12th -20th September NSW Bike Week

The weather here has been superb. It is Spring and you just want to be outside doing things. On the weekend the Festival of the Winds was on in Bondi. It is NSW Bike Week  from Saturday, 12 September until Sunday, 20 September and there are children in parks, at the beach and on the move. Hopefully it will still be like this in a week's time when it is school holidays. When I think of Spring at school I like to read Will Hillenbrand's Spring is Here to my preschoolers. It is one of the books in the series about Bear and Mole. Coincidently there is a title about kites, Kite Day and another title in the series about bike riding  is Off We Go! Here Bear is encouraging Mole to give up his training wheels. This too is the premise in other titles about bike riding (see list of titles below). 

I am often asked by parents for books about bike riding because their child is fearful and unwilling to take risks. I recommend Jeanne Willis' Don't Let Go! which hasn't failed me yet. Here a little girl persuades her father to teach her to ride a bike. She has all the trouble with balancing and speed control that every learner remembers - but at last she is whipping down the path in the park screaming: 'It's all right - you can let go now!' 

I notice that there has been a number of new books which feature bicycles lately including Byron Barton's My Bike, Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bike by Chris Raschka and two more about bears on bikes, Bike On, Bear! by Cynthia Liu and Bear on a Bike by Hannah Shaw which is coming soon.

I like to share two books set in Africa with older children who take having a bike for granted,  Galimoto by Karen Lynn Williams and My Rows and Piles of Coins with fabulous illustrations by E.B.Lewis.  These two show how for a child without a bike the yearning for the freedom that comes with a bike is paramount.

And don't forget Mulga Bill's Bicycle. Read it with gusto and explain the history of it and penny farthings.

26th December

It is Boxing Day and I maybe should be thinking about boxes, but having done boxes before for a great display in the library and the box construction club (see http://pinterest.com/kinderbookboard/cardboard-boxes/) I feel inclined to write about something else I have observed lately.

A couple of days ago I bought The Bear with the Sword by David Cali and as I read it and looked at the bear and his behaviour I was reminded of  two other bear picture books I had bought this year,  Bear Has a Story to Tell by Philip Stead and Erin Stead and Bear in Love  by Daniel Pinkwater and Will Hillenbrand. How do illustrators make bears have such human expressions? Each bear is different but so imbued with human mannerisms. My favourite bear is the one in Sebastian Meschenmoser's Waiting For Winter. He makes me smile every time I look at him trying to work out what snow is. None of these bears appear to be 'wild' or 'grizzly'. None are bad-tempered or look as if they could do harm, and for someone who lives in a country without bears (except in zoos) it is so hard to remember that we should keep our distance from these animals. They do not look anything like teddybears either so they have become pseudohumans. They are easy to empathise with, so easy to see their point of view, and so easy to fall in love with and want to hug. Look at their eyes!

Here are some of my favourite bears and bear stories and this is without including any of Barbara Firth's for Martin Waddell, Kady MacDonald Denton's for Bonny Becker or Karma Wilson's.

14th February Valentine's Day Phyllis Root (1949)

Happy Valentine's Day! Looking for a fun book in keeping with the theme...read Phyllis Root's Kiss the Cow! Here a young girl called Annalisa refuses to kiss the cow Luella when she milks her, to thank her for her milk. Perfect for Phyllis Root's birthday too. Of course she has written many other equally good titles, but today this is my favourite. And Will Hillenbrand's illustrations are an added bonus.

31st May Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893 - 1986) Tohby Riddle (1965) Will Hillenbrand (1960)

Busy day with so many birthdays, but I wrote about Elizabeth Coatsworth yesterday and

the other two, Australian illustrator, Tohby Riddle and American illustrator, Will Hillenbrand each have a very comprehensive website that gives biographical details, annotated lists of their books and information about their work philosophies. I cannot tell you anything that is not there.

Both do picture books that cater for a very wide age range of reader. Tohby Riddle has a lovely set of preschool books about a dog and a bird. The first was issued in a soft cover and was popular in the library. The subsequent titles have been issued as board books which limits their appeal in a library such as a school library. Similarly, Will Hillenbrand has a number of books for preschoolers. See The Book Box; Down by the Station and Margery Cuyler's penguin stories, Please Play Safe and Please Say Please.

At the other end of his repertoire, Tohby has picture books that demand very creative thinking by their readers. My favourite of these is Escape From City Zoo. He has also illustrated The Word Spy and The Return of The Word Spy, two rivetting reads about words and their origins by Ursula Dubosarsky.

My favourites of Will Hillenbrand's illustrated books are Phyllis Root's Kiss the Cow, and Rebecca Hickox's Golden Sandal: A Middle Eastern Cinderella Story.