3rd April Happy Easter

It's finally school holidays and I can fall in a heap. The family is all at home so the house is full. It's raining like it often is at Easter. We've eaten copious amounts of hot cross buns which I love and we are planning to cook kedgeree which is a family tradition for Good Friday.

The last week of school was very busy with Easter services and hat parades and an International Day, but in amongst all this in the last couple of weeks, I did have time to read some of my favourite Easter books, Muddy Footprints by Mary Small; Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco; Max's Chocolate Chicken by Rosemary Wells and The Smallest Bilby and the Easter Tale by Nette Hilton. But I have a new favourite, The Easter Bunny's Assistant  by Jan Thomas. This book is a real hoot. I read it to preschool classes with the assistance of their teacher. Like Mark Sommerset's Baa Baa Smart Sheep and Mo Willem's Elephant and Piggie  books this book is written for two speakers, the Easter bunny and his assistant, Skunk. Each class teacher and I hammed up the respective parts to make a wonderful reader's theatre rendition of the book. The students loved the fact that skunk smelled and joined in with the humour, holding their noses and warning the Easter bunny about what was going to happen. They even predicted the peg ending. An added bonus of the book is a well set out procedure for decorating and dying hard boiled eggs. This book is such good value all round!

14th May International Migratory Bird Day

International Migratory Bird Day or World Migratory Bird Day is celebrated on the second Saturday of May, to draw attention to the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats.

This year’s theme is ‘Land use changes from a bird’s-eye view’ and aims to raise awareness of the effects of human land use on migratory birds. There is a trailer and a copy of this year's poster here.

I can think of many books that feature bird migration. Colin Thiele does Australian birds very well for Australian children's literature. Mary Small's Night of the Muttonbirds is worth a read too. When I was a child Dutch author Meindert de Jong, won the Newbery Medal with The Wheel on the School a wonderful story about migrating storks. Holly Keller's Grandfather's Dream has a similiar migrating stork theme to the De Jong story but is a picture book. And of course there is Paul Gallico's Snow Goose. Two other picture books about migrating geese that come to mind are John Birmingham's Borka and Father Goose by William Lishman.

5th April

The Easter break is just about over, but as there are no birthdays today, I thought I would write about picture books for Easter. My favourite Easter picture book is Muddy Footprints by Mary Small and Pat Reynolds. It is old and out of print, but I share it with Kindergarten every year in the week before Easter. It is ideal because being Australian, it depicts an Easter where

it is raining, it is Autumn and the outdoor egghunt is thwarted. The children relate instantly to Sam and Lucy because they have lived this experience!

Egghunts are the focus of two other picture books suitable for sharing with Kindergarten or preschool children. Firstly, Max's Chocolate Chicken by Rosemary Wells. Here Max sabotages bossy Ruby's carefully planned egghunt in his usual mischievous way. Children love watching the pictures tell another story from the one that Ruby and the text are telling. A similar idea is used in Olivier Dunrea's newest Gossie and Friends book, Ollie's Easter Eggs. Gossie, Gertie, BooBoo and Peedie are working hard while Ollie plays. Each of them collects, dyes and hides an egg, but Ollie moves them to other hiding places. As usual the crisp white pages have perfect ink and watercolour illustrations.