13th - 19th November National Recycling Week

The preschool on the corner of the street I live in is very good at letting the community know what they are celebrating. The signboard is changed regularly to let you know what they think is important and children's work displayed. This week they tell us it is National Recycling Week.

This week aims to encourage Australians to better recycle. Planet Ark started the campaign in 1996. This year’s theme is ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’.

The focus is on giving resources a second life, consuming less, reducing the need for new resources, and of course, recycling!

The students at our school are very well informed when it comes to recycling and the library has a myriad of resources to assist with this. See here.

Two new books in the library that are just perfect for under eights  and which exemplify this year's theme are:

• Rubbish! Don't Throw It Away by Linda Newbery and Katie Rewse.

From pine cones on the grass to old coat- hangers in the cupboard, from empty cardboard boxes to unwanted curtains, used wrapping paper, yogurt pots, odd socks, sinks and fallen leaves What can we do with all this stuff that nobody wants?

The Dragonflies nursery know exactly what to do. They are full of creative ideas and love to think up ways in which old things can be made new and useful again. And it’s all free!

• Ruby's Repair Cafe  by Michelle Worthington and Zoe Bennett

Ruby loves to fix things, rather than throwing them away. When a shiny new department store opens next door to Ruby’s Repair Cafe, everyone in town soon forgets about fixing things. But will Ruby be able to save her family business from big business before the rubbish takes over the town?

28th February World Rare Disease Day

World Rare Disease Day is an annual observance held on the last day of February (February 28th or February 29th in a Leap Year) to raise awareness for rare diseases and improve access to treatments and medical representation for individuals with rare and genetic diseases and their families.

An official video has been produced which draws its inspiration from the RDD slogan for 2013, ”Rare Disorders without Borders”. It mixes stop motion animation with live action. Its very talented  director, Carlo S. Hintermann has produced a thought provoking, poignant video for us all to enjoy and to help continue the Rare Disease discourse.

What is a rare disease? It is a disease that is life-threatening or chronically debilitating, has a low prevalence and a high level of complexity. It usually is incurable. 80% are of genetic origin and 50% affect children.

It is timely then that this book just arrived in my library called Yellow Dress Day. It is written by Michelle Worthington and illustrated by Sophie Norsa. It tells the story of Ava who likes to wear a different colour dress for each type of weather, so on hot days she wears red, on rainy days, purple and blue for cold days. One whirly, windy morning Ava wants to go outside and play with her puppy but her yellow dress, the one for windy days, is missing. What will she and her mother do?

The author, Michelle Worthington has been friends with a family who have a little girl called Ava who has Rett Syndrome, a rare neurological disease. One day after visiting Ava and her family she went home and wrote this story for her. 5% of the royalties from the book are going to the International Rett Syndrome Foundation. An added bonus is the illustrations which are amazing when you consider that this is Sophie's first picture book and that she was still at school when she did these illustrations. She was discovered while on work-experience. Hopefully she will go on to illustrate more books.