31st May World Otter Day

 

World Otter Day occurs on the last Wednesday of May, which is May 31st this year. The sea otter has a whole week, Sea Otter Awareness Week. It  takes place during the last full week of September to celebrate and inspire deeper awareness of these marine mammals.

World Otter Day brings all otter species to the attention of many people. It focuses on raising awareness about how important otters are and also highlights the threats that they face. There are certain issues faced by otters that some people are largely unaware of, such as the huge trade in these animals for pets and fur.  

There are 13 species of otter, and all of them are listed in the IUCN Red List.

Otters have been highly successful in making their habitats in oceans, lakes, rivers and wetlands around the world. They can be found from North to South America, Africa to Asia, and all across Europe. However, there are no otters in Australia unless they are at a zoo. At Taronga Western Plains Zoo there is a family of  Asian Small-clawed Otters which are the smallest of the 13 otter species. Small-clawed Otters are best known for their dexterity which means they are good at using their hands. The incomplete webbing between their fingers gives them a great range of motion and they hunt for food using their hands rather than their mouths like other species.

At high school Ring of Bright Water  was an English class text and it certainly made me fascinated with both otters and Scotland. Whenever I'm at a zoo outside of Australia they are the first animal I look for on the zoo directory.

Otters are the subject focus for a lot of children's books. Many make the word 'otter' playfully say or mean something else, such as here in these titles:

• I Love You Like No Otter by Rose Rossner (I Love You like No Other)

• Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller (Do Unto Others)

• Otter Chaos by Michael Broad (Utter Chaos)

There is a series of picture books and easy readers by Sam Garton

Of course there are other picture books as well.

see my Pinterest page for suggestions. Some are no longer available new but search in the library.

There are a large number of short novels

And of course there are information books:

Traditional nonfiction:

Narrative nonfiction:

25th March Tolkien Reading Day

Tomorrow is a day to celebrate J.R.R. Tolkien, to encourage fans to celebrate and promote his life and works by reading favourite passages from his works.  A day that will remain a mystery to me as I have not read any Tolkien. I have been scarred for life! My Year 2 teacher who thought reading aloud should be part of her class's day and who also read aloud very well,  read us The Hobbit. I did not cope and I think I was one of the more capable children in the class. Maybe it went over their heads. It just disturbed me. I was seven years old and I had so many questions. 

Since then I cannot even attempt Tolkien or go to the movies of the books. I am not even keen on other fantasies where the characters are too far removed from normal people. I do love books and reading though and as a result of this I have always been very careful about matching my students to texts. I want to stretch them vocabulary and thinking-wise, but I don't want them to have their wellbeing disrupted.

I have been teaching for a very long time though and despite the fact that I am often surprised by what my young students have watched, their ability to visualise while being read to has changed greatly and what once worked as imaginary texts has changed too. I have been in the habit of sharing Jill Tomlinson books with classes. I find them humorous and each chapter stands alone well. The students I read it to recently laughed much less than those of other years. They liked the repetitions, but often did not think what a character did was unusual or funny. 

In a kindergarten class I thought I would share some poems for World Poetry Day. If it had any element of fantasy in it, they did not cope or laugh at all. When I read I've Never Seen a Purple Cow, they just kept saying 'no one would ever see a purple cow! That's not funny.' I read them a picture book version of The Owl and the Pussycat and they could retell the story. The consensus though was that it was silly and when I said that Edward Lear wanted it to be silly and to make you smile, it didn't make it any better. Just as I was despairing I finished with Hands by Julia Donaldson which they mimed aloud to and loved. When I told them who the poet was they rattled off a list of what she had written. The power of Julia Donaldson!

I did get to smile though, when a child asked to take home a copy of The Owl and the Pussycat for his mum. I'll ask him next week what mum thought. Meanwhile there is Bloomsday when we read Joyce, a day to read Tolkien,  a day to celebrate Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss and Eric Carle, so perhaps it's time to have a Julia Donaldson Day! I haven't always been a fan but the students I teach definitely are.

