3rd June World Bicycle Day

World Bicycle Day brings attention to the advantages of utilising the bicycle — an uncomplicated, affordable, clean, and environmentally sustainable means of transportation. The bike contributes to cleaner air, reduces congestion, and shortens the distance between education, health care, and other social services and the most vulnerable populations. It is a sustainable transportation method that promotes economic growth and reduces inequalities while supporting the action against climate change.

German Inventor Karl von Drais is credited with developing the first bicycle in 1817. Drais was a prolific inventor, but his most popular and widely recognised invention was a two-wheeled bicycle. It incorporated the two-wheeler principle that is basic to the bicycle and motorcycle  and was the beginning of mechanised personal transport. This was the earliest form of a bicycle, without pedals. 

The Running Machine  by Keith Negley 

A story of pluck and determination inspired by the real events of 1815-17, when a young man named Karl Drais invented the very first bicycle. Before there were trains, or cars, or planes, people rode horses to travel from place to place. Then came the Year without a Summer, when a cloud of volcanic ash blocked the sun and crops withered across half the world. With no oats to eat, horses grew too weak to walk. Everyone despaired—how would they get around?

Pedals were added in 1864 in a Paris workshop. The need for speed spawned the Penny Farthing in 1870, whose wheel size determined the ‘gearing’ of the bike.

In countries around the world, people were realising the usefulness of this vehicle. It was in 1893 in Australia that the bike’s real potential was established. For a time Australia was the long-distance cycling centre of the world, with various distance records established by Australian riders.

Nobody knows exactly how many bikes exist in the world, but it is estimated that there are somewhere around 1 billion. 

I have written about this day before, but I have just shared Banjo Paterson's Mulga Bill's Bicycle with a year 2 class and it never ceases to amaze me how interested they are in this book and its story.

Other books I haven't mentioned before that are worth looking for in the library:

 The Bicycle  by Patricia McCormack and Mevan Babakar.

For generations, Mevan and her family lived in their beloved Kurdistan. But when they are forced to flee by the Iraqi government, Mevan must leave everything behind. Her family travels from country to country in search of safety; and with each stop, Mevan feels more and more alone. Until … a stranger’s gift changes everything. Based on Mevan Babakar’s own childhood, this is a moving reminder of how powerful just one act of kindness can be.

Bicycle Eureka! the Biography of an Idea  by Lori Haskins Houran & Aaron Cushley

Here is a "biography" of bicycles, an essential invention that keeps people rolling! From the first spark of an idea of a new way to get around to the spread of bicycles throughout the world, Bicycle is a fun and informative look at an invention that makes a huge difference in our lives.

Noodles on a Bicycle by Kyo Maclear & Gracey Zhang

A vibrant historical picture book about Tokyo's bicycle food deliverers, or demae, who balanced towering trays of steaming hot noodles on their shoulders while navigating crowded city streets.

Ride Beside Me  by Lucy Knisley
The community that rides together, thrives together! This book celebrates the joys of biking and the community coming together to build safer streets and a brighter future for all.

Pedal, Balance, Steer by Vivian Kirkfield & Alison Jay

In the 1890s, times were tough, and opportunities for women were few and far between. When mother-of-three Annie Londonderry saw an ad promising $10,000 to a woman who could cycle around the world in a year, something no one thought possible, she decided it was time to learn to ride. She waved goodbye to her family in Boston and set off for Chicago.

Books on Bikes  by F. Isabel Campoy & Brizida Magro
Lía loves books, and she reads all the time—even while walking her trusty bike through town. But sometimes books can be hard to come by. When Lía discovers her neighbours are as eager for books as she is, she takes a page from the heroes she has read about and pedals into action! Inspired by real-life book bike programs this book celebrates how one child’s small act can transform communities. 

Why are American picture books so expensive in Australia? The last four books are too expensive for most school libraries, so you might need to check at your local library.

For more books about bicycles see this Pinterest. A biography about champion cyclist Chris Hoy has recently been published in the Little People Big Dreams series too.

Book Week Early Childhood Shortlist: The Wobbly Bike by Darren McCallum and Craig Smith

This book The Wobbly Bike  by debut author Darren McCallum and 'old hand' Craig Smith is a joy and will certainly make you smile. It is fun and very pertinent to this age group.

