23rd May World Turtle Day

It’s easy to get confused between a tortoise and turtle. The main difference between the two is that turtles sometimes live in the water, while tortoises only live on the land. Turtles live up to the age of 40 and have streamlined and mostly flat shells. On the other hand, tortoises can live up to 300 years and they have larger, more domed shells. You will mostly find turtles in the sea, while tortoises inhabit dense jungles and grasslands. Turtles and tortoises are two different animals but this day is dedicated to celebrating and protecting both.

I have written about this day before here and here, but in our school library this is a day when no matter what I put on display, the books all seem to get borrowed. This topic is nearly as popular as polar bears and pandas so the library has a number of fiction and nonfiction titles. See my Pinterest page. The book pictured A Turtle's View of the Ocean Blue  by Catherine Barr and Brendan Kearney is truly inspiring and fairly new so if you are short of turtle books, consider this one. The day after Turtle Day Lindsay Moore's new book, Yoshi and the Ocean will be released. It is based on a real turtle who was released from captivity in South Africa, but then was tracked travelling thousands of miles. What amazing creatures turtles are!

If tortoises are of more interest, two must reads are Jean Craighead George's  Galapagos George (also based on a real creature) or Paul Geraghty's Tortuga are worth hunting for in a library.

 

25th April World Penguin Day

Every day is Penguin Day for me. I love them. The children I teach love learning about them and they are very popular as topics and characters in children's books. I have written about them before for Penguin Awareness Day in January and listed many of my favourite books.

Last term Year 2 and I read Jill Tomlinson's short novel, Penguin's Progress (The Penguin Who Wanted to Find Out) over several weeks and as we read, we checked to see if the information she had given us about Emperor penguins was indeed correct. In the process the students handled many non-fiction books, looked online at film clips and websites and chose themselves to borrow picture books and short novels which had penguins as characters.  The library had over a hundred penguin books and they were well-borrowed. We looked at penguins' habitat, lifecycles, food and enemies. The students were not happy when we added 'man' to the list of enemies. This came about when we read Solo  by Paul Geraghty, a heart-wrenching family story where the students felt sure that the father and mother penguin would not come back to feed baby Solo. Ulco Glimmerveen's A Tale of Antarctica  also showed students the impact humans have on the pristine environment of Antarctica.

With the topic of penguins it is so hard to know where to start reading with children because there is just so much worth reading! But these are musts!

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.

20th January Penguin Appreciation Day

Penguins are an especially popular choice of character in children's books! They are endearing, different from other birds because they can't fly, live on ice and can dive and swim in a way that humans envy.Why then do we need to have an Appreciation or Awareness Day for penguins? It really is just a time to celebrate penguins, but it is also a good time to reflect on the fact that some of the 17 species of penguins are being threatened by climate change.

What to read? Here's some fiction and non-fiction that is enjoyed in my library:

• Cuddly Dudley by Jez Alborough

• The Penguin Who Wanted to Find Out by Jill Tomlinson and Paul Howard

• Solo by Paul Geraghty

• Nanu, Penguin Chick by Theresa Radcliffe and John Butler

• Emily and Alfie by Meredith Hooper and Emma Quay

• Little Penguin by Patrick Benson

• The Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins and Jane Chapman

• The Emperor's Kingdom; Living on the Ice by Roger Kirkwood

• Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems by Judy Sierra and Ariane Dewey

• The Penguin Book: Birds in Suits by Dr Mark Norman

and of course there's always the Atwater's Mr Popper's Penguins and the myriad of movie

s and DVDs about penguins and Jeanne Willis' new book Penguin Pandemonium.

3rd May Paul Geraghty (1959)

Paul Geraghty was born in South Africa, but now lives in London. His books have very strong links to the natural world and his illustrations of animals in particular and their natural habitats are outstanding. The viewer feels immediately transported to that location. His childhood in South Africa has also influenced his books as he says in the interviews and filmclips on You Tube.

I always read Solo to my Year 2 students as part of a unit of enquiry on emperor penguins and I still get choked up when Floe leaves Solo on the ice and goes back to the sea, and I know

what happens. It is because of the horrified looks on the children's faces when this happens. They become very animated and I always stop to let them talk and suggest solutions to the problem. When we then read to the end of the book you can hear a pin drop in the room!

Tortuga is also popular. Whenever it is on display with or without the accompanying toy tortoise it is quickly borrowed. It is an adventure story with

lots to say about the environment and survival.

Paul has also illustrated some of John Bush's picture books. He is also a South African and writes about the animals native to there. He has a wonderful website.