Lollylegs by Pamela Freeman illustrated by Rhian Nest James

Lollylegs was a gift from a friend and how I wish I had seen this book last year.  Our school has a spectacular school fete each year.  We do have a wonderful picture book called Our School Fete by Louise Pfanner which is actually based on our fete but I have always struggled to find other books which explore this type of community event.

Lollylegs is a lamb and she is set to be auctioned at the school fete.  Laura's dad brings the lamb home a few days before the big event and of course Laura falls in love with his cute face and soft wool.  Then she discovers that the winner might want to eat her lamb!  About one hundred tickets will be sold.  Laura urgently needs to raise money and buy those tickets.  She cleans, sweeps, washes and tidies but on fete day some of the tickets have already been sold.

Laura can't eat. She can't enjoy the fete. She is desperate to save Lollylegs.  Who will win?

Here is a set of teachers notes.  These are perfect beginning chapter books.  Each has three stories or three chapters, line drawings and a satisfying story by some of the best children's writers from around the world including our own Bob Graham.  Pamela Freeman is also Australian and I have talked about Victor's Quest and Cherryblossom and the Golden Bear in the past.  When you look at the review of Cherryblossom you will see a comment from Pamela herself!  You can also see the amazing Sonya Hartnett on this list with her story Sadie and Ratz.

There are thirty books in the Walker Book series and we have a few in our school library but for some reason we missed Lollylegs.

• Handa's Surprising Day - Eileen Browne
• Little Witch - Juliette MacIver
• Mr Tripp Smells A Rat - Sandy McKay
• Lollylegs - Pamela Freeman
• Our Gags - Catriona Hoy
• The King's Shopping - June Crebbin
• Happy Birthday x 3 - Libby Gleeson
• Robin Hood's Day - Josephine Feeney
• What Mona Wants, Mona Gets - Dyan Sheldon
• Glog - Pippa GoodHart
• Sylvie's Seahorse - Mara Bergman
• Nick Mack's Good Luck - Mara Bergman
• Parrot Park - Mary Murphy
• Sadie and Ratz - Sonya Hartnett
• Not Like Me - Marguerite Hann-Syme
• Ellie and Granny Mac - Elizabeth MacLennan
• Jack's Little Party - Bob Graham
• Leon Spreads His Wings - Wendy Lee
• Jake's Cave - Lou Kuenzler
• Grandad's Bench - Addy Farmer
• Toffee and Pie - Pippa Goodhart
• Nelson - Tor & Jude Freeman
• Drusilla and Her Brothers - Dyan Sheldon
• A Heart For Ruby - Franzeska G. Ewart
• Mia's Magic Uncle - Lindsay MacLeod
• The Lost Treasure - Jan Strandling
• Kasia's Surprise - Stella Gurney
• Comings and Goings of Parrot Park - Mary Murphy
• Drawing Together - Mimi Thebo
• My Dad, the Hero - Stella Gurney

Our school fete by Louise Pfanner illustrated by Kim Gamble

I actually can't believe I haven't talked about this book in a previous post.  Our School Fete is actually about the fete held at my school.  With nearly 900 students our fete is a huge affair which involves our whole school community in months of preparations and of course one huge day of fun!

Today was the day for our school fete.  In the week leading up to this event we love to re-visit this special book Our School Fete by Louise Pfanner.  Louise was a parent in our school and she experienced many school fetes first hand.  I think this is why this book has such authenticity.  In past years Louise has visited our school to share her book and when it was published in 2004 our library hosted a magical book launch where we set the whole library up as a fete complete with meringue mice and helium balloons.

The story opens with Charlie, Shen and their grade five teacher Mrs Flowers as they start work on their class stall - The Haunted House. An added layer of fun for the students at my school is the discovery that Mrs Flowers, Mr Beard, all of the children and the librarian in this book are all modeled on real teachers. The librarian is ME!! Miss Lindgren (I was so honoured to be asked if Louise Pfanner could use my name in her wonderful book). Oh and the dog is a real one too - little Ruby. 

In a lovely sequence we watch as the fete preparations count down from three weeks, to two weeks, to one week and finally the day of the actual fete.  The opening pages show the fete map (drawn by mum) which is a little worse for wear after languishing for a few weeks on the kitchen bench.  Look closely and you can see juice spills and cup stains along with fold lines.

Mum is so busy for the fete - she is making things for the cake stall, the dress up stall, the craft stall and the sweet stall .  She has also sent in a collection of old toys and other household items for the white elephant stall.  One of my favourite pages is on the morning of the fete when mum stands back to admire her lovely empty, clean house.

Meanwhile dad is "taking a long time" over his chutney and tomato sauce.  Growing the tomatoes, making the sauces, washing the jars and adding labels and little fabric hats.

There are so many visual jokes to enjoy in Our School Fete.  Compare the empty house page with the final spread.  "We no longer have a lovely, empty house, but mum can't complain because she bought: a rainbow rug for Baby, a mini trampoline for Ruby, a boules set, an ice-cream churn and a special present for Dad."

Louise Pfanner uses repeated phrases such as "Baby and Ruby are helping too."  while on each page we see Baby and Ruby are not helping at all.  Zoe and Kitty keep practicing their duet which they perform perfectly on fete day and haunted house is a huge success.

When you sit down with this book make sure you look for the purple elephant, the tennis ball, the different clothes the school kids wear each day and the purple toffee apple from the title page.  You can see some of the pages here.

You can see some photos from our fete today - Games Alley, lucky dip bags and a spider from our Haunted House. We had a special day made even better by the sharing of this very special book with over 450 students in our school last week.  A big thank you goes to Louise Pfanner for writing about our school fete!