10th August World Lion Day

Lions – with the scientific name Panthera leo – are the second-largest cat in the world, just behind the Asian tiger.

Three million years ago, lions roamed all over Africa and the Eurasian supercontinent. But today, various ice ages and changes in the natural environment means that their range is reduced primarily to Africa and select parts of Asia. 

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, lions are a “vulnerable” species, meaning that their numbers could and should be higher. Currently, researchers estimate that there are between 30,000 and 100,000 lions left on planet Earth. Without significant intervention, there is a chance that they could find themselves on the endangered list alongside other species most at risk of extinction.

World Lion Day,  has three objectives. The first is to raise awareness of the plight of the lion and the issues that the species face in the wild. The second is to find ways to protect the big cat’s natural environment, such as creating more national parks and reducing the areas in which people can settle. And the third is to educate people who live near wild cats on the dangers and how to protect themselves.

Lions are the only cats that regularly live in social groups and their groups are called prides. The size of a typical pride is usually between 10 to 15 animals but it can vary between 2 to 40 members. In a pride, females do most of the hunting and cub rearing and males defend the pride territory. While females live with the pride for life, males usually leave the pride when they are a few years old.

Lions are not as popular as tigers in the library or in picture books in general, but they do get borrowed and it is always worth doing a display. What the library has is here, but I do have some favourites, which are these:

Dumazi is a young savvy Zulu girl who encounters a yellow lion caught in a trap one day. Although compassionate, she instantly surmises the lion’s true nature and only after making a deal for her life, agrees to set him free. But can one really trust a hungry lion? And is Dumazi’s brazen bravery and quick thinking enough to save her life?

It tells the story of a lion who, bored by his rural life in the savannah, seeks excitement and opportunity in the city of light. On arrival in Paris the lion is disappointed to find that despite his size, people barely pay attention to him, not even when he lets out a ferocious roar on the busy Metro. Taking in the sights and sounds of Paris it successfully conveys the experience of being a stranger in a new city and the process of understanding our own identity. 

There are seven steps to becoming a proper lion, including Looking Fierce, Roaring, Prowling Around, and Pouncing. Our young hero, a rather meek and scrawny human boy, does his best to learn the necessary skills during his training with a master instructor (who just happens to be a real lion). After a grueling set of lessons, the boy discovers that that the final step--Looking Out for Your Friends--is the most important of all.

All the books in this series are good, but I really like this one about why lions don't have a home like most other animals.

And I am especially fond of the fable The Lion and the Mouse and there are so many beautifully illustrated versions, but none are better than the pencil lion drawings in this one:

Curious Creatures, Wild Minds

When the CBCA announced this slogan for Book Week I did wonder how I was going to explain it to and enthuse my under eight year old audience in the library. 'Curious' is a word I use with them quite often and I know that they like to use that word. It is good that it has two meanings.

1. eager to know or learn something  & 2. strange or unusual     
Then if we add 

synonyms: for 1. inquisitive: intrigued; interested

for 2: odd; peculiar; unusual; bizarre; weird; eccentric    

We then have quite a lot to work with. I have had fun collecting books to put together a display. I added the 'wild' from wild minds to make half of the display to be a collection of books that explore unusual wild animals. I started with questions like

• What is an okapi?

• What is an axolotl?

• What is a pangolin?

• What is a tenrec?

• What is uakari?

• What is an ibex?

• What is an aye-aye?

• What is a wonga-wonga?

and then I realised there are so many animals I could add to this list. Just look in books such as 

• Weird and Wonderful Animals  by Rosella Trionfetti and Cristina Banfi

• The World of Weird Animals Series  by Jess Keating

         Pink is for Blobfish

         Cute as an Axolotl

         Gross as a Snot Otter

         What Makes a Monster?

• Who are You Calling Weird?  by Marilyn Singer and Paul Davis  

• Weird Animals  by Mary Kay Carson

• Lesser Spotted Animals by Martin Brown

• Even More Lesser Spotted Animals by Martin Brown

• Who Am I? by Steve Jenkins

• Tenrec's Twigs  by Bert Kitchen

And for those very mixed up animals, read:                                

• Hello Hello  by Brendan Wenzel

• The Wild Fluffalump by Mwenye Hadithi

• Greedy Zebra by Mwenye Hadithi

• Call Me Gorgeous  by Giles and Alexandra Milton

See more on Pinterest here.