19th March Aardvark Day

On the 19th March every year, National Aardvark Day is when we celebrate our favourite inquisitive friend, the Aardvark. The natural habitat of the aardvark is sub-Saharan Africa and they are nocturnal.

The aardvark has long ears like a rabbit, a snout somewhat similar to a pig, and a tail a bit like a kangaroo, but actually there are no close relatives to the aardvark. In fact, the nearest thing to an aardvark is an elephant!

In the world of picture books, Marc Brown's Arthur would probably be the best known aardvark, as he has a  series of books in which he stars with his sister D.W. There are chapter books, easy readers and picture books.

My favourite aardvark book is one of the African Animal Tales series illustrated by Adrienne Kennaway, Awkward Aardvark.  This story explains why aardvarks are nocturnal and live underground.

Of course there are other aardvark books in the library. Look for:

• Oi Aardvark! by Kes Gray and Jim Field

• It's an Orange Aardvark!  by Michael Hall

• Aalfred and Aalbert by Morag Hood

• Can an Aardvark Bark? by Melissa Stewart and Steve Jenkins

• Weird and Wonderful Animals: Aardvarks  by Emma Bassier

• Aardvarks by Maddie Gibbs

•  A is for Aardvark by Mark Shulman and Tamara Petrosino

• The Aardvark Who Wasn't Sure by Jill Tomlinson

• Noko and the Night Monster by Fiona Moodie

• Noko's Surprise Party  by Fiona Moodie

25th April World Penguin Day

Every day is Penguin Day for me. I love them. The children I teach love learning about them and they are very popular as topics and characters in children's books. I have written about them before for Penguin Awareness Day in January and listed many of my favourite books.

Last term Year 2 and I read Jill Tomlinson's short novel, Penguin's Progress (The Penguin Who Wanted to Find Out) over several weeks and as we read, we checked to see if the information she had given us about Emperor penguins was indeed correct. In the process the students handled many non-fiction books, looked online at film clips and websites and chose themselves to borrow picture books and short novels which had penguins as characters.  The library had over a hundred penguin books and they were well-borrowed. We looked at penguins' habitat, lifecycles, food and enemies. The students were not happy when we added 'man' to the list of enemies. This came about when we read Solo  by Paul Geraghty, a heart-wrenching family story where the students felt sure that the father and mother penguin would not come back to feed baby Solo. Ulco Glimmerveen's A Tale of Antarctica  also showed students the impact humans have on the pristine environment of Antarctica.

With the topic of penguins it is so hard to know where to start reading with children because there is just so much worth reading! But these are musts!

31st January Backwards Day

Backwards Day! What a good idea. Good excuse to wear your cap backwards, practise walking backwards, sitting on a chair backwards...let the children come up with ideas. Try telling a story backwards. Does it work? Is it good to know the solution before the problem?

Read Tell Me the Day Backwards by Albert Lamb and David McPhail. In this story Timmy Bear and his mother play a game just before going to sleep where Timmy has to tell his mother what happened during the day but in reverse order. This is probably a good way to review the day with young children because they often remember the more recent things and need to be prompted about earlier events.

With older children it can be fun to identify names that are spelled the same forwards and backwards, like Eve; Anna; Hannah; Otto and Elle. When I read Libby Gleeson's Skating on Sand to classes the discussion in the book of Hannah's name being a palindrome always elicits long list of other palindromes. Jill Tomlinson's The Penguin Who Wanted to Know has a penguin called Otto and another called Anna so it too is good to start palindrome discussion. If you just want to keep palindrome discussion brief introduce the picture book Mom and Dad are Palindromes by Mark Shulman and Adam McCauley and leave it out for your students to read.

