16th October World Dictionary Day

October 16, the birthday of Noah Webster, is World Dictionary Day. Show your appreciation for this most useful of reference books by celebrating Dictionary Day with children --learn some new words, learn how dictionaries came to be, spruce up your dictionary skills, or even create your own dictionary! Look here for lots of ideas on how to have fun with words.

In Australia we are more likely to use an Oxford, a Collins or a Macquarie dictionary than a Webster's, but nevertheless Webster is worth celebrating. There is Noah Webster and His Words  a picture book biography that will be in many libraries and it is an ideal way to introduce young children to Noah Webster. If this creates plenty of discussion you might like to also introduce students to the life of Peter Mark Roget, the thesaurus guru whose life is featured in this new book, The Right Word by Jen Bryant and with wonderful illustrations by Melissa Sweet.

4th October World Animal Day St Francis of Assisi

 World Animal Day is an international day of action celebrated annually on October 4, the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. It started in 1931 at a convention of ecologists in Florence, Italy who wished to highlight the plight of endangered species.

"Saint Francis of Assisi has always held a fascination for members of all faiths, and his story continues to inspire and motivate us more than seven hundred years after his death. Born into a wealthy family, he led a dissolute life as a young man. Then one day he had a conversion experience while passing a poor leper's hut. From that day on, Francis dedicated his life to helping the poor and outcasts of society and to teaching respect for all living things. He was joined by a noblewoman, Clare, who was soon known as Sister Moon to Francis's Brother Sun." (Amazon) He is responsible for the famous prayer that begins, "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.", the Canticle of the Sun and many stories about how he tamed a wolf and talked to animals. 

Below is a collage of all the wonderful picture books that feature Saint Francis. Lots of well-known authors and illustrators have presented their view of this favoured saint. See Tomie dePaola, Brian Wildsmith, Fiona French, Pat Mora, Demi, Margaret Mayo, Reeve Lindberg and Katherine Patterson. You might even be able to find a favourite of mine, the very old and now out-of-print How St Francis Tamed the Wolf by Gerald Rose.

There are so many wonderful books about animals, including Walker's wonderful Nature Storybooks, anything by Steve Jenkins, those large, beautifully illustrated books with flaps by Francesco Pittau Gervais, anything fro National Geographic... World Animal Day is such a good excuse for a display in the library.

3rd October World Smile Day

World Smile Day is celebrated on the first Friday in the month of October every year. The idea of World Smile Day was coined and initiated by Harvey Ball, a commercial artist from Worcester, Massachusetts. Harvey Ball is known to have created the Smiley Face in 1963.^[1] The World's first World Smile Day was held in the year 1999 and has been held annually since.

After Harvey died in 2001, the "Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation" was created to honour his name and memory. The slogan of the Smile Foundation is "improving this world, one smile at a time." The Foundation continues as the official sponsor of World Smile Day each year.

The message of the World Smile Day 2010 is "Do an act of kindness. Help one person smile." (Wikipedia)

This day makes me a little sad because my son finished high school and shortly after had that yellow smiley face tattooed onto his body, saying, "well no teacher ever gave me one so I got myself one!" I was devastated to know that teachers, their stamps and stickers or lack there of could have such dire effect on a child, and every time he takes his shirt off I am now reminded of the power of teachers.

I have put together a reading list of picture books that feature smiles before. See this entry, and I would like to add The Smile That Went Around the World by Patrice Karst, the author of that book all kindergarten teachers use called The Invisible String.

31st August International Bat Night

The 18th International Bat Night will take place this weekend. The last weekend in August has been set aside to celebrate bats since 1997. While people who live with bats in their neighbourhood may not be that enamoured of them there are good reasons to ensure their continued existence. Although this may be questioned since the linking in the news of fruit bats and the Ebola outbreak. While this is supposedly an International event, it appears to be about preserving colonies of European bats and Australian Bat Night is celebrated in March.

The children I teach are nearly as interested in bats as they are in sharks, maybe because they fly but aren't birds and maybe because they are fascinated with the way they hang upside down and use echolocation. Consequently the library has nearly as many bat books as shark books. Of course the most popular stories are the series by Brian Lies that started with Bats in the Library, Janell Cannon's Stellaluna  for which we have toys or puppets, Jeanne Willis' Daft Bat and the very old Robert Dickins' Boris the Bat, but many of the non-fiction readers are just as popular. Nicola Davies' Bat Loves the Night, one of the Nature Storybooks series is one of my favourites. Below are the most popular titles.

