Showing posts with label Juliette MacIver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Juliette MacIver. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

13th May Frog Jumping Day

Frog Jumping Day is a good day to celebrate frogs and their amazing ability.

'Frogs have great jumping capabilities and are the best jumpers among all vertebrates given their size.'


Collect all the frog books you can find, both stories and expository texts and set aside time to read and learn, read and laugh and read and share. The most borrowed frog book in the library is Juliette MacIver's The Frog Who Lost His UnderwearThere are so many favourite 'frog' series in my library.

There's
* Frog by Max Velthuijs. There is a dozen or so books in this series and they have recently been reissued in a larger format with covers that no longer have a bordered illustration.

* A Boy, a Dog and a Frog by Mercer Mayer. These little books are textless and small hands love them and tell the stories to each other without any trouble. There are six of them.

* Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel. This series has been around for a long time, but so many generations of children have learned to read using these beginning chapter books. They are always in print.

* Lester and Clyde by James Reese. These three books are very old now, out of print and hard to find, but I know teachers who share these stories with their class and then the children are keen to borrow them.

While these aren't a series, there are several versions of the dreamtime story of Tiddalick , a frog who caused a flood in my library, complete with puppets so that the children can make a play. It would be good also to introduce the fairytale  The Frog Prince  because it is one of the Grimm stories that not as many children know. Read a traditional version with fairytale language, not a 'reader' and then compare it with a spoof like Jackie Urbanovic's Prince of a Frog. Have fun revisiting lots of old favourites and jumping around like a frog. Below is a collection of stories about frogs. There are a large number of nonfiction books too listed here.


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Sunday, August 3, 2014

5th August National Underwear Day

Who would have thought, a day to celebrate underwear! It is a great topic to celebrate in a Prep school library because it is a topic explored in a large number of children's picture books. When I type 'underwear' in my subject search for my library there are over forty books I can use to make a display, so that is just what I will do tomorrow. Of course there's all the Captain Underpants titles, with another one about to arrive very soon, all the Claire Freedman Aliens in Underpants series, and Todd Doodler's Bear in Underwear series, but there are many stand-alines too. It is interesting too, how many of these books are accompanied by a toy! Obviously they are sellers. Our latest toy is the elongated orange frog from New Zealand author Juliette MacIver's  The Frog Who Lost His Underpants. If you haven't read Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants do and share it with a class. It is fun!  

Here is just some of the titles in the library: