19th December Eve Bunting (1928)

Eve Bunting was born in Northern Ireland and moved to the United States with her husband and family in 1958. She started writing after doing a writing course in America and since then has written over 200 books. She writes for a large age range and about a broad range of topics. There is an interview with her here. At this time of year there are many Christmas titles to choose from. Try Night Tree; Cricket Christmas and We Were There. Each of these gives a very different perspective to Christmas from the books we usually read at this time of year. The last two look at insects and their view of Christmas. Have you ever thought about the scorpion or cockroach that were in the stable at the time of the nativity?

Australian author, Libby Gleeson talked about her daughters' reading at a conference I attended and she mentioned how one of her daughters had particularly liked I Am the Mummy Heb-Nefert (see the trailer) and I thought how nice that was because I particularly like that book too. In my library as well as this one the three other Eve Bunting books that are the most borrowed are:

* Secret Place illustrated by Ted Rand . This is the story of a family of ducks who a boy finds hidden among the concrete city. A good book to compare and contrast with Colin Thiele's The March of Mother Duck and Narelle Oliver's Home.

* Sunflower House illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt. This book is used by Year 1 as part of a unit of work on growing and lifecycles.

* Pop's Bridge illustrated by C.F.Payne. I bought this book this year for our Book Week unit on bridges. It is the story of two boys who have fathers who are part of the team of workers building the Golden Gate Bridge.

Paul Klee (1879 - 1940) Timothy Knapman

Paul Klee was a Swiss born German artist whose paintings appear simple but provide children with plenty to examine and talk about. His birthday is the ideal time to read Dreaming Pictures: Paul Klee, one of the wonderful Adventures in Art titles from Prestel. This book is suitable for children as young as five but a good read for adults too. You never know when you may end up at Zentrum, a museum in Bern, Switzerland dedicated to Klee!

Timothy Knapman is a British author who likes to write about friendship and adventure. He has said, " I try to make my books as exciting as possible because I know how much I enjoyed the books I read when I was small. I am very conscious that it's now my turn to introduce children to the joys of reading, and to create a book habit that will last a lifetime. That doesn't mean I want to make things easy, because I think easy is boring - especially for kids. I want my young readers to be thrilled and entertained - but also challenged and stretched."

Tim's books often take motifs from fairytales and play with them to make very satisfying stories. See Little Ogre's Surprise Supper; Guess What I Found in In Dragon Wood; and The Mermaid, the Prince and the Happy Ever After. His series about Mungo, a small boy who finds adventures and comedy when he opens a book has been a hit with my under 8s. These three books are illustrated by Adam Stower. When will the next adventure be published?

17th December Jacqueline Wilson (1945) Bel Mooney (1946)

Woke up to the news this morning, to hear that Australian author, Ruth Park had died. She is the author of The Muddle-Headed Wombat books and When the Wind Changed. She was 93, but it will still be hard for the Niland family at Christmas.

On a more celebratory note it is the birthday of two British authors who write contemporary realism that girls love. They relate to Jacqueline Wilson's characters and Bel Mooney's Kitty. The problem in my library with Jacqueline's books is that they read something like Lizzie Zipmouth or The Cat Mummy and then go and buy Cookie or Bad Girls because they aren't in the library. They just cannot wait to read more, even if it is not suitable to their age. I've had to deal with a couple of not so receptive mothers, but this shouldn't stop my under eights from reading the Jacqueline Wilson that she has written for them.

Bel Mooney also writes for a large age range but she has two series that are just perfect for my clientele. She writes about Kitty and her friends (there are more than ten titles) and another series about Bonnie, a small dog and her owner, Harry. This series now has at least 6 titles. Both series are popular.

16th December Quentin Blake (1932) Chris d'Lacey (1954)

Where do you start with someone like Quentin Blake, the famous British illustrator. He is a phenomenon. He was rightly so, the first Children's Laureate. Everything he does is wonderful so it is so hard to know what to single out. The children I teach think of him as Roald Dahl's illustrator, but he is so much more than that. He illustrates for other well known authors too such as John Yeoman, Michael Morpurgo, David Williams and Michael Rosen. And, he writes his own books as well and they usually have such a sense of fun. I love Mrs Armitage and Mister Magnolia and they never fail when I use them with classes. Two books of Blake's that you might not know, but really need to check out are Tell Me a Picture and The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac. Tell Me a Picture is the book accompaniment to an exhibition Blake organised for the National Gallery in London. He did this because he believes that enjoyment of the art in picture books can be a prelude to pleasure in a museum.

Chris d'Lacey is the British author responsible for the very popular series The Last Dragon Chronicles, but these are beyond my clientele, so I have introduced them to his other dragon series, The Dragons of Wayward Crescent in readiness.

15th December Hundertwasser (1928 - 2000)

Hundertwasser (Friedrich Stowasser) was an Austrian painter and architect. I first fell in love with his work when I bought a New Zealand Conservation Week poster over thirty years ago. I then went in search of more of his work and since then have bought a calendar nearly every year so that I can have a lot of Hundertwasser in my life. His work always involves bold, vivid and vibrant colour that often appears confrontational because of the black backgrounds. He had strong opinions on everything, strived for ecological harmony and lived by his words "the colourful, the abundant, the manifold, is always better than mediocre grey and uniformity."

Children and teachers can get to know Hundertwasser by reading these two books:

* Harvesting Dreams: Hundertwasser for Kids by Barbara Stieff

* A Journey in the World of Fantasy with Hundertwasser

This book is one from the series of Prestel My Painting Book, but it is far more than a colouring in book. It gives information about his motifs and asks children to do their own.

14th December Rosemary Sutcliff (1920 - 1992)

Rosemary Sutcliff was an English author who specialised in historical fiction and she certainly knew how to bring history to life. She has written about Greek mythology and extensively about English legends, such as Robin Hood and King Arthur. While most of her writing is beyond my under 8s, what she writes about is not and children who revel in easier picture book versions of Greek mythology and King Arthur will go on to enjoy her books and appreciate her fine use of the English language.

13th December

No birthday, but on the 10th when there were so many birthdays, it was also Ann Turner's birthday. She was born in 1945 and is an American author. I do not know her work well, but the one book of hers that is in my library, In the Heart is illustrated by Salley Mavor, an illustrator who uses fabric to make 'wee people' for her very tactile illustrations. Salley's birthday is the 14th April, 1955 and I didn't know that back in April. In my library we have three of Salley's books. The other two are Martin Waddell's The Hollyhock Wall and Judith Benet Richardson's The Way Home. Recently though, I read about her new book Pocketful of Posies and I cannot wait to see these illustrations. Hurry up and come to Australia. The illustrations I have seen on websites are beautifully detailed, exquisite masterpieces. Her fabric relief technique is meticulous and slow, with a page in a book taking a month or so to do. This means a whole book could take a year or two. But to quote William Joyce who celebrated his own birthday only a couple of days ago, "Children's literature is the first literature and the first art children are exposed to. It should be good. And when it is, it should be given respect." So it is fitting that Salley Mavor has spent so much of her time illustrating nursery rhymes!