26th August Book Week shortlists

As a conscientious teacher librarian, I have been sharing books from the CBCA shortlists with my students. Some of these books are 'big hits', but others will be hard to get out of the library. That always worries me, as many schools buy the whole of the shortlists, but they do not have the budget I have. Wouldn't it be better to buy books that you cannot buy at BigW or Kmart, books that children won't buy themselves and books that will inspire them to read more and differently. Books that expand their horizons. My library has a large collection of biographies, books about sport heroes, books that allow for the sharing of nonfiction topics but which have outstanding illustrations and books that are hard to find at bookshops or other libraries.

What are the most borrowed?

• Nature Story Books from Walker Books

We have many of the original Read and Wonder books that have morphed into the new series and all the recent ones. These books combine a story with factual writing using two fonts. They include animals that the students know but are happy to find out more about. Great White Shark was on the shortlist for the Eve Pownall Award.

• Easy graphic novels (toon books)

Yes, my students enjoy, Bad Guys  and Dogman, but they also love, Press Start, Kung Pow Chicken, Pizza and Taco, Flubby, Cranky Chicken, Stickman Odyssey and other book that looks like a bit like a comic.

• Little People Big Dreams series by Maria Isabel Sanchez

And then they will read more about a favoured person in other biographies.

• Anything a friend or their teacher recommends. If the principal mentions a book in assembly, everyone wants it.

• Books about plastic and rubbish in the oceans. See here:

I think as a staff we might have overdone this as a topic, but I do think the students genuinely do care and they are diligent about sorting their lunch rubbish.

Back to the shortlist. Let's look at what was popular with the students. Remember I only teach Preschool to Year 2 (4 to 8 year olds).

• Walk of the Whales by Nick Bland has been very successful because it fits the last category of popular books. The humour appealed to the students. The thought of a whale on a bicycle made them laugh. The students had plenty to say about this book. We had a scientist visit during Science Week who also inspired them to find out more about whales. Consequently very book in the library about whales has had an outing. See titles here.

• Stellarphant by James Foley. This book also combined humour with serious topics of inclusion, diversity, perseverance and individuality. The students were fascinated by the final pages that listed all the animals that have gone into space and luckily we had books about some of these eg. Laika the Space Dog; Laika the Space Astronaut; Dogs in Space; Monkey in Space; 50 Animals that Have Been to Space.

• Blue Flower and The Boy and the Elephant,  both of which are more serious in tone, touched my Year 2 students because they were concerned about the protagonists and their view of school. I underestimated how much having friends and being included at school matters to this age group. Many made connections between the two books because of how they felt about school and their family. Empathy was the subject of all the discussions. One girl told me that she felt sure Sonya Hartnett had not enjoyed school and she asked me how she is now that she is 'a famous author'. watching Freya Blackwood's textless book on Story Box Library definitely helped the students appreciate the detailed illustrations and the scope and importance of them to the story.

• Iceberg by Claire Saxby and Jess Racklyeft was also popular once I had read it and the  students had looked closely at the artwork on a large screen courtesy of Story Box Library. We have had this book in the library for quite a while and it was unborrowed until we shared it. This book fits the Nature Story Book model, factual but with wonderful illustrations. I find my Year 2 are fascinated by Antarctica and last term we had read about emperor penguins so they did have some background knowledge to 'hang the content on'. I am going to purchase Except Antarctica  as a companion read as this term Year 2 are looking at classifying animals into groups and this would tie in beautifully.

• Jetty Jumping by Andrea Rowe and Hannah Sommerville. The students like this book because as children who live on or near Sydney Harbour they have many jetties to choose from. I had concerns about this book for this Early Childhood age group (0-7yrs), as there isn't an adult in sight, many of my students are not strong swimmers, the protagonist is scared to jump and no-one validates that feeling as being acceptable, and in the end she appears to fall in and all is okay. For me I felt this book needed lots of scaffolding and discussion. We did have some interesting debates about whether she should jump just because her friends told her to. I used Tim Winton's The Deep  and Jabari Jumps by as companion reads because here the protagonists feel more in control of their fears and there are supportive adults watching.

