24th July Curious Creatures

I have had a lot of fun reading one of my favourite books to my K to 2 library classes this week. I know Book Week has been postponed until Term 4, but I was keen to get started on displays and exploring the theme 'Curious Creatures Wild Minds'. I wanted to start a discussion of this theme using the bunyip, an Australian mythical creature.

I asked the students to draw a creature. They all drew an animal that they could attach a label to. No one drew anything imaginary, extinct, or an amalgam of many animals. When I said, "Is a creature an animal?" The answer was a unanimous, "Yes." "So are you a creature?" Some hesitation, but finally a yes.

Then I asked the students to look at the picture above. "Is this a creature?" "Why do you say that?"
I asked them to make a mental list of three things they could see in the picture. I scribed the long list and there were some very interesting things on the lists, including a mobile phone, lipstick and a magnifying glass. Next, I asked them for one question they would like to ask this creature. There was the obvious like, "What are you?"; "What are you holding?"; "Who are you?" and  "Where do you live?" but there was also ones like, "Do you have friends?" ; "Why do you only have three toes?" and  "What is on your head?".

Lastly, I asked,  "Is this creature curious?" "What makes you say that?" This lead to a discussion of what the word 'curious' meant and after finding out that there are two meanings and that the second meaning is 'strange or unusual' there seemed to be consensus that it was a curious creature.

I then showed the students the cover of the book, The Bunyip of Berkley's Creek by Jenny Wagner and Ron Brooks, the book that won Picture Book of the Year in 1974, forty six years ago. They now knew what the character was, and many students then had anecdotes that they wished to share.

I read the story, slowly and quietly. The first page sets the mysterious tone beautifully. You could hear a pin drop while I read, so few children knew the book. I stopped only once to discuss and explain the sign which has the long words, 'Environment Preservation' and 'Trespassers Prosecuted'.

After reading, in pairs students discussed what they liked about the story and Year 2 pairs also devised a definition of a bunyip eg A bunyip is ... We listened to each others definitions and then amalgamated the pertinent bits to get something like this...
A bunyip is a large mythical creature which lurks (hangs around) in creeks, billabongs,              swamps and waterholes.

The Year 2 students had decided that bunyips weren't real, but wanted to know more, so we looked for other books in the library with bunyips and on Kiddle which they had used last term. We found these books:
1. What's a Bunyip?  by Nette Hilton and Roland Harvey. 
2. Bunyips Don't !  by Sally Odgers and Kim Gamble.
3. Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley.

The students thought that Harvey, Gamble and Whatley had all seen Ron Brooks' bunyip, because they too had drawn the bunyip with a tail, floppy ears, a very rounded body and it didn't look overly scary.




If you choose to do this, do not show the students the Kiddle entry before you read the books, because it will give them a different view of bunyips from the one Jenny Wagner intended. It is for further exploration for the students who want to read up on Australian folklore or Aboriginal mythology.

Later I found three more books:
• Out of Nowhere by Tricia Oktober
• Rosie and the Bunyip  by Meredith Costain, and 
• The Butti Butti Bunyip by Dianne Bates

If there had been time we could have looked at and compared the four bunyip illustrations that appeared on Australian stamps in 1994, one of which was Ron Brooks' Berkley Creek one.


Well we ran out of time, but all the bunyip books were borrowed, some students went off to explore the Indigenous Book Bins and others took from all the unusual animal books that we had on display!

PS. Jenny Wagner seems to 'like' curious creatures! Her novel The Nimbin is also about an endearing curious creature. It is perfect for primary classes.

3rd April Find a Rainbow Day

How appropriate that there is a day such as this when we are in the middle of a crisis.

Rainbows are symbols of many things, peace, hope, prosperity, new beginnings and good luck, so no wonder  the Irish believe there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The rainbow is a comprised of seven different colours.  Each of these colours is vibrant and beautiful, and each one is different than the next. This conveys a beautiful message of inclusiveness and cohesion. It demonstrates how beautiful diversity can be, but these colours work together to make a new beautiful whole so it can also be about working together.

Rainbows are often seen after a storm when the sun breaks through the clouds. This provides us with a very powerful message. Good and beautiful things often follow the darkest storms. We need to remember this right now!

I walked up my street (exercise) and counted how many rainbow paintings were affixed in windows. I counted eight in my neighbourhood. These children have done these paintings to thank all the health workers who are at work saving lives . In fact it was this that sent me looking for rainbow stories for a virtual display. It has to just be a pinterest page  because I'm not at school in my library for a while.

While looking I learned that it was Find a Rainbow Day!  this week, which gave me another reason to put together the list of books.

Thinking of rainbow stories, the first one I thought of was Annie's Rainbow by Ron Brooks. It is old and long out of print, but a real favourite when I first started teaching. Annie loves rainbows and whenever she sees one she tries to catch it. She just wants one of her own. What a wonderful thing to think you could do! What else is there?

I remember reading Esther's Rainbow by Kim Kane and Sara Acton to a preschool class last year and they really enjoyed it. It is a joyous story about a girl who also sees colours everywhere and goes looking for them.

A parent came to the library last week when we were still open wanting The Rainbow Plate a story by doctor Preeya Alexander, which she wrote to encourage children to eat fruit and vegetables of a variety of colours. There are other books too about eating the rainbow.

I like the concept and the fun of How the Crayons Saved the Rainbow by Monica Sweeney. Just like the children around here, the crayons draw rainbows all over the place. There are so many versions of this on Youtube!

And then for older students there is the colorful picture book biography Newton's Rainbow by Kathryn Lasky that celebrates Newton's discoveries that illuminated the mysteries of gravity, motion, and even rainbows, discoveries that gave mankind a new understanding of the natural world, discoveries that changed science forever. 

So lots of avenues to explore while you're looking for rainbows and hoping for an end to the isolation of Covid 19.

7th September Threatened Species Day

"Threatened Species Day is a national day held each year on 7 September to commemorate the death of the last remaining Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine) at Hobart Zoo in 1936. It is a time to reflect on what has happened in the past and how we can protect our threatened species in the future. A day to celebrate our success stories and ongoing threatened species recovery work."

While there are some books about thylacines I had kindergarten on this day and wanted to read something slightly easier. I had recently purchased Penelope the Mountain Pygmy Possum, which is a story about a pygmy possum in the Snowy Mountains, and these possums are endangered. I knew that the idea of the tunnel under the road would appeal to Kindergarten. They ended up comparing this tunnel with a possum tunnel we have nearby on the Wakehurst Parkway that goes over the road. The information page at the back of the book brought us back to the real issue of pygmy possums and why they are endangered. Many of the children are skiers and spend time at Thredbo so they made some very pertinent connections with the text.  Then the  children wanted to borrow other books about pygmy possums which we don't have, but many borrowed books about Tasmanian devils and bilbies, both of which do also need saving. The conversation came back to the issue of the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect too and Zoos Victoria, so this term's reading has made for some good connections, both text-to-text and text-to-world. 

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