26th January Ashley Wolff (1956)

Last year I bought a book called Baby Bear Sees Blue and was just 'blown away' by the illustrations. I love linoprints and they are probably my favourite form of artwork.  Many of the artworks in my home are linoprints. I wondered why I hadn't seen any other books by this illustrator, so went in search of other books by Ashley Wolff. Surprisingly there were quite a lot already in the library, but none had memorable illustrations like this one. I hadn't remembered that Wolff was the illustrator of all the books in the series about Miss Bindergarten. I love the illustrations in Compost Stew  but hadn't realised they were hers. So now I am on the lookout for more of her books. I was pleased to see that I need to buy Baby Bear Counts One  which was published at the end of last year. I went to Ashley Wolff's website to learn more about her and her techniques for the bear books. There I learned that her bear books were  inspired by the bear cub in McCloskey's Blueberries For Sal and I found this review

Wolff’s illustrations, black linoleum-block prints washed with watercolors, feature bold lines, strong
compositions, and sensitive uses of color that will draw readers into the pictures. Excellent for group
sharing…. The quiet text is made up of Baby Bear’s questions about the sensory wonders of his world and his mother’s replies, and given a chance, young children will be happy to supply the answers first. An engaging concept book with just enough narrative for its audience.

~Booklist

As well as linoblocks she uses collage and two books about grandparents interest me now - I Call My Grandpa Papa and I Call My Grandma Nana. These books explore the names various children and cultures have for their grandparents - just perfect for Grandparents' Day at school!

Happy Birthday Ashley Wolff. You are now on my radar!

1st & 2nd February Tomato Festival

This morning I was reading the newspaper and was surprised to read that Sydney is hosting a Tomato Festival at the Botanical Gardens on the 1st and 2nd February. This got me thinking about tomatoes, a fruit that I feel is somewhat overrated in its raw state. Friends say that is because I never have really good ones straight from the garden. Recently though I did. A friend served up a salad that was just tomatoes of various colours straight from her garden with olive oil and a little basil and they were good, very good!

Next I thought about how there were tomatoes growing in the school vegetable garden and how I have never thought much about them as a display impetus in the library. What did we have about tomatoes?  I thought of the 'signature' book I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato, the very first Charlie and Lola book by Lauren Child and then had to look in the catalogue. There was not much as I discovered. Here is the sum total!

Oh No, Monster Tomato!  a picture book about a tomato-growing competition by Jim Helmore and Beware! Killer Tomatoes, a short chapter book from Jeremy Strong's Laugh Your Socks Off series continue the fun tomatoes conjure up in fiction and then there are a few non fiction books that look at how to grow tomatoes and their lifecycles. Compared to apples, pumpkins, carrots and potatoes, tomatoes are certainly under-represented in children's books!

21st January Squirrel Appreciation Day

It is very easy to appreciate squirrels when you have very little knowledge of them and for you they are lovely looking mischievous characters in children's picture books. But I get the feeling that for people who live with them they may well be like possums are for me where I live...pests! I have seen lovely big red ones in Switzerland,  very busy, but small red ones in England and  brown, quietly busy but not easily distracted ones in America, and I thought they were all gorgeous, but here in Australia we do not have squirrels, so I feel justified in appreciating them. I love Melanie Watts' Scaredy Squirrel books and so do the children who frequent my library. My timid and worried students can laugh at Scaredy while needing lots of reassurance themselves and they reborrow the same books from this series over and over again. I also love the squirrel series that starts with Those Darn Squirrels by Adam Rubin. Here the squirrels are brazen and pesty. But, my favourite squirrel in a children's book has to be the endearing one in Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser, who helps Bear work out what snow is.

20th November Christmas Folktales

I have been having so much fun reading with my Kindergarten classes this term. We have been studying folktales and for the last four weeks we have looked closely at folktales that are set at Christmas. They are perfect for teaching students to make text-to-text connections. We started by looking at the Ukrainian tales which tell why spiders are hung on Christmas trees in the Ukraine and then compared it to the German Cobweb Christmas where we found out about the origins of tinsel. Next we looked at gift-bearers in Italy and Russia by comparing Old Befana and Baboushka and then to finish off we went to Mexico to learn why poinsettias abound as Christmas decorations.

These books are in my school library so they were the ones I used, but I am sure there are others.

