First of all this is not a new book. An A to Z of Australian bush creatures was first published in 2008 but this is a new edition released in 2016.
In 2016 our CBCA Book Week slogan is
Australia : Story Country
I plan to feature picture books about Australian animals such as A house for Wombats, Koala Lou, and Edward the Emu. I have been hunting for a book that covered some of our less famous, but no less fabulous, Australian Animals.
An A to Z of Australian bush creatures will be a terrific jumping off point. Yes it does contain detailed illustrations of our famous fauna - koala, kangaroo, kookaburra, wallaby, wombat, platypus, numbat, bilby, cockatoo and even the wonderful Christmas beetle but it has so many which you may not know including one that doesn't even really exist - the bunyip!
I would like our older students, during Book Week, to adopt a Australian animal. I want them to find one that is not featured in lots of picture books and perhaps write a short story or a poem.
Here are some possibilities but there are so many others in this book :
bettong
blue tongued lizard
spotted cuscus
dusky hopping mouse
jabiru
witchetty grub
rosella
lorikeet
lyrebird
kowari
kultarr
You can see every page from this richly illustrated book on the author web site.
I have been hearing about Raymie Nightingale for many months. I was so excited when our copy arrived at school. I knew it would be fabulous because, like so many children's literature people, I adore the writing of Kate DiCamillo. Raymie Nightingale is actually such a brilliant book I just don't know how to tell you about it but I will try because I want to encourage you to run into your local library and grab this book. This is absolutely a ten out of ten book!
Raymie Clarke has a plan. She needs to convince her dad to return to his family. Two days ago he ran off with a dental hygienist. The plan means winning the Little Miss Central Florida Tire (in Australia we spell this tyre) competition. Raymie is sure this will make him come home. She knows she can win if she can learn baton twirling. Raymie meets two girls at her baton twirling class. Louisiana Elefante who also desperately needs to win this competition.
"I'm going to win that one thousand nine hundred and seventy-five dollars and save myself from the county home and get Archie back from the Very Friendly Animal Centre and never be terrified again."
Beverley Tapinski, the other girl Raymie meets at baton twirling, does not need to win this competition. In fact she has a plan to sabotage the event.
This is a story of healing. All three girls have complex lives. It is Louisiana who realises, early on, that the three girls need to work together.
"We're the Three Rancheros! We're bound to each other through thick and thin ...We'll rescue each other."
Different adventures bring the girls together. Raymie tries to complete a good deed by visiting an elderly resident in a local nursing home. She drops her precious library book when a different resident frightens her. The book is important because it is a library book and so it must be returned. The book is called A bright and shining path : The life of Florence Nightingale.
I love this description of Mr Option the librarian :
"Mr Option looked too young and uncertain to be a librarian. Also, his ties were too wide, and they were all painted with strange and lonely pictures of deserted beaches, haunted-looking forests or UFOs."
In their first adventure the girls band together to retrieve the precious book. Then Louisiana needs help to retrieve her precious cat from the animal centre and this involves a visit in the middle of the night. Beverley needs help to resolve her anger and perhaps find friendship and compassion.
Our Magpies Magazine featured Raymie Nightingale in their latest issue March, 2016. The reviewer, Helen Purdie, opens her review with these words - I heartily agree :
"Every once in a while a lucky reader will discover a story that is so entertaining, magical and poignant that closing the book at the end produces a genuine feeling of loss."
Mr Schu talks to Kate and you can also watch some video interviews. Here is a beautiful review. Here is another interview which gives excellent insights into Kate and how her own experiences link with Raymie. Listen to a story extract.
I am making a collection of books about hats because next term we will celebrate National Simultaneous storytime and this year the featured book is I got this hat.
The NSS book this year is fairly simple and I will have an 'audience' of 150 excited Kindergarten students so I am planning on a hat celebration.
I have selected Millie's Marvellous Hat as one of the extra books we will feature at our school event. Millie sees a wonderful hat in a store but then discovers it costs 'five hundred and ninety-nine pounds and ninety-nine pence." All Millie has is an empty purse. The wonderful shop keeper comes to her rescue. He has the most marvellous hat which can be any "size, shape or colour you wish. All you have to do is imagine it." Imagination is the key word here. Millie sets off and her hat becomes a feather extravaganza, a tower of cakes, a bouquet of flowers and a joyous celebration of her happy thoughts. On the final pages mum and dad join in too creating their own marvellous hats. I really want to celebrate the adults in this book who are so affirming of Millie and her imagination.
