Did you see Sonam and the Silence when it was published in 2019? This is one of those very special picture books to share with a group of older students. In my review I said: Sonam and the Silence is an important book and an emotional and uplifting story.
This is just one example of a truly special picture book that should be shared with senior primary and junior high school students. There are so many more. Our wonderful National Centre for Australian Children's Literature have been working very hard over the last eighteen months to find and annotate all our Australian picture books for older readers. They found more than two hundred of them. I first mentioned this project back in October, 2022. This week they launched their newest database.
NCACL is very proud of our new database and believe it will make a significant contribution to the teaching of literature and visual literacy. ... The database entries cover an extensive range of subjects, literary devices and techniques and a wide range of artistic styles. Ruth Nitschke Project Manager Reading Picture-Drawing Words Picture Books for Older Readers
One of the parts of my former library that I am most proud of is the separate shelves I made of senior picture books. I used SO many of these in my teaching with students in Grades 5 and 6 (here is my Pinterest collection) and while not all of them were Australian it is exciting to see just how many books The National Centre for Australian Children's Literature (NCACL) have found - 240 fabulous books.
The National Centre for Australian Children's Literature explain the focus and scope of this project. These details are from their flyer:
Picture books can be read on several levels and interpreted differently depending on the audience. They can be suitable for more than one audience simultaneously and assist students in becoming competent in image analysis and identifying storytelling devices. Books selected for this database are often more sophisticated with different levels of meaning. Such books may:
• provide alternatives to text-only books
• offer books for image analysis
• assist in developing multi-literacy and visual literacy
• analyse different types of literature including post-modernism
• introduce methods for decoding the integration of words and pictures
• analyse artistic techniques and styles as well as book design and layout
• study literary devices and intertextual references aimed at older readers
• examine multiple narratives
• attract reluctant readers, EAL/D students and those with language diffculties
• offer non-traditional plot structure and metafictional devices
• examine sensitive topics including death, war, violence and societal issues
• attract readers who find picture books suit their needs and interests
• provide useful tools for introducing thematic units of work
Each books has the following details:
Bibliographic details; Australian Curriculum Codes; a suggested audience; a list of subjects; an annotation with a plot summary and other details; and links to teaching resources.
So many details provided for every book makes this an enormously rich resource. AND you can search by title, author, illustrator, publisher, publication date, subject, audience and Australian Curriculum code. This is so impressive.
Take a look at this database user guide from NCACL. Belle Alderman Director of NCACL spoke with the Storybox Library. Belle mentions another splendid NCACL resource - verse novels.
So many of my own favourite books are included. You can search for each of these by title using my side bar:
If you search for your favourite author such as Margaret Wild or Gary Crew, both of whom are our IBBY Australia Hans Christian Andersen award nominees, you can see all of their picture books for older readers in the database.
Barbara Braxton on her blog The Bottom Shelf says: With the enormous popularity of graphic novels, we know our students respond to illustrated books that do not present as a wall of daunting text, particularly in a world dominated by screens, so the perception that picture books are for very young children who are not yet reading independently is, thankfully, disappearing and the power of the picture book to explore and explain difficult concepts, especially those that are not the common lived experience, is being acknowledged for what it is. (Note a few of the books used as a heading for Barbara's post are not included in the NCACL database because the focus is Australian picture books for older readers - not international titles).
Disclaimer One - I did contribute to this database. My annotations were for My Dog (John Heffernan); Yahoo Creek (Tohby Riddle); Azaria (Maree Coote); The Watertower (Gary Crew) and Suri's Wall (Lucy Estela). AND there are also links to a handful of my blog posts in the database.
Disclaimer Two - I am not yet able to talk about the Children's Book Council of Australia 2023 short listed picture books because I was a judge for this category. Several of these titles are in the database, as you would expect, so after Book Week and the winners and honour books are announced I can add those details to this post.
