10th April National Farm Animals Day

Each year on April 10th, National Farm Animals Day focuses attention on the humane care of farm animals. This is a day celebrated in the USA, but it is pertinent here too, as we are in the midst of The Sydney Royal Easter Show (6th to 17th April), Australia's largest annual event.

Here, the country and the city join together to enjoy animal experiences, produce competitions, rural past times and carnival fun. This show was first held in 1823. It is run by the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW which rewards agricultural excellence and invests in agricultural programs and rural communities, so of course supports humane care of farm animals.

While there is not an abundance of books about the Royal Easter Show, there are these books: Show Day by Penny Matthews and Andrew McLean, The Show  by Nan Hunt and Bettina Ogden and A Day at the Show by Gwyn Perkins,

and of course, there are books about dog shows, cat shows and pony competitions a plenty.

A fun way to talk about how farm animals are cared for might be to look at books where the animals demand to be treated differently as they do in Farmer Duck  by Martin Waddell and Betty Cronin's series that started with Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type. 

Many of my Year 2 girls get hooked on the Juliet Nearly a Vet series by Rebecca Johnson because there is lots of animal care and competitions.

And these, just because they feature farm animals who triumph and are favourites!

16th January New School Year List 2: Separation Anxiety

As the school I work at has seven preschool classes as well as four classes of each of Kindergarten to Year 2, there is always a need at some time for books that address the worries that go with being separated from a parent while at school. Most teachers have their favourite 'go to' book for this purpose, but it is always good to have a few more at hand in case the specific one they want is on loan at the time. If you're a parent you might like to adopt the Willa Perlman idea of kisses in your pocket from the book Pocket Kisses.  

At one stage this was very popular in our preschool, but the library copy of the book fell apart and hasn't been replaced. Just looking though, I see that it is still available. 

Separation anxiety is a normal rite of passage for young children. It is common at drop-off time, but can occur anytime and with even the sturdiest of children on a 'bad' day. Picture books enable adults to address the angst of separation with humour and warmth and as many of them feature animals, there is a distance from the child which means they can smile at the animal's quandary. Most children just need reassurance that their parent will return to pick them up.

Below are some books from our library that I have recommended over the years. The beginning titles are usually all that is needed to reassure students that their parent will return. Often I send the book accompanied by a plush toy that accompanies the book so that the child has something to hold while the story is read and discussed. Chester  and Llama Llama Red Pajama,  but we have an owl baby and a duck which stands in for Puddle.

Most teachers know and use The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, but there are many others:

1. Oh My Baby, Little One by Kathi Appelt and Jane Dyer

2. Puddle's Big Step  by Amber Stewart and Layn Marlow

3. The Kiss Box  by Bonnie Verburg and Henry Cole

4. Llama Llama Misses Mama  by Anna Dewdney

5. Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson

6. Wemberly Worried by Kevin Henkes

7. Will I Have a Friend?  by Mirriam Cohen and Lillian Hoban

8. First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg and Judy Love

9. Love Waves  by Rosemary Wells

10. Mama Don't Go by Rosemary Wells

11. The Invisible String and The Invisible Web  by Patrice Karst and Joanne Lew-Vriethoff  (an earlier version of The Invisible String was illustrated by Geoff Stevenson)

12. Mum Goes to Work  by Libby Gleeson and Leila Rudge (earlier edition illustrated by Penny Azar)

If you do not have these or the child is older look for these:

• Tomorrow I'll Be Brave  by Jessica Hische

• My Strong Mind  by  Niels Van Hove

• Parachute  by Danny Parker and Matt Ottley

• That's Me Loving You by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

6th February Lame Duck Day

I was reading today and happened to notice that it was Lame Duck Day and that made me think that I hadn't written about ducks or Duck Day on this blog. Of course being a Lame Duck has very little to do with ducks, but given how many picture books feature ducks I got to thinking about them. Well there's Rubber Ducky Day ( January, 13th), Donald Duck Day (June, 9th) and even Dead Duck Day (June, 5th) but there does not appear to be World Duck Day or International Duck Day. What a shame. There are so many endearing ducks in picture books, starting with my all time favourite Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.

The children I teach are aged between four and eight so their introduction to 'ducks' in picture books is usually a version of Five Little Ducks,  but very quickly they move to the series about ducks that we have in boxes in the library. There is
• Daisy Duck by Jane Simmons
• Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
• Baby Duck  by Amy Hest and Jill Barton
• Duck in a Truck  by Jez Alborough
• Sarah and Duck by Sarah Gomes Harris
• the madcap duck in What is Chasing Duck? in the Giggle Gang by Jan Thomas
• the zany Katy Duck by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Henry Cole
• Duck Duck Dinosaur  by Kallie George and Oriol Vidal
• Duck Duck Porcupine by Salina Yoon.

Of course there's other ducks to fall in love with such as
• Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury
• Just Ducks  by Nicola Davies and Salvatore Rubbino
• Alexander in Alexander's Outing by Pamela Allen
• Ben and Duck by Sara Acton
• The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese, and the newer
• Duck!  by Meg McKinlay and Nathaniel Ekstrom
• I'm a Duck  by Eve Bunting and Will Hillenbrand
and if you are looking for a serial for this age group there's always Meg McKinlay and Leila Rudge's
• Duck For a Day  and Definitely No Ducks
And if this isn't enough duck books, look here.

18th February Barbara Firth (1928 - 2013)

Sad news this week, reading that Barbara Firth had died on 18th February, and so soon after Jan Ormerod. Two wonderful illustrators that we will not see any new illustrations from. Luckily so much of their work is well known and still in print.