I adore the art of Satoshi Kitamura. You can read a review of another one of his books here. Here is an amazing Pinterest collection of picture books about hats.
I plan to give each of my Kindergarten teachers a book about hats. Here are some of my favourites:
Here is another important book to add to your collection for ANZAC Day.
When you open this book take time to think about and talk about the very first page - the opening end paper. Here you can see a solitary soldier walking across a grassy landscape He has his rifle. His focus is on moving forward. In the foreground there are some red poppies. The sky is cloudy and a flock of birds are flying overhead. The scene looks oddly peaceful but is this possible if this is a soldier going to war? Now turn the page. This is the half title page and here you will see a little brown and white dog. He looks sad,and slightly disheveled. He is surrounded by red splotches - is this blood? Now turn to the title page (see below). This is a double spread. Added to our characters of a solder and a dog we now see a small boy. All three figures are moving forward. On this page the red splotches look more like the poppies moving in the wind. The solider looks happy, the dog is focused and moving with a purpose and the boy - well he looks sad. His shoulders and arms suggest a sense of resignation.
The story opens with the solider. He has found a lost dog. He thinks this dog would make a good mascot for his troop. He tries to give the dog some simple instructions - sit, roll over etc. The dog takes no notice of him. He names the dog Flanders and they set off toward the camp but a boy comes running across the grass. "Bonjour, soldier. Monsieur, that is my dog."
I am not going to tell you what happens next it is too important and emotional. You need to read this book to find out.
The final end papers show a very different scene with fireworks and a happy family - boy, wife, young man and not just one dog but two!
This book was inspired by Libby' search for details of her uncle who was killed at the Somme in 1917. You can read more about this in her book Eventual Poppy Day. While completing her research Libby found a photograph of a "returned Australian solider holding open a sack revealing a young orphaned French boy who had been smuggled out of France."
You can read about the illustrator here. He is talking about another book Once a Shepherd but this interview gives you a sense of his commitment to his work. A solider, a dog and a boy is an excellent example of how perfect picture books really are the marriage of text and illustration.
I started Speechless yesterday afternoon. I finished reading Speechless yesterday afternoon. I read the whole 160 pages in one sitting. This is not an earth shattering book but it is a very satisfying read.
At our school each year students present speeches. Our students are given a topic or open idea such as "I wonder...". In Speechless the students also participate in a similar speech competition but there is free choice for their topic.
Joseph Alton Miles (Jelly) has no real interest in this speech event ... "every year, I've mumbled mine as fast as I could and got it over with." What is the difference this year? Well on offer is a wonderful prize pack of a tablet computer with accessories. Jelly's dad does own a computer store but Jelly can only use it for homework and does not own any video games. The initial stages of this competition happen in each classroom. Jelly has a best friend called Parker (PB). "When we were little our mums said we stuck together like the insides of a sandwich. Since Parker Brown's initials are P.B. and mine spell J.A.M. ... well that's why everyone calls me Jelly."
Parker, who this year is in a different class, is convinced Jelly can win the competition and defeat a school bully called Victoria. Jelly works hard with his speech and when the big day comes Victoria makes a very fancy presentation about the conservation of biodiversity in South America. Jelly almost trumps her with his funny and well researched speech about the value of video games. The teacher declares it is a tie.
Meanwhile Jelly has begun some volunteer work at a local food bank. He gradually learns about the people who use and work for this important service and he is able to apply his computer skills to sort out their equipment and spread sheets. Jelly is also trying to cope with Victoria who seems determined to ruin his life and perhaps even have him expelled from school.
For the final round of the speech competition new topics must be selected. I felt certain Jelly would talk about the food bank. I hope you enjoy the surprise ending. If you need to read more about the plot here is a Canadian review. You can read an extract of the book here.
This book became my obsession last week. I actually raced home to keep reading it. Yes Beetle Boy is that good!