•  The Legend of Old Befana by Tomie dePaola
• The Tale of Baboushka: A Traditional Christmas Story by Elena Pasquali
• Baboushka by Arthur Scholey (we have two versions, same words different illustrations)
• Babushka by Sandra Ann Horn
• Cobweb Christmas: The Tradition of Tinsel by Shirley Climo
• A Christmas Spider's Miracle by Trinka Hakes Noble
• The Spider's Gift: A Ukranian Christmas Story by Eric A. Kimmel
• The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola
• The Miracle of the First Poinsettia: A Mexican Christmas Story by Joanne Oppenheim

10th November National Adoption Week

It is National Adoption Week in Australia from 10th -17th November.  This week is designed to raise community awareness of adoption and the issues surrounding it in Australia.  It  aims to increase insight and empathy, remove the stigma, and work towards a more positive adoption environment because every child has the  right to a family. 

The figures on the website show that the number of adoptions in Australia is decreasing but there are still a large number of children in need of positive and permanent homes. The subject of adoption is not one I have thought about at length, but lately I have had reason to search in my library for books for families and teachers on just this topic. Presently there are at least six children at school who have been adopted from overseas and they do like to see themselves in stories. This was brought home to me while I was reading a group of Year 2s, Randall Jarrell's The Animal Family  and one of the students wrote a very moving piece in her journal making text to self connections between herself and the bear cub who the hunter and mermaid 'adopt'.

I was surprised how many books were in the library that could be used to discuss adoption, so I have put them together on a pinterest page.

8th November World Radiography Day

World Radiography Day 

is celebrated on 8 November each year. The date marks the anniversary of the discovery of x-radiation by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895.

I was pleased to see that there is a day to celebrate radiography because I have discovered this year that an early childhood library can never have too many books about x-rays. After sharks, snakes and dinosaurs, x-rays and bones would be the next most popular topic with 4 to 6 year old boys in my library. They especially like the books with the acetate pages that show what is under the skin or what is on the x-rays. If you are looking for books this is what is most popular in my library:
• Jessica's X-ray  by Pat Zora
• You Can't See Your Bones With Binoculars by Harriet Ziefert
• X-treme X-ray by Nick Veasey
• Bones: Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins

21st October Apple Day

Apple Day is an annual celebration, held in October, of apples and orchards. It is celebrated mainly in the United Kingdom where it is Autumn and harvest time. The first Apple Day was held in 1990. Given that the Granny Smith green apple originated in Australia in 1868 and apples are popular as snacks in Australian school lunchboxes we should celebrate it here too.

Apples and their place in our language and life could make for some interesting discussions with children, even a whole unit of study. Look at how many sayings there are. Just some that come to mind:
• an apple for the teacher
• an apple a day keeps the doctor away
• that apple didn't fall far from the tree
• rotten to the core
• you are the apple of my eye
• don't upset the apple cart
• don't let one rotten apple spoil the whole barrel.

Scrolling through my library catalogue there were more than thirty picture books which highlighted apples. Some were sheer celebrations of the apple such as Apple by Nikki McClure and Little Apple: A Book of Thanks by Brigitte Weninger; others such as The Apple Trees by Vivian French, One Red Apple by Harriet Ziefert, Apples Apples Apples  by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, From Seed to Apple  by Anita Ganeri and Apples Grow on a Tree by Mari Schuh explain the lifecycle of apples in an illustrated format suitable for young readers; some tell the benefits of and how to make apple pies (Amelia Bedelia's First Apple Pie; How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World) and yet others are just great stories for young children to enjoy and marvel at.

The most recent acquisition that sent me on this search for an Apple Day is The Apple Orchard Riddle  by Margaret McNamara and Brian Karas. I bought this because their earlier book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? had been such a success with the teachers and this story is also about teacher, Mr Tiffin and his class, and in it they go on a trip to an orchard and learn a lot about apples while trying to solve a riddle as well.

Other stories that I have shared with preschool or kindergarten classes to great effect are:
• Mr Brown's Magnificent Apple Tree  by Yvonne Winer and Maya Winters
• A New House for Mouse by Petr Horacek
• Red Panda's Toffee Apples by Ruth Paul
• The Very Helpful Hedgehog by Rosie Wellesley
• The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall and Shari Halpern
• The Apple Tree by Lynley Dodd
and two picture books with more 'meat' and things to talk about
• Hubert and the Apple Tree by Bruno Hachler and Albrecht Rissler
• One Green Apple by Eve Bunting and Ted Lewin. This story also features an excursion to an apple orchard, but the main character here is Farah, a Muslim immigrant who is new to the class.