30th May Puffin Day

As far as I know there is no such thing as Puffin Day. I'm instigating one! It was Puffin Fest in Scotland from the 15th - 25th May. I have a good friend who is off hunting puffins in Scotland at the moment. She has seen some, sat in a bus stop decorated with puffin paraphernalia and written about her adventures. I can't help but feel a little jealous. Then yesterday I bought a new puffin picture book and thought about my friend as I did so, to add to the library's already extensive collection - The Angry Little Puffin by Timothy Young. This book will really make you smile. The puffin in the story shares an exhibit at the zoo with penguins and has to listen to the visitors talk about him as 'that kooky little penguin', 'that funny-looking penguin' etc, and he is on a mission to make the visitors read and take note of his characteristics and how different he is from the penguins. It is a fun way to learn about the differences and to learn about an arctic bird that children in Australia are not likely to see. The reader gets the puffin's point of view. He is persuasive and it mixes graphics, speech bubbles for the visitors and text for the puffin's thoughts. Lots to talk about, use for teaching and just fun to read! See the trailer here.

Next week I'll get the library's books and puffin toy out, we'll celebrate puffins and practise using the word 'auk'! I love that word!

20th June World Refugee Day

World Refugee Day is held every year on June 20. It is a special day when the world takes time to recognise the resilience of forcibly displaced people throughout the world.

On World Refugee Day 2013, we are focussing on the impact of conflict on families through the theme of ‘1 Family Torn Apart by War is Too Many’.

I have written about Refugee Week at length in the past, highlighting a book each day in both 2012 and in 2010.  Except for drawing attention to Sarah Garland's more recent Azzi in Between, I don't have any books I want to write about here. Zoe at Playing By the Book  has written at length about this book here. What was encouraging was the number of people who turned up in Melbourne to support asylum seekers and the comments made in Parliament today by retiring MP Judi Moylan reminding us about how many children are still detained in Refugee Camps in Australia. It should not be acceptable for any child's freedom to be curtailed in this way.

6th August Picnic Day

It is Picnic Day in the Northern territory of Australia on the first Monday of August. But it could be picnic day at school any day you care to organise one. Start with Freda Plans a Picnic by Stuart J. Murphy and have the children look at how to organise a picnic. Make lists, allocate jobs and collect what is needed. Then read! Collect together all your old favourite picnic books and then include more recent ones such as the fabulous Florentine and Pig Have a Very Lovely Picnic by Eva Katzler & Jess Mikhail

I found these in my library:

• The Bears' Picnic by Stan and Jan Berenstain

• The Lighthouse Keeper's Picnic by Ronda and David Armitage

• Piglet's Picnic by Jessica Souhami

• We're Going on a Picnic! by Pat Hutchins

• The Bear's Water Picnic by John Yeoman & Quentin Blake

• Ants at the Picnic by Michael Dahl

• Polly's Picnic by Richard Hamilton & Sophy Williams

• Lily's Picnic by Paul Rogers

• Having a Picnic by Sarah Garland

8th May

As Mother's Day approaches and I watch what is borrowed from the Mothers' Day display in the library I note the difference between what mothers borrow and what their children borrow. I love Sarah Garland's books because I could always relate to the frazzled mother she depicts in her wonderful series of books for preschoolers, but my clientele of mothers don't relate to her in the same way that my generation of mothers did. Kate Kellaway wrote about Sarah Garland in The Guardian in December 2007:

Sarah Garland's books could not find a French publisher because her mothers were judged insufficiently chic. What French madame would be seen in a shapeless green duffel coat, pushing a buggy uphill, with the baby's bottle (lid off) peeping out of her pocket? Garland is one of the best and most sympathetic chroniclers of English family life precisely because her pencil doesn't lie about the slog of bringing up children. She has a loving, unsentimental eye. She can be festive but is never false. I have always been profoundly grateful to her for drawing a mother I can relate to - as have millions of others who adore her work.

All the more reason to love her I say. Interestingly, mothers do borrow books where Dad is in charge or the children are 'pitching in'. These have been borrowed:

• Tucking Mummy In by Morag Loh and Donna Rawlins

• When Dad Did the Washing by Ronda and David Armitage

• Mr Large in Charge by Jill Murphy (but not Mother Know Best also by Jill Murphy)

• Mums Don't Get Sick by Marilyn Hafner