24th August Ruth Park (1917 - 2010)

Today would have been the birthday of New Zealand born Australian author Ruth Park who wrote for both children and  adults. But I was pleased to learn on her website that she wanted to write more for children as she saw that as a challenge. She is well known for the children's classics The Muddle-Headed Wombat  and Playing Beatie Bow. My clientele cannot read either of these independently yet so they are more likely to meet Ruth, reading When the Wind Changed; The Gigantic Balloon or The Big Brass Key which are in the library.

When I first started teaching every child knew and talked about When the Wind Changed. Now the students I teach have parents who don't want their children reading this book because 'it has a gun in it'. The world has changed. In some ways my students are very connected to the world because of technology, yet because they are not allowed to or do not watch the news, there is much less conversation about national or international news, what is happening in their community or other communities within their city. Their general knowledge, vocabulary and knowledge of idiom and proverbs has diminished. They haven't heard the saying about being careful not to pull a face in case the wind changes and it stays like that. Thus, I'm always in a quandary...to read or not to read?  Old books that are part of Australian children's literature deserve to be read, even if they need to scaffolded by their historical setting. Recently I did this with Junko Morimoto's Kojuro and the Bears, another story 'with guns' and I was amazed by the discussion that followed.

Ruth Park will also be remembered as the mother of other Australian Children's literature stalwarts, Kilmeny and Deborah Niland.

21st August Book Week Part 4

Another Book Week initiative that has been a big success is the the wide reading contract that we handed out at the beginning of term. Many of the students had completed the Premier's Reading Challenge,  then read another thirty books so that they could have lunch with the principal in the 'secret garden', so many of them were looking for a new directive. This grid directed their reading for pleasure. Many parents used it as a guide when borrowing from the library too. We had a large bin of textless books, another of picture book biographies, and yet another of graphic novels and toon books which made it easy to locate the books. As each activity was completed the box was coloured in or crossed off. When completed the students brought their grid and a photo of themselves reading to the library for a small reward (a goody bag with eg. a bookmark, sticker, rubber and badge). The photos are on display pegged onto ribbons in the library. The students in extension literacy classes had to do it and record on the back the titles of some of the books they read for certain categories. Many teachers and parents commented on how it made students vary what they read and look at things they may never usually contemplate reading.

READ	ENJOY	AND	DISCUSS
in the car	to Mum	a non-fiction book	a book that became a movie
outside	a book with a blue cover	with a friend, a book they recommend	A wordless book
in the dark with a torch	a book with chapters	in the kitchen	a book with your name in it
a book that won an award the year you were born	at the library	something on a Kindle, computer or iPad	in your pyjamas
listen to a story	a book based on a true story or a biography	some riddles or jokes	a book published this year
some poetry	with Dad	a comic, toon book or graphic novel	a book from a series

Return completed grid to the library with a photo of you reading from one of the boxes.

20th August Book Week Connect to Reading Part 3

I didn't purchase all of the Eve Pownall shortlisted books because many weren't easily accessible to children under eight years. So it was hard to go past Jeremy which my students loved. I had read this to them long before it made any shortlist and when I was making up my Clayton's shortlist for the CBC Sydney event in April I told the audience that Jeremy was the most borrowed 2013 Australian picture book in my library so something in this book certainly connects to its audience and my clientele.

Once it made the shortlist we read it again. The children all had kookaburra stories to share. They live in homes with trees and verandahs. This lead to possum stories too. And then we looked at who was telling the story and whether or not it was true. We used Greg Reid's Kookaburras  book from Macmillan's Australian animals series to see if the time framework for Jeremy's growth was compatible with the lifecycle of a baby kookaburra. We read the kookaburra facts on the endpapers as well. The students decided it most definitely could be true. They especially liked that they found out that female kookaburras can have two or three chicks at a time so the chicks that he flies off with could well be siblings.

Next we read Possums in the Roof , a very old book by Julie Morris which is also a story based on real events and looked at the connections between it and Jeremy. Here mother possum has twin babies who get caught under the tiles in a roof cavity. The boy who lives in the house discovers their existence and tries to save them with his father. The students listed many similarities or connections starting with the first person narration and the fact that this book says that it is true. These books were perfect for teaching connections and focussing students in on text-to-self and text-to-text connections.

 These two stories started requests for other true stories about animals so I went looking and was pleasantly surprised to find we actually have quite a few. See the titles on this pinterest page.