15th February Hippopotamus Day

Coming up is Hippo Day! A great day to celebrate in a library because  -
1. Hippos are in danger, and humans are their biggest enemy. So we need to know more about these 'water horses'.
2. Some of the best 'reads' for children  feature hippos.

One of my all time favourite serial reads with a class is The Twentyseventh Annual African Hippopotamus Race by Morris Lurie. It is such fun and yet at the same time has so much to discuss with students. Can hippos really swim? What should Edward do about Sebastian? What makes Edward a good friend? a good grandchild? a good swimmer and competitor? What does 'gosh' really mean? Great to read before a sports day, swimming carnival, when you want to discuss bullying or even just hippos and Africa.

A wonderful pourquoi story, Hot Hippo  by Mwenye Hadithi and Adrienne Kennaway explains for students why hippos don't actually swim, but spend a large part of their day in the water.

Another book that students love is Hippos are Huge! by Jonathan London and Matthew Trueman. This illustrated information book tells students about just how big and dangerous hippos are.

Hippos have even made it to the realm of 'true animal stories' since the December tsunami that swept baby hippo, Owen into the sea. Kenyan villagers worked to rescue Owen and he has now become best friend with Mzee, an elderly giant tortoise. Many books feature these two. See Owen and Mzee and its sequel by Isabella Hatkoff et al; A Mama for Owen by Marion Dane Bauer and Mama by Jeanette Winter.

Hippos can also be something that authors use for humour. Look at the popularity of the very long lasting series that started with There's a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake by Hazel Edwards and Deborah Niland. And more recently, Hippospotamus by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross,  The Hippo-not-amus  by Tony and Jan Payne and Hippobottymus by Steve Smallman and Ada Grey.

And maybe because hippos can be cantankerous they often feature in children's books about feelings and behaviour. See  Greedy Grumpy Hippo; Big Bully Hippo; Hurty Feelings; and  The Hippo who was Happy. 

For even more hippo books for your display, look at these.

.

1st May Save the Rhino Day

Today I went looking in the library for books about rhinos and found...well not much. It seems that the rhinoceros is not an animal chosen by authors as a character for children's picture books. Is it because they are not seen as having endearing qualities physically or emotionally? But rhinos, especially black rhinos are endangered and we do need to make sure that they survive and thus, the need for Save the Rhino Day.

With my Year 2 classes at the moment we are researching animals of the African savannah and for most animals I have about ten good books. For rhinos only two, which are:

• Black Rhino by Rod Theodorou

• Black Rhino by Malcolm Perry

For reading for pleasure, Shoo Rayner's series that retells Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories are favourites with my young readers , so search out • How the Rhino Got His Skin. I also found The Cross-with-us Rhinoceros a well borrowed story by John Bush and Paul Geraghty.

And good news two new books about rhinos:

• My Rhinoceros by Jon Agee and

• Running Rhino a new title in that wonderful series by Mwenye Hadithi and Adrienne Kennaway.

26th May Adrienne Kennaway (1945)

Adrienne Kennaway was born in New Zealand, grew up in Kenya and now lives in Ireland. While living in Africa she developed an interest in drawing and wildlife and most of her books therefore are about wildlife and the best selling ones, about African wildlife. She illustrates Mwenye Hadithi's alliteratively-titled African animal stories which explain a certain aspect of each animal's behaviour. Crafty Chameleon won her the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1987, but the children I teach like Hungry Hyena and Greedy Zebra best when asked to vote for their favourite. She also is the illustrator of Miriam Moss' series This is the..., the most recent being This is the Mountain, as well as a few animal stories that she has authored herself, such as An Otter's First Swim.

1st December Jan Brett (1949)

Jan Brett is an American author illustrator with a long list of books to her credit. Her website is a teacher's treasure trove. It has teaching ideas, reader's theatre scripts, worksheets, craft templates, videos and interviews. There is everything you would ever need to do an author study! At this time of year you could just do her Christmas titles! My library has Twelve Days of Christmas, The Night Before Christmas, and Christmas Trolls and there are others. Yesterday a class at school cooked Christmas biscuits. This could have been done using Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby book, the gingerbread recipe and video from her website. My favourite of Jan's many books is Honey...Honey... Lion! because having read about a honey badger in Mwenye Hadithi's Lazy Lion the children wanted to find out more about them and we found this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. Jan Brett's animals are always a joy, full of personality, very detailed and in realistic contexts. She does hedgehogs so well, like Jackie French does wombats and I have just read on her website that she has a pet hedgehog, so no wonder. Jan has illustrated a myriad of fairytales, fables and poems.