5th November Tsunami Awareness Day

Quality children's picture books — richly illustrated and often poetically written — can introduce young readers to people, places, and times they might not otherwise experience. 

It's important not to scare children when talking about something powerful and real like a tsunami. Adults need to take care to assure children about how rare these events are and how safe they are where they are living.

Children's books are both a timely and timeless resource because of the way they encourage kids to make a connection to the people and places portrayed. They build upon the news and facts by providing a context for understanding who was affected and what was lost. With the guidance of a parent or teacher, picture books and serialised novels can be used to develop understanding and empathy and perhaps the will to help.

I teach an enrichment group of Year 2 students and often I serialise Pearl Buck's The Big Wave, look at life in Japan through picture books and together with the students research tsunamis. They know what tsunamis are because of the media and they are very aware of natural disasters as they live in a country that has been devastated by bushfires and floods. When I was their age I knew nothing about tsunamis and very little about Japan, but I was a keen reader and I know that I would have loved this unit of work. It would have satisfied my need to read, know more and travel elsewhere. I did know Hokusai's Big Wave painting because my parents had a print of it and it fascinated me. There are so many wonderful picture books that feature it now. See:

• The Great Wave  by Veronique Massenot 

• One Day in Japan with Hokusai by Julia Altman

• Hokusai by Deborah Kogan Ray         

You could choose however to just look at tsunamis and there are enough books for students this age to search out and read. Look for:

• Tsunami! by Kimono Kajikawa and Ed Young

• Kenta and the Big Wave by Ruth Ch

• The Tsunami Quilt by Tammy Yee and Antony Fredericks

These next three books tell the true story of a baby hippo who was orphaned during the Indian Ocean tsunami in 

• Mama: A True Story, in Which a Baby Hippo Loses His Mama During a Tsunami, but Finds a New Home and a New Mama   by Jeanette Winter

•  A Mama for Owen by Marion Dane Bauer and John Butler

• Owen and Mzee: True Story of a Remarkable Friendship by Isabella and Craig Hatkoff

• Wisdom: The Midway Albatross by Darcy Pattison and Kitty Harvill

• Elephant Mountain  by Janeen Brian and Sally Rippin

• Bibile: the True Story of a Baby Orphan Elephant  by Teresa Cannon and Liz Wilks

• Elephant Alert by Jackie French

• Running Wild  by Michael Morpurgo

• High Tide in Hawaii by Mary Pope Osborne

There are these nonfiction texts in the library, but there are many others, many which are more recent:

• Sweeping Tsunamis by Louise and Richard Spilsbury

• Ocean Tides and Tsunamis by Baby Professor 

• Can Surfers Surf on Tsunamis? by Baby Professor

• Understanding Earthquakes and Tsunamis by Olivia Williams

• Tsunamis and Other Natural Disasters by Mary Pope Osborne

• The Tsunami Book by Gillian Jolly

• Earthquakes and Tsunamis by Emily Bone

• The Science of Natural Disasters: The Devastating Truth about Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis by Alex Woolf and Andy Rowland

28th September Lila Prap (1955)

On 23rd September, some sources say that it was the Japanese artist Hokusai's birthday. Other sources say it was more likely to be October or November. It doesn't matter when it really was as he certainly needs to be remembered as a prolific and influential artist. Hokusai was born in 1760 and died in 1849 and in that time had many name changes and artistic periods. He is famous for his 36 views of Mt Fuji woodblocks which includes his most famous painting 'The Great Wave'. I have spent time looking at his artworks lately because so many of them feature bridges and they became of interest during Book Week where the theme was Across the Storybridge. While searching for books about him that very young children and their teachers could use I came across two books that I want to focus on here. One, is a fictionalised information book from Prestel, the publishers who produce the spectacular Adventures in Art series, One Day in Japan with Hokusai by Julia Altmann. Here Kiku and Yoshi go to visit, their grandfather, Hokusai and he tells them about his life, travels and paintings. The other The Old Man Mad About Drawing: A Tale of Hokusai by Francois Place tells about Hokusai through the story of Tojiro, an orphan boy who becomes Hokusai's assistant. The strength of both of these books is the illustrations, not the text, but they soften what could otherwise become wordy expository texts that are not as accessible to such a young audience.

Lila Prap (Lilijana Praprotnik Zupancic) is Slovenian. Her beautiful pastel-on-paper illustrations are beginning to be well-known in many countries. Her books work particularly well with preschoolers. Why? is wonderful at helping parents laugh at that perennial question. This week I purchased her newest title Dinosaurs and it looks just as endearing and no doubt will be as popular.