Thoughts from a Quiet Bench by Kes Gray illustrated by Nila Aye

Publisher blurb: The Quiet Bench in the playground is the perfect place to sit and watch the world go by. It's a place to listen, think, and ask yourself questions such as . . .

What are thoughts made of?

Where does the air stop being invisible and turn into blue sky?

Can the wind blow in two different directions at once?

So next time you see someone sitting quietly, why not join them? Because there's always room for one more friend on the Quiet Bench.

This is a book you will want to add to your school library BUT I recommend shopping around because the price here in Australia seems to vary between AUS$22 up to over AUS$32. 

Kes Gray is an author of more than fifty books for children of all ages, including the acclaimed Daisy series illustrated by Nick Sharratt and Garry Parsons. As well as winning the Red House Children's Book Award for Eat Your Peas, Billy Bucket and Daisy and the Trouble With Zoos, Kes was noted by The Independent as one of the top ten children's authors in the UK only a year after publishing his first book. He is also the author of Zippo the Super Hippo illustrated by Nikki Dyson and the bestselling Oi Frog! illustrated by Jim Field. Kes lives in Essex with his wife, children and an assortment of animals.

I spied this book in a city bookshop. I picked it up. Read it. And sighed with happiness.  Aren't we lucky that children's authors and illustrators keep producing amazing books for our children. I don't usually give stars to picture books but as you can see I have given this five stars! Just look at this page - 

There are, of course, some poignant moments in this book when we see the child sitting on the bench and later a child playing alone but this is beautifully balanced with some laugh out loud moments and a beautiful story ending. One of the things I treasured in my former school library were the quiet loner (not necessarily lonely) younger children who came to my library at lunch time. I tried hard to put aside the endless lunch time task of book shelving and just sit with these kids to play a simple card or board game and then inviting other kids to join in. 

Kes Gray is the author a book I love to read aloud:

Billy's Bucket

Here are some other books by Kes Gray - surely you already have many of these in your school library!

Nila Aye was born in Rangoon, Myanmar, arriving in the UK at the age of three and spent most of her childhood dreaming and drawing pictures. Nila studied graphic design at Central St Martins in London, graduating in 1995. Nila is an award-winning illustrator, collaborating on many well-loved children's books including Nature Trail, People Need People, Story Soup and the Little Bugs Big Feelings series. Her love of visual storytelling and collaboration with authors continues to energise Nila in her mission to bring beautifully illustrated books to a new generation of young readers around the world.

Here is the Instagram page for Nila Aye - she has a few small videos about Thoughts from a quiet bench.

Companion book:

The Friendship Bench

Little Brown by Marla Frazee

2019 Winner Charlotte Zolotow Award

I am not sure about this book. I do not think I would read it to the younger children at school but I do think it would be a terrific springboard for discussion with older students aged 9+.  The ending is so unresolved and sad. Little Brown is cranky. We don't know why? Perhaps he does not know how to make friends or approach the other dogs. Watching the play and happy times of the other dogs just makes him crankier and crankier. Is this jealousy? When a ball rolls over to his corner of the enclosed yard (perhaps this is a dog shelter/home/pound) he nabs and keeps it and then continues to collect all the other dog toys.

This is a dilemma for the other dogs.  I was pleased to see did not lead to any aggression. I did expect to see the dogs fighting. Instead the other dogs ask important questions:

"Is Little Brown cranky because we don't play with him?"
"Or do we not play with him because he is cranky?"
"Should we play with him to get the stuff back?"
"Or will that make us cranky too?  What then?"

Little Brown himself wonders:

"If I give it all back, will they like me? Then will they play with me? What if I give it all back and they still won't play with me? What then?"

I have labelled this book as a senior picture book because there is so much you could discuss around these questions and the open ending. I think I would call this lesson "What if or What then... ? " Marla Frazee conveys huge emotions in her illustrations. She discusses this on her web site.

 Here are some comments from the Charlotte Zolotow committee:

Little Brown, a cranky (but otherwise unremarkable) brown dog, has no one to play with at the kennel. Is that why he’s cranky? Or do none of the other dogs include him because he's cranky? When he hoards all the other dogs’ toys, what should they do? What should Little Brown do? In Frazee’s superb text, supported by equally fine, soft-hued pencil and gouache illustrations, a dramatic narrative crafted with wonderful language and artful pacing is full of hilariously spot-on dog behavior. But Little Brown’s isolation is heartbreaking, while the puzzlement of the other dogs and the “dilemma” they all face make for a complex look at social dynamics. The brilliant open ending leaves everything up for discussion with young readers and listeners, who no doubt know people like all of the dogs portrayed here. Charlotte Zolotow Award page

The reviewer at Kirkus says:

So when a ball rolls his way and Little Brown grabs it, this looks like the beginning of the end of Little Brown’s isolation and crankiness. But he then decides to grab the other toys, and in a jiffy, he’s collected a whole pile and stands on top of them, like a dragon hoarding treasure. Now there is a “dilemma.” …  Weirdly, this dilemma remains unresolved, leaving readers to continue the pondering: It becomes time to go and “maybe tomorrow / they would know what to do.”  A promising start dissolves to an undetermined, unsatisfying conclusion. Kirkus

In contrast the School Library Journal review says:

An open-ended story that creates a great starting point for meaningful discussion with young children about bullying and inclusion. School Library Journal (from Simon and Schuster publisher)

And here is the Bulletin of the Centre for Children's Books

Frazee interestingly leaves the conclusion open-ended, with no dog managing to break the standoff; that lessens the drama of the ending slightly, but it also offers easy discussion prompts (the dogs' questions could be posed to the audience verbatim) for some empathy-building and social consideration, while the adults can consider larger political symbolism. 

