19th August Book Week Connect to Reading Part 2

I shared the shortlist for the Picture Book with my four classes of Year 2 students. I agonised over whether to buy The Rules of Summer as I thought the illustrations were quite dark and the rules worded rather negatively and that I would need to do too much scaffolding to do it justice in one or two thirty minute library lessons. I thought I would wait and see if it won and then decide. Well it did win and I am still not sure what I want to do!

The other shortlisted books were fun to share and easy to use the connection theme with. We stared with King Pig  because the students all wanted to read it. They thought it would be funny and they 'love' Nick Bland books. We book talked it in pairs where the students had to focus on what made it funny and discuss whether or not it had a message or theme. They easily recognised the theme but were surprised that a humorous story could have a serious message. This prompted revisiting other books they knew such as Click Clack Moo Cows that Type  and Farmer Duck.

It also led effortlessly to The Windy Farm which also looked as if it would be humorous. Similarly here the students worked out that this was not only funny but had a deeper message. Two of the classes were currently studying the environment and were keen to talk about energy sources and how common wind energy was. This led naturally to the book Energy Island  by Allan Drummond which tells the story of Samso, a Danish island that is powered by wind energy.

I thought Toby the character in Parachute  may have been too young for my Year 2 students to relate to, but in their Book Talk pairs they quickly began to talk about fears and make connections to themselves. The subject of 'security blankets' arose and one class and I revisited Lisa Shanahan's Gordon's Got a Snookie in order to once again look at the connection between humour and serious themes. The other three classes talked more about overcoming fears and we used Sonya Hartnett's  Come Down Cat to make connections, both literally with cats and heights, but inferentially about how to and when to be brave.

And lastly,  Silver Buttons  which was my favourite and the easiest to get the students involved in. We talked about small increments of time and what could be done in them. We timed activities with stopwatches. We looked at what is 'momentous' and what is 'mundane' and argued the story events inclusion or not.  The Book Talk final discussion was to sum up the book in one word. I was amazed by how well the students did this. There was the obvious 'minute', but others were 'time', 'life', celebration', and 'importance'. I used At the Same Moment Around the World and Just a Second as either pre or post reading.

King Pig  and  Silver Buttons were the most popular of the books we read when the students voted.

18th August Book Week Connecting to Reading Part 1

It is Children's Book Week in Australia and the theme 'Connect to Reading' has meant some very insightful reading has been happening in my library. My 5  to 8 year olds have been reading from the Early Childhood and the Picture Book shortlists. We have been connecting these titles to other older books that they may not have known too.

We haven't done any art or craft activities yet. I am saving the Reading to Connect activities for fun in the library this week when we will draw with rainbow pencils and paint with mud, as Ann James does in I'm a Dirty Dinosaur, try to draw a duck in a minute inspired by Silver Buttons and make plastic bag parachutes to float our teddies off the second floor down onto the playground.

So far though we have made text-to-text connections between the two lullabies on the Early Childhood shortlist Baby Bedtime and Kissed by the Moon. We played lullaby music and lay down on the mat as I read.

We read The Swap and connected it to Pat Hutchins 1985 classic The Very Worst Monster which is also about sibling rivalry and the need to get rid of a sibling.

We read Banjo and Ruby Red  and connected it with many books Year1 and I had read last term when we looking at chickens and foxes in picture books and talking about stereotypes. The children thought it reminded them of Albert and Lila,  a chicken and pig story where they help each other to outwit a fox and The Chicken Thief  because 'the hen and fox become good friends'. This connection also led to us reconnecting with Bear and Chook the good friends in Lisa Shanahan's award-winning books.

And although we live near the beach, the concept of grommet was very new to my students, so to read Granny Grommet and Me  we first looked at some surfing books and the news report about granny grommets. One of my students connected this story with Olivia Learns to Surf because in it Olivia is taught to surf by her grandmother. We quickly visited it, but the children were much more interested in talking about sea dragons so that is where we went, off exploring them. The book Seahorses and Seadragons led us to connections of all kinds especially once the students discovered from the maps that they could be found in the sea off Sydney. Next we read another Australian picture book Seadragon Sea  by Margaret Spurling.

