to find she has grown antlers overnight. We do however have two of the picture books that are written by his wife Sarah Stewart and illustrated by him, The Gardener and The Library and When Dinosaurs Came With Everything which is written by Elise Broach and illustrated by him.

The famous naturalist, Charles Darwin celebrated his bicentenary two years ago and at that time many books about him were published for children, many of which were picture books. Three picture books that deal very positively with Darwin's life and his concept of natural selection are Peter Sis's Tree of Life; Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom's What Mr Darwin Saw and Kathryn Lasky and Matthew Trueman's One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin.

27th August Arlene Mosel (1921 - 1996) Sarah Stewart

American professor of library science, Arlene Mosel wrote two picture books in the 1970s which are still read by children and librarians. They are written as folktales, but whether or not they were actually based on Chinese or Japanese folktales is now debatable. This aside the well known Tikki Tikki Tembo and Caldecott Medal winning The Funny Little Woman, both illustrated by Blair Lent, are still in libraries and early childhood classrooms and children enjoy their improbability and dramatic plots. The long name of the older brother, Tikki Tikki Tembo rolls off the tongue and has children parroting it very quickly. Kindergarten are fascinated by a name that long!

The debate surrounding Tikki Tikki Tembo centres on the fact that people of Chinese heritage worry that readers may see this story as being fact or being representative of Chinese culture. Rather than not read it at all, I feel it is better to be very clear to present the story as a dramatic family story that is not factually correct and one that was written in a different time when travel and knowledge of other cultures was not what it is in our culturally diverse communities.

It is also American author Sarah Stewart's birthday. I don't know when she was born, just that it was on this day. It is fitting too, that one of her books that is well known is The Library, a story about Elizabeth Brown who just loves books. A fitting tribute to librarian Arlene Mosel! I love the illustration from the cover of it, done by her husband David Small that has been turned into a book mark. It is also a fitting end to Book Week! We had a wonderful Book Week at school, finishing this morning with a Book Week Expo where each class went to all the other classrooms to see what that class had done for Book Week. I have photos and hope to write more about it soon.