So often the parents at school will say 'my child can't ride a bike. When will he learn?' in a manner that implies that it is the school's job to teach him, and then they add 'we live in a unit/ apartment'.

I think this is sad because it means that this child isn't outdoors at the park often or that his parents don't see it as their job to make time to ensure he does learn. Learning to ride a bike is about time, practice, perseverance, risk taking, adult belief and investment in their child, but so rewarding when a child shouts 'I can do it!'

Linked displays:

1. books about learning to ride bicycles

2. books set in the Northern Territory and /or Darwin and books by authors who live in the Northern Territory

3. books about Australian birds

4. other books by Craig Smith

Display 1: Learning to Ride a Bike

The library often has a display about bikes. The preschoolers are very keen to borrow books about bike riding. If you are putting together a display, these are popular

• Don't Let Go! by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross   (this would make a perfect companion text)

• Don't Let Go, Dad!  by Mark Wilson

• Hello, Bicycle!  by Ella Boyd and  Taming a big-kid bike

• Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle  by Chris  Learning to Ride a Bike

• Two Wheels  by David Gibb and Brizida Magro  (this would make a perfect companion text)

• Let's Ride a Bike  by Ruth Walton

• I Love My Bike  by Simon Mole and Sam Usher

• Off We Go!  by Will Hillenbrand

• Logan's Big Move by Logan Martin, Jess Black and Shane McG

• Frank and Bert: the One Where Bert Learns to Ride a Bike  by Chris Naylor-Ballesteros

• The Bike Lesson  by Stan and Jan Berenstain

• Duck on a Bike  by David Shannon

• Wild Blue: Taming a Big-Kid Bike  by Dashka Slater and Laura Hughes

• Bike on Bear by Cynthia Liu Kristyna Litten

Display 2: Books set in the Northern Territory 

• Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo  by Alison Lester

• To the Top End  by Roland Harvey

• My Home in Kakadu  by Jane Christophersen

• Dry to Dry: the Seasons of Kakadu by Pamela Freeman and Liz Anelli

• Walking the Country in Kakadu  by Diane Lucas, Ben Tyler and Emma Long

• Collecting Colour  by Kylie Dunstan

• Big Rain Coming  by Katrina Germein

• Too Many Cheeky Dogs  by Joanna Bell and Dion Beasley

• Aunty's Wedding  by Miranda Tapsell and Samantha Fry

• Look See, Look at Me!  by Leonie Norrington and Dee Huxley

• Cyclone by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley

Leonie Norrington, Joanna Bell, Samantha Fry, Rosemary Sullivan, Katrina Germein and Kylie Dunstan have all lived in the Northern Territory at some time.

Display 3: Books about Australian Birds

The teaching notes for the book suggests:

• Have your class work in groups to research different species of birds in Australia. What do they look like? Where do they live? How many birds illustrated in the story can they identify?

Display of books like these would help with this:

Coming in August from CSIRO

Display 4 Books illustrated by Craig Smith.

The library has more than 100 books illustrated by Craig Smith. Time to revisit these two humorous tales:

And these two more serious tales:

3rd June World Bicycle Day

World Bicycle Day celebrates the uniqueness, longevity and versatility of the bicycle and promotes it as a simple, sustainable, reliable, fun and affordable means of transportation. I have celebrated bikes on this blog before and I have large number of book titles on my Pinterest page so here I just want to highlight three, two biographies and a sightseeing travelogue.

Pedal, Balance, Steer  by Vivian Kirkfield

Annie Londonderry proves women can do anything they set their minds to—even cycle around the world—in this nonfiction picture book for cycling enthusiasts, budding travelers, and anyone who dreams of reaching a difficult goal.

She Rides Like the Wind  by Joan Negrescolor

Tells the inspiring story of Alfonsina Strada, a woman who loved to ride her bicycle but had to fight hard for her dream. The iconic cyclist represented the wheels of change breaking down gender barriers in the early 20th-century. Known as the “Pedal Queen,” she resisted conformity in 1924 by taking part in the prestigious Giro D’Italia and many more races.

