Bird and Sugar Boy by Sofie Laguna

"AP Davies was going to get a big surprise when Bird turned up at his place. I'd knock on the door and when he answered, I'd say 'Hello, AP Davies. My name's Bird - it really is!' Then I'd show him my drawing book and maybe we'd start making plans for the sanctuary as soon as I arrived."

James Burdell lives with his car mechanic dad. They have a good relationship but as you read this book you will wish James could talk more with his dad - he desperately needs to understand why his mother left when he was very small. James has a very active mind. He remembers overheard conversations and fragments of phrases uttered by the adults in his life, but he constantly misinterprets these. James lives in a small town called Denham - I think it might be in Victoria. He and his best friend Sugar Boy spend their time after school and on weekends mucking around on their bikes, chasing trains and fishing. At school James is always getting into trouble - he is either daydreaming about birds or causing trouble to get a laugh out of his classmates. The teachers know he is a bright boy but they are running out of patience with his bad behaviour. 

Birds are an obsession for James. Several years ago when he was with his dad in an op shop, he spied a book - Birds: A Field Guide. This book becomes his comfort. He almost memorizes the whole thing and when he is upset or confused or in trouble, he takes out his drawing book and sketches the birds from his book. In his mind the author is a hero and so James hatches a plan to meet AP Davies. The back cover says the author lives in The Blue Mountains. James has no idea where that is but when he is told his very best friend Sugar Boy is moving to Broome in Western Australia, James decides he needs to find AP Davies. He is sure leaving will make things easier for his dad who struggles to 'make ends meet.'

"I did know I was having big dreams, and big dreams aren't the way things actually are - but why was it better to stick with the way things actually are when big dreams felt so much better? Look what AP Davies did - he lived in mountains that glowed blue and spent all his time doing bird study."

Helping in a school library at the end of last year I spied Bird and Sugar Boy by Sofie Laguna. Parts of this story have lingered with me since I first read it in 2006. When I read My Brother Ben and also The Someday Birds I struggled to think of the title of Bird and Sugar Boy but I was certain it also contained a story about a boy who loved birds and who owned a precious bird guidebook.

My Brother Ben

The Someday Birds

But the blurb did not help me: Sugar boy gave me the name Bird, otherwise I'm James Burdell. I live with my dad who has a big tattoo that says Live to Ride. He is so strong he can lift up a car, but he can't tell me what he's thinking. Maybe he's thinking about my mother who shot through. Sugar Boy is my best friend. We hang around down at the river, in the bush tunnel, or beside the railway tracks riding our bikes fast enough to beat the train. There's only two of us, but we're the whole team. I don't know what would happen if I didn't have Sugar Boy.

This afternoon I re-read Bird and Sugar Boy from cover to cover. It is long out of print, but it might still be in a school library.  I was surprised by the scenes I had forgotten and delighted to find scenes I had remembered especially the ones near the end of the story when James (Bird) finds himself in the city at night with no money, no food and desperate to find the right train to the elusive "Blue Mountains." I was also surprised by the fairly strong language used in this story - I think perhaps I read with a different eye now. This book is almost a Young Adult title and so I would say 11+. I wish I had kept my old copies of Magpies magazine because this book was featured on the cover of May vol. 21 no. 2 2006; page 16 with a review by Agnes Nieuwenhuizen. Oh, and yes this was the book I struggled to think of featuring a bird guidebook and a journey of discovery by a young boy. 

Bird and Sugar Boy was a CBCA (Children's Book Council of Australia) Younger Readers Honour book in 2007.  Here are the comments by the judges:

When his best friend Sugar Boy moves interstate with his family, Bird is devastated. The consequent feeling of rejection causes him to revisit the pain of his mother’s departure earlier in his life. The resulting intensity and struggle of his father’s devotion becomes apparent when he takes off to the Blue Mountains and is located by the network of biker friends. Bird’s obsession with Davis’s Field Guide to Birds of Australia, along with his skill in drawing and the positive support from his science teacher, offer great hope for him. Realistic depiction of male characters who are friends rather than mates is sympathetically done by this author.

The winner in 2007 was Being Bee by Catherine Bateson.  Just for interest the Picture Book winner that year was The Arrival by Shaun Tan. 

