Read Grow Inspire Book Week Slogan 2023 (Part 3) READ

 READ    WHY?

Were you born to read? I hope so. This is a great book to start any discussion about reading, why we read and the power of reading. Here is the blurb for Born to Read which is out of print but you will find it in a library or on Youtube.

"the narrative chronicles the amazing successes of Sam--thanks to his early love of books. The story ranges from Sam's infancy, when his mother reads him a picture book ("then another, then another, then another . . . such a perfect, patient mother"), to school age, when he cleverly uses some of his favorite books to rid his town of the rampaging baby giant, Grundaloon. 'Here's my secret, ' Sam decreed. 'Readers win and winners read.' Marc Brown's playful pictures joyously complement this fun-to-read, upbeat story."

Sam certainly is an inspiration!

There are activity pages from the publisher here that you could use or adapt for your students.

If your students are older read a poem from Read! Read! Read! by Amy Ludwig Van Derwater and Ryan O'Rourke. Here there are 23 inspirational poems to explore. In Pretending  a small girl remembers how in the beginning she felt reading was hard, but for days, weeks, months she practised, then

"Learning to read 

felt like  

learning to fly.  

And one day  

I took off. 

I was swooping  

alone 

over words 

once confusing 

but now 

all my own.”

The artwork in this book is also inspiring.

Image copyright Ryan O’Rourke, 2017. Courtesy of WordSong Publishing.

Image copyright Ryan O’Rourke, 2017. Courtesy of WordSong Publishing.

Another source you could explore as provocation with older students is the poem English by T.S.Wyatt which explores the pronunciation of so many unusual English words. The students will need to see the poem to appreciate it fully. There are many versions on line that you can download. Students will laugh at this poem, only if they can read it. That is the power of it. You need to be a reader!

There is a collection of picture books about reading here, so if you cannot access those above you may choose something from here. They all have the power of reading as their theme. If I was a classroom teacher who read a book day I would choose five books to read. 

1. Born to Read by Judy Sierra and Marc Brown

2. A Story for Bear  by Dennis Haseley and Jim LaMarche (click on title for activities. The last one is very special *)

3. No Buddy Like a Book  by Allan Wolf and Brian Farley

4. Rectangle Time by Pamela Paul and Becky Cameron

5. When You Open a Book  by Caroline Derlatka and Sara Ugolotti 

Or read a biography or a book about learning to read such as

1. The Oldest Student  by Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora

2. Mr George Baker  by Amy Hest and Jon J. Muth

3. Thank You, Mr Falkner by Patricia Pollacco

4. The Girl Who Buried Her Dreams in a Can by Tererai Trent 

5. More than Anything Else by Marie Bradby and Chris K. Soenpiet

 * leave your students a collection of books like woman left bear. Put down  a cloth blanket and on it put some pinecones, leaves and a stack of books from your classroom library. To make it extra special, get a realistic looking grizzly bear plushy and leave a handwritten note from bear, maybe something along the lines of “To _____’s class – Bear would love it if you continued to read to me this year.

25th November Shirley Climo (1928) Mordicai Gerstein (1935) Jim LaMarche

I have just come back from the shops where I picked up a copy of Bear's First Christmas by Robert Kinerk and Jim LaMarche for half price. What a good way to be reminded that it is Jim LaMarche's birthday. I love the illustration of the moose, the bear and the crow seen from above scratching at the iced bog. The bear in this book is so adorable looking, very huggable looking, and it makes it hard for children here in Australia who have never seen a bear to perceive of them as wild animals to be feared. LaMarche has given the animals human-like personalities and made the snowy environment look very inviting.

I thought it was Mordicai Gerstein's birthday yesterday, but Anita Silvey's almanac website says it is today and she is such an authority on American children's literature that I will write about him today. He is an American author/illustrator who has a large number of books to his credit, but here in Australia, he is really only known because of his 2004 Caldecott Medal winning book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. This book tells of the amazing feat performed by French high-wire trapeze artist Philippe Petit who walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York in 1974.

American author, Shirley Climo's stories are often based on folklore. She has said that her love of folklore began in her childhood and she has taken these stories and retold them for new audiences. She has written several versions of the Cinderella story. In the library we have

* The Egyptian Cinderella illustrated by Ruth Heller

* The Persian Cinderella illustrated by Robert Florczak

* The Korean Cinderella illustrated by Ruth Heller

* The Irish Cinderlad illustrated by Loretta Krupinski

25th November P.D.Eastman (1909 - 1986) Marc Brown (1946) Crescent Dragonwagon (1952) Jim LaMarche

It is the birthday for four Americans today:

P.D. Eastman is the name Philip Dey Eastman used on his books that he wrote and illustrated for Ted Giesel's (aka Dr Seuss) series of Beginner Books. He wrote several books, but is best known for Are You My Mother? which turned 40 this year. It is still very popular with beginning readers who enjoy the plot and feel amazed that they can read a whole book!

Marc Brown is the author of the Arthur books. Next year Arthur will be 35, so he is another 'stayer' in children's literature. My children often ask,"but what is he?'' Arthur is an aardvark, an animal that they know very little about. Last year during our safari for Book Week, one class researched aardvarks and decided that Arthur didn't act much like an aardvark. He was more like a child just like them! Marc Brown is interviewed on a Reading Rocket Video.

Crescent Dragonwagon is a name that each time I see I have a little chuckle to myself and think that it can't possibly be her real name, and I have just read that it is not the name she was born with. It is a great story if you are interested in people and how they think at certain points in time. I knew that she was Charlotte Zolotow's daughter, so I guessed it was a pseudonym, but not so. Although Crescent has written a number of books, there is only one in my library, a lovely, lyrical poem Half a Moon and One Whole Star illustrated very evocatively by Jerry Pinkney.

Jim LaMarche is an illustrator of beautiful books where the children in them seem larger than life and so close to the eye. See the interview with him here. I first met his work in Dennis Haseley's A Story For Bear, Laura Krauss Melmed's The Rainbabies and Little Oh, but more recently I have purchased The Elves and the Shoemaker and Up.

28th June Dennis Haseley (1950)

There is only one book by Dennis Haseley in my library, A Story For Bear illustrated by Jim LaMarche. It is a fanciful, yet enjoyable story about a bear who is curious about a woman he sees reading by a house in the forest. He befriends her and listens attentively as she reads to him every day while she holidays in the house. The bear looks so happy and the story reads aloud in such a way that you can imagine the power of story to engross. For this reason I have used it at parent nights, reading it to the parents to show them the power of story and why they need to read aloud to their children. Just as the bear and the woman part, going their independent ways, stronger for having known each other and having had that close relationship, so will a parent and child who have had the pleasure of shared reading.