22nd February Robert Baden-Powell (1857 - 1941)

Robert Baden -Powell, the founder of the scouting movement was born on this day a long time ago. I have had reason to think about scouts in the last week or so, as I am serialising Jill Tomlinson's The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark for Year 1 at the moment. I have read this very funny story about Plop, a baby barn owl many times before and it has never failed me, but this year I am noticing that I have needed to stop to explain more than usual. Why? Well I think it is because the children that I teach no longer have some of the experiences that the children in the story do. They have a bonfire in their backyard and their father lets of fireworks. Boy scouts have a campfire, play in the dark, sing camp songs and drink cocoa. The children I teach only get to see fireworks in a distant display. They have no close experience and they do not seem to know any scouts. There are several scout halls and scout packs in the vicinity, but their cohort are not among those who attend them. My son was a cub and then a scout and it provided him with a chance to excel, something he couldn't do at school and it does seem a shame that not as many children have the chance to experience the outdoors in this way. The picture book version of the book certainly helps to show the students what a scout looks like, and Paul Howard's coloured illustrations certainly add to the book, but the humour of the novel has gone so I still prefer to read it. Look for both versions and the Berenstain Bear series of books has many that feature scouts as well.

20th January Penguin Appreciation Day

Penguins are an especially popular choice of character in children's books! They are endearing, different from other birds because they can't fly, live on ice and can dive and swim in a way that humans envy.Why then do we need to have an Appreciation or Awareness Day for penguins? It really is just a time to celebrate penguins, but it is also a good time to reflect on the fact that some of the 17 species of penguins are being threatened by climate change.

What to read? Here's some fiction and non-fiction that is enjoyed in my library:

• Cuddly Dudley by Jez Alborough

• The Penguin Who Wanted to Find Out by Jill Tomlinson and Paul Howard

• Solo by Paul Geraghty

• Nanu, Penguin Chick by Theresa Radcliffe and John Butler

• Emily and Alfie by Meredith Hooper and Emma Quay

• Little Penguin by Patrick Benson

• The Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins and Jane Chapman

• The Emperor's Kingdom; Living on the Ice by Roger Kirkwood

• Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems by Judy Sierra and Ariane Dewey

• The Penguin Book: Birds in Suits by Dr Mark Norman

and of course there's always the Atwater's Mr Popper's Penguins and the myriad of movie

s and DVDs about penguins and Jeanne Willis' new book Penguin Pandemonium.

27th December Jill Tomlinson (1931 - 1976) Diane Stanley (1943) David Metzenthen (1958)

British author, Jill Tomlinson is one of my favourite authors for serial-reading in the library. Each chapter of her animal stories stands alone and the humour and the characterisation (really anthropomorphism) sustains the story until the next week and the next lesson. For me it is hard to reconcile Jill's multiple sclerosis pain with her humour, but I am sure it is the fact that she could not physically do the writing herself, that makes The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and Penguin's Progress (renamed The Penguin Who Wanted to Find Out) read aloud so well. These two stories never let me down. I read the first to Year 1 and the second to Year 2 every year and then they read the rest of her books themselves. Paul Howard who illustrated the new editions of the chapter books has also published some of the titles in picture book formats, and while they are beautiful, the text has been abridged and much of the humour has been lost. Therefore your library really needs to have both the chapter books and the picture books.

See tomorrow's entry for Diane Stanley and David Metzenthen.

1st April Gina Wilson (1943) Paul Howard (1967)

Amazingly, this British author, Gina Wilson and British illustrator, Paul Howard have done a book together! Gina Wilson writes novels and the occasional picture book, of which we have three. Her best known picture book would be Ignis which I have written about before because of its illustrator, P.J.Lynch. Then there is Prowlpuss, illustrated by David Parkins which is a poor McTavity-the-mystery-cat-type poem, but because it is in a picture book, accessible to younger children and good for a descriptive language and vocabulary study. And the third, Grandma's Bears which is illustrated by Paul Howard, is a softer, warmer story about Nat and his sleepover at Grandma's.

Paul Howard's illustrations are memorable. They are warm, a little 'cherubic' and make animals look particularly friendly and approachable. To see this, look at any of the Jill Tomlinson animal stories that he has illustrated. Recently, while reading The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark and The Penguin Who Wanted to Know to classes we compared the illustrations from an older version of the books with Howard's new illustrations. The children decided that the new illustrations 'were mischievous and cheeky' much more in keeping with Tomlinson's humorous stories. So, hopefully Howard will continue to turn the rest of Tomlinson's stories into beautiful picture books.