Here are some other books by Sofie Laguna:

When You're Older   The Song of Lewis Carmichael

Raising an Active Reader by Samantha Cleaver

A ask questions

B build vocabulary

C connect to the child's world

There are many ways to read a book to and with a young or even an older child. Above all the experience, should be an enjoyable one. In the school setting books are sometimes "killed" by over analysis and through dreaded worksheets which are often meaningless or busy work or simply require no deep thinking. There is a wonderful movement in some schools now, especially in the US, to simply read a picture book every day.  No complex discussion questions and no worksheets. Just reading a wonderful picture book, and there are tens of thousands of these, for the sheer joy of a shared reading experience. One aspect of this program that I really like is that the book covers of all the books that are read over a year are put up for display in the classroom. This is a wonderful way for children to make connections between books, between authors, between book themes and between the books they read and their own lives. 

In my school library I read thousands of picture books - every day of every week - for over 30 years. I also watched colleagues attempting to read my favourites with our library groups as my library qualified for extra staffing. Sadly I often despaired listening to others sharing books with classes when I had also read these same books many many times. The extra teacher either didn't scaffold the text prior to reading, or they spent way to long dissecting the book and then had to rush the reading, or they launched into a book without having read it for themselves first and then stumbled over the pace needed for reading. With picture books, even the way you turn pages can be important. 

We talk about teaching for success and one of the things I liked to do with a picture book to assist the students to enjoy the story - to achieve success perhaps - was to scaffold the story briefly prior to reading. Not to dissect it or give to much away but just help the children, again briefly, to develop a field of knowledge if needed, to help with unfamiliar words/vocabulary or signpost things to notice in the story. Some of this comes very naturally through exploring, prior to reading, the features of a book such as the cover, title, end papers, title page and sometimes the blurb (not always because sometimes the blurb can spoil a story). 

Raising an Active Reader: The case for reading aloud to engage elementary school youngsters is the full title of this book and I will pull out one word from this title - active. Synonyms for active might be words engaged through actively participation by making the reading a shared experience. 

Here are a few text quotes from this book:

"It should always be an enjoyable experience to share a book with your child."

" .. kids today need to understand and relate to lots of different issues that they may never experience firsthand ... One solution to a lack of empathy is reading, and meeting many different characters and experiencing lots of different situations in books."

"Reading aloud for fifteen minutes a few times a week is a way to take small steps toward the big goal of raising children who are critical thinkers, strong readers, and who love books."

"There is an emotional quality to reading; we read a story and we feel the sadness of a scene. We ache for a character's loss. We are sickened by the description of an injustice. We feel happy when a character succeeds. In this way, books build empathy by teaching children about the world they live in; that includes experiences that are like their own and experiences that are far from anything they will ever experience."

"When kids are able to think critically as they read, when they ask questions, think about and learn new words, and make connections they are becoming strong readers."

"When your child starts interrupting you to ask about new words, that's great. It means that they're developing word consciousness, or an awareness of and interest in words."  (I would add to this it also means they are following the story, they are interested in what is happening - and yes - your child is engaged).

Here in Australia this is a very expensive book costing over $42 but if you can find a copy in a library or perhaps access an ebook version from a library I do recommend reading Chapter 4 "Ask Questions"and Chapter 5 "Build Vocabulary".  These two chapters have some excellent practical advice relevant to parents and teachers. 

Here is the publisher blurb from Rowman and Littlefield: Parents and teachers know that reading aloud to children is important, and many parents of young children read aloud to them daily. However, when children start to read on their own, parents often stop reading aloud. But, the early elementary school years, when children are learning how to read on their own, is a perfect time to build vocabulary and comprehension skills through read aloud and Active Reading. Raising an Active Reader makes clear the process of learning to read, how Active Reading fits into raising strong readers, and the behaviours that adults can do to encourage strong language, comprehension, and vocabulary in children in grades K-3. This book extends on the ABCs of Active Reading (Ask Questions, Build Vocabulary, and make Connections) as they apply to older children and picture books, chapter books, and novels. Raising an Active Reader provides parents and teachers with the knowledge and skills to engage elementary school-aged children (grades K-3) in Active Reading with examples, clear explanations, and ideas for making one-on-one or small group read aloud sessions a powerful way to build children’s early literacy and language skills, all while creating a lifelong love of reading. 

One final thing - I was excited to read that one of the author's favourite books to read with her own children is Strictly No Elephants.