Barbara Firth is  the English illustrator responsible for the wonderful Little Bear that Martin Wardell created, but she brought to life, firstly in Can't You Sleep, Little Bear? which won the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Smarties Prize in 1987. There were then four more titles and the series went on to sell more than seven million copies.

When I was a young teacher and mother, Can't You Sleep Little Bear? was new and a must read. Then Martin Waddell was in Australia and visited our school to talk to Year 1. The children were enthralled. His publisher left posters which we displayed in the library and all over the school. We had a small toy Little Bear that the children read with and ever since then I have felt the need to share these books because their gentle messages work so well with young children.

Currently, my parents and children are newly involved in the Premier's Reading Challenge and therefore are on a mission to only take books with red stickers on their spines. This means any book without a sticker is going to languish in the library for a couple of months until they have read their thirty books.

No matter, I was going to honour Barbara Firth and yesterday I got out all her books that we have in the library and put together a small display. A few had red stickers and they were gone by home time, but so had a few others...good, parents with taste who will hopefully come back looking for more now that they have been introduced to her work and the series of five books about Little Bear:
• Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?
• Let's Go Home, Little Bear
• Sleep Tight, Little Bear
• Well Done, Little Bear
• You and Me, Little Bear

 "I have always been biased toward illustrating natural history, so it was a joy to be able to draw pages and pages of bears," Barbara Firth says of her collaboration with Martin Waddell on Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?, the first of their classic Big and Little Bear series. As part of her research, she spent hours at a zoo, carefully watching and recording the movements and habits of bears. 


Barbara Firth has illustrated for other writers besides Martin Waddell and they too, show her aptitude for animals. See Karen Wallace's Bears in the Forest and Peter Hansard's  Wag Wag Wag, a book about dogs.

14th December Whose view?

Yesterday while writing and thinking about nativity stories, I realised how many there were where the narrator was an onlooker at the birth of Jesus and how often this was an animal. This is an interesting way to add some new interest to a well-known story. It allows the reader to look anew, to move their focus and to see different perspectives of an event.

I particularly like Michael Foreman's Cat in the Manger. I love the illustrations and the way they move the focus. I love Foreman's use of the colour 'blue', not a colour that you necessarily think of when you think of the nativity story and I like that the narrator is a cat, not the donkey, a sheep or a cow, animals you expect in the stable.

But there are others:

• The Witness: A Christmas Story by Robert Westall and Sophy Williams is also told from a cat's point of view. Here the cat is looking for somewhere to have her kittens and she finds a stable, the one where Mary is about to also give birth. The cat witnesses the birth and forms a bond with the family.

• On This Special Night by Claire Freedman and Simon Mendez. Here a mother cat and her kitten are asleep in their own barn when they are visited by other animals who are travelling to see a bright star in the sky. They too decide to set off to see what the star is for and they learn that it is indeed a special night.

• Room For a Little One: A Christmas Tale by Martin Waddell and Jason Cockcroft. Here Kind Ox invites all weary travellers to share the stable, including Old Dog, Stray Cat, Small Mouse and Tired Donkey who is carrying Mary by saying, "There's always room for a little one here."

• The Ox and the Donkey: A Christmas Story by Gunter Spang and Loek Koopmans. Here there is a lazy ox who eats more than his share of the food and a gentle donkey sharing the stable. When Mary and Joseph arrive, their kindness transforms the ox into a decent caring animal and the protagonists who were enemies, inspired by the miracle of Christmas become friends.

• Home For Christmas by Sally Grindley and Karin Littlewood. Unlike the others, here the focus is on a homeless child who sees Mary and Joseph at a market in the village and he wonders what it would be like to experience the warmth of a family. During the night he is awakened by a crying child and a bright light. This story explores the themes of home, family and belonging in more than one way.

While none of these books offer anything amazingly new, they are all by well known and revered picture book authors and illustrators, they do offer a different slant, a more personal touch for readers to connect to, each is specifically designed for a very young audience and each has very beautiful artwork which adds to the specialness of the event.

2nd October World Farm Animal Day

World Farm Animal Day is devoted to mourning, memorializing and exposing the useless death and sufferings of the pigs, chickens, cows, turkeys and the other sentient and innocent animals slaughtered and raised for food. October 2nd is the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi who was the outspoken supporter of the non- violence towards animals.

Good picture books to use today would be those where the farm animals have the last laugh at the expense of humans! See:

• Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury

• Click, Clack Moo: Cows That Type; Thump, Quack, Moo; Giggle, Giggle, Quack by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin

• Punk Farm; Punk Farm on Tour by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

• Serious Farm by Tim Egan

• Funny Farm by Mark Teague

28th March Doreen Cronin

I read today that it is American author Doreen Cronin's birthday. I don't know when she was born, but I will still celebrate her birthday in the future in the library. She is the author of that wonderful book about cows that type, Click Clack Moo and all the subsequent farmyard spin offs illustrated by Betsy Lewin. Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type always creates great discussion when compared with Martin Waddell's Farmer Duck.

Doreen Cronin is also the author of the series of diaries about minibeasts, The Diary of a Spider; The Diary of a Worm and The Diary of a Fly. These are illustrated by Harry Bliss.

I had already planned to use Doreen's books Wiggle; Stretch and Bounce having fun with my preschool class tomorrow, so it will be an added bonus to tell them about her birthday! These three books are illustrated by Scott Menchin. No matter who is chosen to illustrate Doreen's books they seem bound to succeed.