Two Bicycles in Beijing  by Teresa Robeson

Side by side, two bicycles, Lunzi and Huangche, come out of the factory. Side by side, they watch the city of Beijing from their shop window. Then a young girl comes in and buys Huangche, rolling him away from Lunzi! With the help of a delivery boy, Lunzi begins an epic race to find her friend that introduces readers to all the sights and sounds of Beijing.

31st August Book Week 2017

When the Picture Book of the Year shortlist came out I read the books and wondered what I was going to do with my Year 2 classes this year as I thought many of the list would need too much scaffolding to share with them successfully. I read The Patchwork Bike and could see a myriad of possibilities and it reminded me of of many other bicycle books that I had read that were also set in Africa. I then thought about the theme Escape to Everywhere  and thought about whether we could 'escape on a bicycle in Africa'. Mind mapping all these books and possibilities I put together a six week (one lesson a week) study which looked at the role of bicycles in Africa and how it differs from here. We started with looking at the role of bicycles in their own lives, where they come from, what they are used for, how much they cost, how many did each family have and who actually had one and could ride one. We recorded this anecdotally. Then we read these books, located the places on a map and talked at length about the main characters, the places and the bikes in the stories:

• Emmanuel's Dream which is a biography about Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, a disabled boy who grew up in West Ghana, overcame great difficulties and went on to inspire others. (See Emmanuel talking about his life here.)

• My Rows and Piles of Coins is the story of a Saruni who helps his mother carry everything to market in Tanzania each week and realises that a bicycle would change his and his mothers life for the better so he saves his money in order to buy one. He has a lot of coins but learns that it is still nowhere near enough to buy a bike.

• The Red Bicycle has a bicycle as the main character.It starts life in  i in North America, being owned and ridden by a young boy.  His bicycle is donated  to an organisation that ships bicycles to Africa and is sent to Burkina Faso, in West Africa, where it finds a home with Alisetta, who uses it to gain quicker access to her family's sorghum field and to the market and then is repurposes as an ambulance.(If you have All Aboard For the Bobo Road, it is also set in Burkina Faso and shows the role of bikes well in the illustrations.)

• In A Cloud of Dust tells the story of Anna who has a long walk to and  from school in Tanzania until the school is visited by a bicycle library. At this point I asked the children whether there was any aspect of Emmanuel, Saruni, Alisetta or Anna's life that they thought they would enjoy or like to try. The discussion was amazing. Many students thought these children had a degree of freedom and independence that they did not, some wanted to try working for money and some of the girls commented on liking to live 'without technology'.

Then we read The Patchwork Bike and watched both Maxine Beneba Clark read it on Youtube and it read on Story Box Library where we could see the illustrations in great detail because of their size on the smartboard. The students were fascinated by the way the illustrations were done on cardboard from a box. We talked about what we could use to make a bike. The students designed and drew up plans. I had time to read one class Galimoto too and this class made bikes from cardboard and wire. I was impressed with their  perseverance and their readiness to help each other.

Overall the Year 2 students and I have had a very interesting time in library lessons this term. We have used maps, turned the library into a makerspace to design and make, read good literature, put ourselves in others' shoes, watched film clips and been surprised at just what is happening charity and bike-wise.

May National Bike Month

It is the beginning of Spring in America and therefore a good time to get your bike out and start riding again, so they designate May as Bike Month. Here in NSW we have a Bike Week in our Spring in September, but the weather here has been ideal bike riding weather right now. We just had two weeks school break with weather that was perfect for picnics, biking, walking and playing outside. Queensland celebrates Bike Week from the 15th to 22nd May.

There are so many wonderful picture books about bike riding so pull them out and display them if you are a librarian or go to the library and borrow some to read with your children. America and Canada have a Ride to School Week at the end of May. Quite a few children I teach ride their bike or scooter to school, but unlike when I rode my bike to school, albeit in a country town , our school does not have anywhere to store them during the day and I see mums struggling to carry these vehicles as they walk home.  This year we are having a Ride Safe to School Week from 31st October to 4th November. We need one of them too, as I know that some of the children I teach do not know how to ride a bike and perhaps it isn't high priority.   Recently, a mother asked me when her kindergarten child would learn to ride a bike and she seemed quite shocked when I suggested that that was her job, not the school's.