I would like to be able to wholeheartedly recommend Raising an Active Reader. The author of this book makes some really good points and gives practical examples of active reading but sadly this book is not very accessible. It is printed with a small font and with very text dense pages. I found the format made it hard to read. If intended audience is parents, this book looks a little too much like an academic text.

Here is Samantha Cleaver's previous book which is part one of her discussion. In this first book the focus is children aged 2-5 while her second book, as discussed in this post, focuses on children from Grade 3 and up. 

Be Kind by Naomi Shulman illustrated by Hsinping Pan

125 Kind things to say and do

You can make the world a happier place

Being kind should be the motivation for so many of the things we do. Making beds, folding washing, walking a pet - surely these are just things we do to be kind our family. Sharing a hug, listening carefully to a friend, saying thank you. Again these should be automatic things we do because we share our world with others.

Here are a few quotes from the 125 suggestions in this book:

"Smile at one more person each day. If you smile at three people today smile at four people tomorrow."

"Read a book to someone who hasn't learned how yet."

"Put the grocery cart away in the store parking lot and take back another cart while you're at it. (It's actually fun.)"

"Put a brownie in your mailbox with a note for your letter carrier.."
In Australia we would need to rewrite this as "Put a brownie on the top of your letter box with a note for the postman."

"Carry an umbrella that's big enough for two (or more)."

"Send a card to your grandparents just to say hi!"

"Keep a thankfulness jar. Every single day write down one thing you're thankful for."

I think my favourite suggestion is leave a penny on the sidewalk for someone to find. In Australia we might translate this as leave a five cent piece on the footpath. This idea links perfectly with Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. I read this book (suitable for readers aged 11+) over a decade ago but the idea of leaving small coins on the footpath still lingers with me.

Here is one more simple, commonsense idea:

"When you leave an empty room, turn off the lights and watch the stars."

In her introduction the author says: "One of the great things about being kind is that it inspires more kindness. Go ahead and make kindness a habit: It's one you won't want to break!"

Be Kind is a book that should be added to every primary school library. Take a look at the illustrator website of Hsinping Pan. She is the illustrator of Big words for Little Geniuses. I would pair Be Kind with Kind by Alex Scheffler.  You might also like to look at these picture book lists on the topic of kindness:

30 Picture books about Kindness Imagination Soup
Children's books about Kindness Growing by the Book

Here is a sample page from the publisher website.

How am I kind? I like to invite friends to participate in events and outings, I like to post birthday cards and today (it is my birthday) I like to give everyone a small gift to say thanks for being my friend. I am giving each of my friends a book today with their name written on an old library card before we head off to a Christmas craft event!

A garden of Lilies by Prudence A Goodchild

A Garden of Lilies Improving tales for Young Minds

by Prudence A. Goodchild

from the World of Stella Montgomery by Judith Rossell

This book is not for the faint-hearted.  Every child inside this book suffers a terrible fate for their 'disobedience' of rules such as :

Modesty should be your aim,
Or you will surely come to shame.

Curiosity killed the cat,
And you as well. Be sure of that.

Be neat and tidy, clean and trim,
Or your ending will be rather grim.

In Withering by Sea we meet Stella and in the sequel little Stella she is forced to spend her time reading "A Garden of Lilies Improving tales for young mind."  Poor Stella this is such a miserable book and reading it must have made her feel such despair but luckily it will have you (the modern child, teacher or parent) rolling with laughter.  Read this review.

I am so pleased to see this inventive book on the CBCA Notables list for 2018.  Even if it doesn't make the short list of six, teachers could have such fun exploring these imaginative cautionary tales and using this format as a writing idea. This is a little book to treasure and share.

Colour plates by Judith Rossell will add to your enjoyment along with the embossed cover, scrumptious end papers and little ribbon book mark.  I also enjoyed vocabulary on the language of flowers page - haughtiness, fidelity, amiability, malevolence and consolation and the A to Z arrangement of moral stories featuring Agnes, Beatrice, Cornelius and Drusilla through to Tilly, Ursula, Victoria, Yaxley and Zenobia.

Here is some of the wise advice found on the final pages:

Never meddle with gunpowder by candlelight.
Endeavour to  acquire the power of swimming in case of shipwreck.
Do not sleep out of doors, particularly if it is snowing.

Here is a set of teachers notes for Withering by Sea.