21st April Tea Day

”You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
~ C.S. Lewis

There is nothing nicer than a good read and a cup of tea. So celebrating Tea Day is a must. Tea is not something children give a lot of thought to, because very few of them actually drink tea, but so many children's picture books feature tea. At the very minimum they finish with and 'they all had tea'...it is a warm, secure, happy, family feeling to finish with. Think of The Elephant and the Bad Baby at the end where everyone goes back to the baby's home and his mother gives them tea and pancakes. Think of Alfie Gets in First and how after the problem of the locked door is finally solved everybody sits down for a cup of tea. Yes, these books are old but the pattern continues and now there are even stories with tea in the title.

Many years ago when I started teaching I did a lengthy integrated social science unit called 'What's in a cup of tea?' and my Year 5 class and I explored the tea industry, the sugar industry and the milk industry for a whole term. What fun it was and given my knowledge now of children's literature I would have had plenty of good books to add to it. What a shame the current curriculum doesn't allow for such tangents or flights of fancy anymore.

Below are covers of books in our library that feature tea parties, cups of tea or the importance of tea. The Biography of Tea pictured above gives a comprehensive history of tea and its role in many cultures.

5th June Hot Air Balloon Day

I have written about Hot Air Balloon Day before here, but recently I have added three new books to the library which are well worth searching out for this topic or just as good reads.

 Lighter Than Air  by Matthew Clark Smith and Matt Tevares tells the story of Sophie Blanchard, the first woman pilot. A must read for all girls who need convincing they are capable of anything.








 A Voyage in the Clouds by Matthew Olshan and Sophie Blackall is another         story loosely based on a true event in history.











How the Queen Found the Perfect Cup of Tea  by Kate Hosford and Gabi Swiatkowska is a fun story about a hot air balloon trip that the queen takes.

19th March Steve Light (1970)

Last Wednesday I attended a fabulous conference, The  Creativity Project that was put on in Sydney by Big Fat Smile, an organisation that is a community owned, non-profit organisation that started on the South Coast to help and inspire families and children. There were some truly inspirational speakers. The first was the author, John Marsden and it was so good to hear him talk about teaching writing in the way that works for writers rather than to purely do well in a standardised test. He mentioned one of my favourite writers, Jane Gardham and I was motivated to come home and pull out some of her stories to reread. I was amazed too, to read that she is now in her eighties, but still writing.

The final speaker was Richard Gill and as usual his passion for creativity, teaching and the arts oozed from him. He makes you want to race back to school and be as zealous as possible. Of course there were other wonderful speakers as well, but these two were my highlights, together with the unstoppable MC Annabel Crabb, another truly inspiring role-model.

I am looking at illustrators and writers of picture books with new eyes too. At the moment I am very enamoured of three very creative books, Zephyr Takes Flight  by Steve Light,  Infinity and Me by Kate Hosford and Gabi Swiatkowska, and You Are Stardust by Elin Kelsey and Soyeon Kim. Each of these books is extremely original, idea-wise and art-wise. They call out to be examined closely and to be revisited regularly, my criteria for very good books.



As an added bonus I have just learned from Happy Birthday Author that it  happens to be Steve Light's birthday today. I need to look for other books by each of these authors and illustrators because they are all 'firsts' for me.