14th January Shoe Buying Day

The PBS Calendar lists activities for parents to share with their children each day and today they are buying shoes. In Australia it is an activity that is on many parent-to-do lists as the new school year starts in two weeks. Remember that scene when Alexander is made to buy 'plain old white ones' when shopping for sneakers with his mother and brothers in Alexander's Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day.

I went searching for a Shoe Day as after all there does seem to be a day for everything else even 'socks', but besides Two Different Coloured Shoes Day on 3rd May and Sneakers Day on 9th October there wasn't a specific Shoe Day. So I'm instigating one, by saying there is a multitude of books, rhymes and songs which to explore when celebrating 'shoes'. And I have decided to start the term with my preschool classes doing that. I will have four or five lessons with each group so I think we will probably look at some aspect of shoes for each session. Usually we have a book, a rhyme or song and some activity.

They will all have new shoes and we will have plenty to look at, compare and discuss. We will see who has shoelaces, who has buckles and who has velcro. We will start with the book Whose Shoes? and find out how many different shoes there are and how many words we have for types of shoes. This video and song will help add to the list of shoes too.

We will have fun with Pete the Cat. He has two books which feature shoes... Pete the Cat: Rocking in my School Shoes and Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes . The children love to sing along with these which we can do courtesy of YouTube.

In each lesson with preschoolers I also like to introduce or revisit a nursery rhyme as they enjoy reciting them and don't know them like they used to. There are four that I can think of that feature shoes.
• 1 2 Buckle My Shoe
• There Was an Old Lady
• Cobbler Cobbler
• Diddle Diddle Dumpling My Son John

There are also a large number of songs complete with actions here.

While 'rhyme' is centre-most with preschoolers it will be fun to share books that are written in rhyme like
• What Can You Do With a Shoe?  by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers and Maurice Sendak. What a great question to discuss before even reading the book. Then look at the rhyme...
What can you do with a shoe? You can put it on your ear or wear it on your head or butter it like bread or use apple jam instead!
• Grandpa's Slippers by Joy Watson. This is part of a series of books about Grandpa and his clothing. They are written in rhyme and children and grandparents both laugh when these are read aloud.
• Shoes From Grandpa by Mem Fox and Patricia Mullins. This is a cumulative rhyme where family members describe the clothes they plan to give Jessie to go with the shoes from Grandpa.

Next dogs and shoes. Discuss what dogs do with shoes and then introduce these three books:
• One Two That's My Shoe! by Alison Murray
• Shoe Dog by Megan McDonald and Katherine Tillotson
• A Dog Wearing Shoes  by Sangmi Ko.
Each of these is humorous and likely to enthuse the children to talk.

And of course there's always fairytales. Here are five which feature shoes:
• Cinderella
• The Elves and the Shoemaker
• Puss in Boots
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses , and
• Red Shoes  by Hans Christian Andersen.

See the shoe possibilities really are endless!

9th May Maurice Sendak (10/6/1928 - 8/5/2012)

I just read the sad news. The world will be a poorer place with the passing of Maurice Sendak. We needed him to keep the fire in children's literature. Together with Tomi Ungerer he has kept debate alive about what children need, are capable of coping with and what critics need to back off about. In an odd sort of way Sendak is the reason I pursued children's literature as my area of further study. I had seen the power of literature using Where the Wild Things Are and Aidan Chambers' Booktalk questions and I wanted to know more. See my birthday entry for the 10th June. Also see the NY Times article and this article where it includes Sendak's wonderful quote about his view of ebooks. Interesting timing as today I just finished writing in the library newsletter about ebooks and apps.

Ebooks - "I hate them. It's like making believe there's another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of sex. There isn't another kind of book! A book is a book is a book."

13th September Roald Dahl (1916 - 1990) Else Minarik (1920)

Another day to remember classics in children's literature and then revisit them afresh. As each new lot of children come to school and enjoy my library I get to share Roald Dahl and Else Minarik anew and revel in the children's pleasure, being just that they discover that they can read Little Bear all by themselves, or that they come to tell me that they found a 'rude' word in the Dahl book that they are reading or that 'did you know Mr Twit is disgusting!'

Roald Dahl is so well known that the 13th September has become known as Roald Dahl Day and schools organise activities to celebrate his birth.

Dahl was born to Norwegian parents in England and was educated there. Minarik was born in Denmark to Danish parents and migrated to the USA when she was four. They both chose to write books that children would read. Minarik saw a gap in the market for books that children inGrade 1 could read for themselves and so wrote the Little Bear series which are made even more special because they are illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Roald Dahl chose to write books that children would love because of their irreverence and anti-adult stance. He too, has been fortunate in that many of his books have been illustrated by Quentin Blake, also someone not to be missed in the world of children's books. Both pairs, writers and illustrators have become classics!

25th July Ruth Krauss (1901 - 1993)

Ruth Krauss was a prolific children's author and many of her books are still in print. There are biographies that say she was born in 1901 and others that say 1911. Whichever she lived a long life. She was fortunate with her illustrators, getting to work with many well-known illustrators, namely her husband Crockett Johnson (of Harold and the Purple Crayon fame), Maurice Sendak (who she published eight books with between 1952 and 1960), Marc Simont and Helen Oxenbury. Maurice Sendak was so enamoured of Ruth Krauss' writing that he has been quoted as saying, "Prior to the commercialisation of children's books, there was Ruth Krauss."

Ruth Krauss' best-known book is probably The Carrot Seed. It was published in 1945 and has never been out of print. It tells the story of a very young boy who plants a carrot seed and patiently waits for it too grow. He tends it with love and has faith that it will grow despite all the adults who assure him that it will not. In contrast her story with Helen Oxenbury, The Growing Story has everything else growing as the seasons change, but the young boy feels that he hasn't grown at all. Both stories are very relevant to the age-group that I teach.

10th June Maurice Sendak (1928)

Today is master storyteller Maurice Sendak's birthday. Hopefully there won't be a child leaving childhood who hasn't empathised with Max when reading Where the Wild Things Are. Reading it to school children now is very different from when I first read it as a new teacher, because of the movie and the vast number of picture books available now compared to then. Today's children are spoilt for choice and much of that is thanks to Maurice Sendak and the influence he has had on subsequent illustrators and authors.

One of my most memorable afternoons as a teacher was spent with a Year 5 class that was predominantly boys who were very weak readers. I had used Aidan Chambers' Tell Me framework to initiate the discussion of the book and one of the four questions I asked was the one to do with time, 'How long did it take this story to happen?' For almost two hours the children in the class argued, revisited the illustrations, reread the text and steadfastly supported their view. There was a group of children who took the time bit literally and were convinced it was a year and a day; another group who thought it was only minutes because dinner was still hot and there were three boys who had followed the moon in the pictures and were sure that it was closer to a month. As a teacher it was extremely rewarding seeing children who had read very few books for themselves be so excited about a book that had been read to them. I had always been a strong advocate of the power of children's literature over reading scheme materials but this convinced me of the need to learn more and thus I embarked on post graduate study of children's literature.

Much has been written about Maurice Sendak. He elicits strong opinions because his books are dark and far from cutesy, but the number of stuffed toys, videos, books and DVDs about the wild things tells you that children love the story. In life as in his books, Sendak is a passionate advocate of children. He has said:

“These are difficult times for children. Children have to be brave to survive what the world does to them. And this world is scrungier and rougher and dangerouser than it ever was before.”