Book Week Planning for Symphony of Stories Part 8: Little People Big Dreams: Musicians

Recently I have read so much on line about how uninspired teacher librarians are with this year's Book Week slogan: Symphony of Stories.  I'm not sure why, there's so many books featuring music and you should let the books do the display, not spend hours creating unnecessary landfill. You want your books to be borrowed. If you are short of music books, I'm sure you are not short of the very popular Little People Big Dreams books. They are probably the most borrowed books in my library and I keep them in bins altogether so the students can find them easily and without making a mess of the shelves. 

There are now more than twenty titles which feature famous musicians. Type in Little People Big Dreams Musicians and see how many there is. Here's some examples  to get you started. Think about making copies of their covers into music notes or putting them on old CDs or records to make a display with the books.

25th August Book Week

Another Book Week over, well nearly. Unfortunately, one of our visiting authors had Covid, but we will catch up with this next week. Despite all the vitriol in newspapers over the last weeks, a good time was had at our combined Dress Up Parade and Grandparents Day. We made it easy for everyone this year. We dressed up as someone we admire or someone that you are dreaming of being when grown up. Teachers and students had been reading biographies, in particular the series, Little People Big Dreams. I dressed as Meg Lowman, the scientist in The Leaf Detective. Other teachers were Jane Goodall, David Attenborough, Coco Channel and Yayoi Kusama. Previously, Dr Vanessa Pirotta had visited for Science Week and inspired the children, so many of the students were scientists, but there were authors, artists, soccer players, dancers, singers, zookeepers, policemen and firefighters. There were no prizes, just plenty of recognition, talk about good people and high spirits and then the children took their grandparents off to their classroom for other activities, some of which included sharing and reading books.

The Queen's Platinum Jubilee

Queen Elizabeth II is the longest reigning monarch in British history and 2022 marks her Platinum Jubilee, celebrating 70 years of service as Queen, and while I think Australia should  cease to be part of the Commonwealth and govern without a Governor General appointed by the Queen, I do think that Queen Elizabeth has proved herself to be an amazing individual and someone to be revered. My daughter lives and works in London and this weekend coming there is a four day weekend there (Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th June) to celebrate the culmination of the Queen's Jubilee which I am sure she will appreciate.

What will I be doing to celebrate? Well we could have a display in the library of the few books we do have that feature the Queen in some capacity, but given that this week is also National Reconciliation Week which I think is very important for Australia, it would probably not be timely or diplomatic to celebrate the Queen and Australia's links to British history. Perhaps after Reconciliation Week we could have a very low key display.

What books? We have these:

• Steve Antony's series

 

• Nicholas Allan's The Queen's Knickers

• Peppa Visits the Queen

• Little Elizabeth by Valerie Wilding and Pauline Gregory

• Queen Elizabeth II by Susannah Davidson

• Tea With the the Queen by Pip Jones and Ella Okstrad

• Shhh! Don't Wake the Royal Baby by Martha Mumford and Ada Grey

• And one to buy, the latest in Little People Big Dreams  series