16th October Chooks in Space

On the 13th October Speech Pathology Australia announced their winning books of the year. The books relevant to the age groups I teach are the winner for 3 to 5 year olds, Something Wonderful and the winner for 5 to 8 year olds, Funky Chicken: Chooks in Space. When I read this I thought to myself why are chickens in picture books so much lately? Are they fashionable? We've had a lot of books about sloths, lemurs and skunks but somehow chickens don't seem to have the same 'cutesy' appeal. Nevertheless these five books are worth a look. Each has a message about creativity, determination, perseverance and problem solving. Four are Australian and they are FUN.

This year I have purchased three books about adventurous chickens going into space!
• Chooks in Space by Chris Colin and Megan Kitchin. Funky Chicken is back and this time wants to go into space. There is a bonus CD with this one.

• Chicken in Space by Adam Lehrhaupt and Shahar Kober.
Zoey, the chicken is determined to make it into space. Together with her friend, Sam, a pig she plans her adventure.

• Zelda's Big Adventure by Marie Alafaci and Shane McG. Just like the other two, there is a plucky chicken determined to get into space.


Something Wonderful by Raewyn Caisley and Karen Blair is not about a chook although there is one on the front cover. It is a bout a daydreaming boy called Sam who loves to make things. He makes a machine that will do his chores for him. That is the something wonderful. This book is quite inspirational for children and parents as it shows how children can be effective problem solvers and fill in their time without technology.

It is technology that is part of the message in Nick Bland's new chicken picture book too. In The Fabulous Friend Machine, Popcorn, the chicken finds a new friend in the barn and wants to be friends with the pictures on the screen. Can she?

21st January Hugging Day

Everyone needs a hug sometimes! We shouldn't need a day to get a hug, but it is good too, to have an excuse, so make sure today you give someone a hug. Want to have a hugging reading fest? All the books about Douglas starting with  Hugless Douglas are a good place to start. My library has a big plush Douglas sitting in a reading corner for my students to hug and to read to. Look at the end papers in the first book and have fun acting out all those hugs. Then read Hug Me by Simona Ciraola and talk about how it would feel to be Felipe (a cactus) and not be hugged. Or read The Runaway Hug by Nick Bland and talk about passing on your hug.

19th August Book Week Connect to Reading Part 2

I shared the shortlist for the Picture Book with my four classes of Year 2 students. I agonised over whether to buy The Rules of Summer as I thought the illustrations were quite dark and the rules worded rather negatively and that I would need to do too much scaffolding to do it justice in one or two thirty minute library lessons. I thought I would wait and see if it won and then decide. Well it did win and I am still not sure what I want to do!

The other shortlisted books were fun to share and easy to use the connection theme with. We stared with King Pig  because the students all wanted to read it. They thought it would be funny and they 'love' Nick Bland books. We book talked it in pairs where the students had to focus on what made it funny and discuss whether or not it had a message or theme. They easily recognised the theme but were surprised that a humorous story could have a serious message. This prompted revisiting other books they knew such as Click Clack Moo Cows that Type  and Farmer Duck.

It also led effortlessly to The Windy Farm which also looked as if it would be humorous. Similarly here the students worked out that this was not only funny but had a deeper message. Two of the classes were currently studying the environment and were keen to talk about energy sources and how common wind energy was. This led naturally to the book Energy Island  by Allan Drummond which tells the story of Samso, a Danish island that is powered by wind energy.

I thought Toby the character in Parachute  may have been too young for my Year 2 students to relate to, but in their Book Talk pairs they quickly began to talk about fears and make connections to themselves. The subject of 'security blankets' arose and one class and I revisited Lisa Shanahan's Gordon's Got a Snookie in order to once again look at the connection between humour and serious themes. The other three classes talked more about overcoming fears and we used Sonya Hartnett's  Come Down Cat to make connections, both literally with cats and heights, but inferentially about how to and when to be brave.

And lastly,  Silver Buttons  which was my favourite and the easiest to get the students involved in. We talked about small increments of time and what could be done in them. We timed activities with stopwatches. We looked at what is 'momentous' and what is 'mundane' and argued the story events inclusion or not.  The Book Talk final discussion was to sum up the book in one word. I was amazed by how well the students did this. There was the obvious 'minute', but others were 'time', 'life', celebration', and 'importance'. I used At the Same Moment Around the World and Just a Second as either pre or post reading.

King Pig  and  Silver Buttons were the most popular of the books we read when the students voted.