I have been away from my blog because in the last week I have visited two tiny rural schools -
Hampton Public School and Capertee Public School
Here are the books I shared:
This is a terrific 'warm up' book. Every child from Kindergarten up to Grade 5 loved the surprise of the little books at the back - each one smaller than the previous one. I was able to talk about Nadia Wheatley and her famous book My Place and we also looked at the original edition of this book which had a different illustrator and slightly different text.
Then at Hampton we looked at Somebody and the Three Blairs. The children were able to quickly recall the main parts of the 'real' story and the pattern of three. They anticipated the plot of this different version from the title and we spent time looking at the back cover and end papers. Of course the most popular page is always the one where the bear drinks from a pond (the toilet)!
At Capertee we talked about the CBCA 2022 Honour Book (Picture Book) The Boy and the Elephant. This is the first wordless (IBBY call them Silent books) that the children had ever seen. We spent some time before reading Stormy learning new names for book parts - dust jacket; end papers; half title page; title page; and at the end it was wonderful to remove the dust jacket and reveal the little surprise dog tag. We also briefly looked at Aquarium. Most of the children did not know the word aquarium but they loved seeing the way the pattern under the dust jacket matched the girl's dress.
One of our morning activities in both schools involved sharing the contents of a treasure box. It is just an old jewellery box I have filled with tiny objects such as a clock key, tiny bottles of 'magic potion', coins, an old medal, a necklace, gold embroidered gloves, a pen nib, a game of knuckle bones, a dog tag, 'fake' jewels and some tiny opals.
After looking and handling all of the treasures I asked one child to pick their favourite (Hampton key and Capertee necklace) and then I told a story loosely based on this book by Jan Mark. Following my story the children selected a treasure and wrote their own stories. Their work was just wonderful.
Towards the end of the day in both schools we unpacked a box of 2023 CBCA Picture book entries but sorry these are a secret. We looked at 8 books and I explained around 180+ will probably be submitted. We decided on our 'criteria' - cover, title, illustrations (especially illustrations that show more than the story) and of course a great story. I was able to read one book, selected by the children, at each school. I will give you a tiny hint - one book had collage illustrations and in the other the teacher fainted several times.
At the end of the day I presented each school with a box of new picture books that can be added to their school library. There are eight students at each of these schools but I was so happy to see they both have separate buildings for their small school libraries. During the day I pulled a small selection of junior and senior novels from the shelves and I did book talks with the Primary children from each school. Hopefully some of these books will be borrowed over the coming weeks.
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