Biking is a great outdoor activity and it doesn't have to be on the road. Take your bike to the park, the bike track or if you are under eleven you are allowed to ride on the footpath.

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.

19th April Melissa Sweet

It is Melissa Sweet's birthday and as she is a favourite illustrator of mine I have written about her on this blog many times before. Recently I discovered that I had incorrectly celebrated her birthday on the 18th April so I need to write about her birthday again in order to correct my mistake.

Seeing this illustration from Google images which is in fact from Melissa's blog, you can understand why she would be a favourite with any librarian. Her kind of art, some of which, makes extensive use of collage appeals immensely. I first discovered her books when Jane Yolen's Baby Bear books became so popular with the children in my library, but then I went looking for more books by her and discovered that there were a large number of other titles in the library, such as Moonlight,  Love and Kisses, all the Charlotte books and the wonderful Carmine.

More recently when I began a unit of work using picture book biographies with my Year 2 Book Club I discovered more Melissa Sweet titles such as The Boy Who Drew Birds,  Balloons Over Broadway, and Girls Think of Everything and more recently I purchased two new books to add  to this unit Brave Girl  and Mrs Harkness and the Panda.

The best way to learn more about Melissa is to read her own writing on her website and her facebook page because you will see there all the things she is involved in. I was so envious when I read that she had recently done a workshop at the Eric Carle Museum. I wish she had been there the day I visited. I would even have forgone the blue sky, long green grass and heavily fruit-laden apple trees I saw, for the snow and kite flying!

Now I  need to order Spike  (so I can use those wonderful bookmarks) and A Splash of Red to add to the biography unit. And I need to hound the publisher to get Baby Bear's Books  back in print. It is one of the few books that has 'walked' from my library, so you know it is good. Must dash, off to go bike riding or walking by the beach with my librarian friend. see bikes and librarians are important!

12th October National Ride to Work Day

NSW Bike Week was held from 18th to 25th September and now today we have Ride to Work Day, neither of which have a direct impact at school, but they do promote the importance of good health and reducing our carbon footprint, so they are things that could be picked up as discussion starters with children. The Ride to Work website proudly states that 'over one hundred and fifty thousand Australian workers are expected to join the commuter revolution and ride to work.' I rode my bike to school every day during primary school and the school had rows and rows of bike racks. Granted it was in a flat country town and another era but it was an extremely enjoyable and sociable way to get to school. Now I swear at the bike riders who are riding their bike slowly and seemingly obliviously in the middle of the transit lane as I drive to school along a very busy commuter route. How times change.

There is a new book in the shops at the moment, simply called The Bicycle which would make a good follow up to any bike discussion you were having with children. It is a celebration of the bicycle in illustration put together by Colin Thompson as a result of a trip to Cambodia with Save the Children Fund. He writes about how this wonderful book came to be, here on the Readings website. A wide range of wonderful children's book illustrators, fifteen in total have contributed, including Quentin Blake and Shaun Tan and a favourite of mine, Freya Blackwood.

Then if the children are inspired by this book and the reasons behind it, Kate Petty's book for Oxfam, Bicycles will allow children to see the role bikes do play in developing countries.

1st May Mother Goose Day! Daniel Kirk (1952)

Mother Goose Day is a day that I always try to plan something for because children do not know their nursery rhymes like they did when I first started teaching and because there are so many great language activities that you can do using nursery rhymes. I wrote about them on this day last year so I don't want to dwell on them here. I have bikes and New York on my mind because my daughter is riding in the Five Buro Bike Ride today and I am envious.

So today I want to highlight five books, with very tenuous links...they are about New York or bikes and one, The Magic Bicycle by Brian Patten and Arthur Robins even manages to include both! The others are:

• This is New York by Miroslav Sasek

• A Walk in New York by Salvatore Rubbino

• Larry Gets Lost in New York City by Michael Mullin and John Skewes. Here a dog named Larry manages to visit all five buroughs of New York! and

• The Magical Bicycle by Berlie Doherty and Christian Birmingham

P.S I have just learned that it is Daniel Kirk's birthday and as he is the author/illustrator of Library Mouse he should rate a mention. His website has good activities for this book so check it out.