Bulletin of the Centre for Children’s Books

Keep Out by Noela Young

When I was researching Noela Young for my recent post I found some beautiful words by Maurice Saxby.  He compared the children at play in Keep Out with those by Jane Tanner in Drac and the Gremlin.  Both are books about imaginative play. Making use of simple objects to create stories. In this case a tyre swing.

Here is the one from Drac and the Gremlin :

Compare this with one by Noela Young:

Today I borrowed several books by Noela Young from a library including Keep Out. This is a wonderful book, not just because the illustrations are, as Maurice Saxby said "the best ever drawn" but because  this book celebrates 'people power'. A group of inner city children have nowhere to play. Each time they begin a game the neighbours and shop keepers chase them away until one day they discover a fence and a locked gate with the sign "Keep Out".  They kids go inside.

"Inside they found the ruins of old houses that were being pulled down. There were piles of bricks, old doors, and windows - even an old stove, tucked away in the chimney, which was still standing. All sorts of rubbish had been dumped here, including a wrecked car. Everywhere there were things to break and no one to say, 'Don't'."

The children enjoy several days of wild and wonderful play although their choices may seem a little sexist to a modern audience with the girls playing house and the boys building a rope swing. Eventually the 'game is up'. The council team arrive to clear the space. Ironically there are plans to use this ground for a new "nice tidy park."  The children protest so the workers invite their boss - the Council Engineer. "Then came the Mayor, the Town Planner and a young architect, followed by three aldermen."  Not only do the children save the day but they are allowed to share their ideas for the new  playgound including the name - Adventure Playground.

Here are some wonderful images from this book which was published in 1975 and is now out of print but you might be lucky and find this book in an Australian school library like I did.

The Gorgon in the Gully by Melina Marchetta

Well done Puffin for publishing this fabulous little Australian chapter book! I loved it from page 1 to page 119. Why am I praising the publisher? This is a story with a very authentic Australian flavour which is not surprising given the credentials of the author Melina Marchetta. There is no way this book will be taken up by the US market and this makes me cheer. Our children need books set in their own time and place. Danny is our Australian school boy hero. He lives in a very recognizable neighborhood and attends the local Catholic Primary school. His class teacher is a fearsome beast and I love her! I also laughed at all the little playground groups in Year 4 such as the soccer kids, handball, netball, the ‘So you think you can dance?’ girls, cricket players, homework kids, marble players, card players and the hopscotch girls.

“The only thing the kids from St Raph’s had in common was that all them knew that way, way, way beyond the basketball courts, the classrooms, the tuckshop, the bubblers, the toilets and the school hall, there was a patch of grass and then a dip and everything that rolled beyond the patch of grass and the dip disappeared. Every single time.” The real issue here is no one is brave enough to venture into the gully because of the Gorgon who has lived there for years and years. Countless hundreds of balls, and other objects are held in his clutches never to be seen again.

Our unlikely hero is Danny Griggs. He has to find a way to go down into the gully because he has just booted the soccer team’s lucky ball, the one signed by Harry Kewell no less, straight into the gully. Trouble is Danny has a huge secret, well actually it is not a secret because everyone knows, Danny is scared of everything. He is scared of his friend Bella because she is smarter and taller then him, he is scared of Jackson, another friend, because he often just wants to talk and just talking scares Danny but most of all he is scared of the school bully Simmo. Danny is even scared of using the telephone in case the person on the other end of the line can’t remember who he is.

Danny may be scared but he also has amazing strengths. He is a thinker and an organizer and he is very skilled in negotiation. For this crisis he will need all these skills to bring his friends and class mates together to conquer the gorgon once and for all.

I especially loved the character of Mrs Ruby, the Year 4 teacher. Any issue in class is resolved with find-a-word puzzles – dangerous - peril, hazard, risk, threat, menace, jeopardy. Mrs Ruby has a find-a-word for every situation. Other class rules include no eating in class, no green pens, no sharpening of pencils in to sharp point to jab in someone’s arm, no using the S words – shut up or stupid and no getting up from your desk to put a paper in the bin!

This is a book to make you laugh and think and cheer. The ending is simple and predictable but that is all part of the charm. As soon as I finished this book I wanted to put it into the hands of a teacher and ask them to read it to a class because it is a book that demands to be shared.

The idea of these Pocket Money Puffins is to celebrate seventy years of Puffin books, written by favourite authors at a pocket money price. As far as I can tell there are fourteen titles in this series. The first one I picked up was Magic Puffin: A Birthday Surprise but it didn’t really grab me. I will now go back to it and try again and I plan to pick up more of these little books I am sure many will be winners with our Junior Primary readers.

You can preview the whole of the first chapter from The Gorgon in the Gully and when you do I am sure you will want to rush out and borrow this book from your school library and read it read it read it! Look out too for all the references to favourite books like Beast Quest. When you finish this book you should look for NIPS XI by Ruth Starke it is a longer book but it has the same charm and wonderful team work of The Gorgon in the Gully.