The shortlisted Early Childhood books were well received by Kindergarten and Year 1 students, but The Swap  and Banjo and Ruby Red  were the most popular by far when we pretended to be judges and voted, so for once the judges agreed with the children which often isn't the case. It is a fitting tribute to Jan Ormerod to have her last book achieve such an award!

5th August National Underwear Day

Who would have thought, a day to celebrate underwear! It is a great topic to celebrate in a Prep school library because it is a topic explored in a large number of children's picture books. When I type 'underwear' in my subject search for my library there are over forty books I can use to make a display, so that is just what I will do tomorrow. Of course there's all the Captain Underpants titles, with another one about to arrive very soon, all the Claire Freedman Aliens in Underpants series, and Todd Doodler's Bear in Underwear series, but there are many stand-alines too. It is interesting too, how many of these books are accompanied by a toy! Obviously they are sellers. Our latest toy is the elongated orange frog from New Zealand author Juliette MacIver's  The Frog Who Lost His Underpants. If you haven't read Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants do and share it with a class. It is fun!  

Here is just some of the titles in the library:

29th July Kathleen Krull (1952)

Kathleen Krull's name appears in my library quite a lot at this time of the year because it is when Year 2 and I are completing a wide-reading contract using picture book biographies and Kathleen Krull seems to specialise in writing biographies so I was pleased to learn that today was her birthday.
Two of her biographies are included in the contract.  We have others of her biographies but I especially like these two because they are very relevant to my students' lives.

They are:
• The Boy on Fairfield Street (the story of a young Ted Geisel aka Dr Seuss)
• The Boy Who Invented TV (the story of Philo Farnsworth)

Some quotes I would share with my students from Kathleen's own biography would be ...

"When I was fifteen, I was fired from my part-time job at the library. The reason? Reading too much--while I was supposed to be working." 

"As a child I thought books were the most important thing in the world, and that perception is actually more intense now. I’m grateful, for so many reasons, to be able to work in a vital and exhilarating field: preserving literacy. One of the benefits of the writing life is that I can't be fired. Especially for reading too much."

22nd June Michael Hall

I have just found a new birthday to celebrate courtesy of Eric at Happy Birthday Author. Today is the birthday of  Michael Hall, the author/illustrator responsible for  Perfect Square and Cat Tale, two wonderful and popular picture books in our library. I have also just found out he has a new book, It's an Orange Aardvark! which I will need to order!

11th June Eric Hill (1927 - 2014)

At lunch time today I had a quick glance at the new's headlines, only to be met with the sad news of Eric Hill's passing. For my library's clientele that was very sad news because every child in a Prep School library knows Spot and has a definite view about him. Currently there is a poster of him right in the entrance, put there to celebrate Library Week a couple of week's ago. The toy Spots are never in the library and the box of books would be visited every day despite his age!

The obituary published in the Guardian gives a good overview of Eric Hill's remarkable life.


This is a photo of  the wonderful poster in the doorway of the library. Kindergarten children line up there and point to each word as they read them.

7th June Butterfly Day

In the UK today is designated Butterfly Education and Awareness Day, a day to make people aware of the role of butterflies in pollination and what they can do to ensure there are butterfly habitats close to them. Butterflies are certainly fascinating creatures because of their beauty and delicacy.

Many children's books focus on butterflies, but the ones here, I have included because of their illustrations and/or stories rather than their factual information. They will certainly cover a wide range of uses.

1. Butterfly by Petr Horacek.
2. A Butterfly is Patient  by Dianna Hutts Acton and Sylvia Long.
3. Caterpillar Butterfly by Vivian French and Charlotte Voake.
4.  Caterpillar and Butterfly by Ambelin Kwaymullina.
5.  Ten Little Caterpillars by Bill Martin Jnr and Lois Ehlert.
6.  I Wish I Were a Butterfly by James Howe and Ed Young.
7. Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly by Alan Madison and Kevin Hawkes.
8.  Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian by Margarita Engle and Julie Paschkis

For more butterfly titles including expository texts see Pinterest here.