Darkus lives with his dad and life is okay. Sadly his mum has died but after some hard times dad seems to be coming round. Then one day Bartholomew Cuttle disappears. It is a total mystery because his dad was working inside a basement room in the Natural History museum. The door was locked from the inside and there appears to be no way this hard working Director of Science could have left the room. All that the police find is a cold cup of coffee, some papers and open drawers. This room houses the largest Coleoptera (or beetle) collection in the world. The drawers hold beetle specimens.
Here are some of thebeetles mentioned in this story.
You might like to research some of them especially in preparation for the final battle scene. There are beetles who make dung balls, beetles who can chew through concrete and wood and beetles with very painful stings.
Darkus knows his dad is still alive even though the authorities are convinced he is dead.. Luckily his uncle agrees and so Darkus moves in with Uncle Max, who is an archeologist, and together they set about solving this mystery. Living next door to Uncle Max are two very strange, ugly and angry brothers. In the house where these men live there is a room filled with every type of beetle you can imagine and many that you probably have never heard of. One of these beetles has adopted Darkus - his name is Baxter. He is a rhinoceros beetle. There is a wonderful scene near the beginning of the book when these brothers, Pickering and Humphrey, capture Darkus. The tie him to a chair. Smother his clothes and face with cranberry sauce and gag him. You will cheer when you read how the beetles help free Darkus and you laugh at the stupidity of using cranberry sauce!
The brothers live in an old emporium and behind the building is a treasure trove of old discarded furniture. This makes the perfect hiding place for Darkus and his special friends Virginia and Bertolt.
"It looked as if a mob of brawling furniture had been frozen with a ray gun. Table and chair legs stuck out, their feet like clenched fists about to land a punch. A brave hatstand was making break for it at the south side of the yard ."
Adding to all this tension we also meet an evil woman named Lucretia Cutter. "Two sparkling black sticks appeared, and then a woman's head. Jet-black hair, gold lips, and then her body came lurching into view, leaning on the sticks. She wore a white laboratory coat over a long black dress, and every jarring movement of her body screamed out how angry she was." I recommend you read page 260 for an even more stomach turning description of Lucretia and her method of eating! Lucretia is obsessed by beetles she even has a live one as a broach on her coat.
If I have not convinced you that Beetle Boy is fabulous click here to read the first sixteen pages. You might also enjoy this detailed review. Following this book I would read Masterpiece which features an equally heroic beetle. It is also worth watching the video of MG Leonard talking about her book (see below) and I have included a couple of alternate covers including one from Sweden. This book also reminded me of Caleb by Gary Crew which is a book I enjoy reading to our Grade Four classes.
Once each term I need to go right through all our picture books in the library. We have more than 8000 of them. I do this for several reasons. I need to pull out books for classes to use next term - so this time I was looking for stories about food for Kindergarten, books about colour for Year One, the topic of Wet and Dry environments for Year Two and people and beliefs for Year Three.
As I do this process I put away all the books we have had on our various display stands and refresh them with books that need to be re-discovered. I also find books that I want to share with classes and books to pop into the hands of teachers.
One book I 'discovered' today is Ahmed and the feather girl. I adore the work of Jay Ray. We have a good collection of her illustrated fairy tales.
Ahmed and the Feather Girl is a simple story and perhaps it is predicable but it is also truly magical and it is adorned with exquisite illustrations. Ahmed is an orphan who is forced to work for a cruel old woman who owns a circus. One day Ahmed fins a golden egg. He makes it a nest and keeps it warm but Madame Saleem snatches it from him and places the egg in a cage. Over time the egg hatches and a little girl appears. They name her Aurelia. This means golden. Ahmed does his best to care for Aurelia even though she is kept in a cage and is now used a circus attraction. "The little girl began to change and grow. Tiny points appeared on her back and began to sprout fine silken feathers." An adult reader will know Aurelia must one day fly away. Of course Ahmed will set her free. Madame Saleem punishes Ahmed. "Now he had only crusts and scraps to eat and he slept huddled under a caravan. He was cold and hungry and he missed Aurelia." You may have guessed the ending but I am sure it will be a wonderful discovery for a young reader. The final page sparkles.
