Happy Halloween!

It's probably a bit late if you haven't got your resources yet, but here's a list of some of the Halloween items in our catalogue and our display is still upstairs with some nice witchy badges to take away. Here's also a roundup of other recommendations that I've noticed on various blogs over the last few days:

Nosy Crow

Reading Groups for Everyone

Lynne Rickards (fabulous pictures of spooky food on this one!)

Library Mice

Fantastic Reads

Scholastic

TES

Teachmeet Strathclyde

Jordanhill Library Stand

I was really pleased to be asked to have a Library stand at the recent Strathclyde Teachmeet, and what a great night it was, brilliantly organised by the officers of CPD Strathclyde, all B.Ed students. The thing that garnered most interest on the stand was Children's Literature Update (the orange A4 booklet you can see on the right hand table above.) This is an index to articles and web links about books and authors for children and teenagers which I produce four times a year. You can pick up a copy on the display table upstairs by the children's books, or give me your email address to receive it electronically. I also tweet it, which means you can access it via Hootsuite.

As well as staffing the stand, I attended the talks - a mixture of 2 minute and 7 minute presentations. I thoroughly enjoyed them all. It was great to see the sorts of activities that go on when students are on placement - Rea Chisholm's collaborative group work on environments was a highlight, especially the pictures of the giant model of a shark. A couple of talks were based around digital literacy - Ollie Bray on Wikipedia and Andrew James on rights-cleared resources on the web. This is obviously a topic that teachers and librarians have in common, and I felt I learnt something from each of them. There's also a thriving group of librarians on Twitter and we use it in much the same way as Morven Skinnider described for "tweachers", to communicate and share information. I think a lot of students signed up to Twitter after her talk and I'd be pleased to welcome any of them as followers of @JordanhillLib (you can see our Twitter feed down the right hand side of the blog to get an idea of what we tweet about). Those were just a few of the talks - I enjoyed all the rest too, but just wanted to give a brief flavour.

Of course, I can't finish without mentioning the awesome cup cake display. I didn't get to try one because I left before the question and answer session at the end, and we were strongly discouraged from spoiling the pattern before that! And guess what? Libraians like cake too, another thing we have in common.

Teachmeet cupcakes

Reading with kids - the verdict

The supplements promised below by the Guardian and Observer have now been perused on your behalf. Although probably written more with parents in mind, there is still some good stuff in them for the classroom.

"Kindling a lifelong love of books" is the aim. Part 1 covers ages 0-7. None of it should be surprising to any self-respecting education student, but there are, amongst other things, useful book recommendations (most of which we have I'm pleased to say), an article by Julia Donaldson on how picture books can teach youngsters to understand themselves and a section on book games, including making your own wordsearches.

Part 2 covers children's books for 8+. The format is similar with brief book reviews (again, no surprises, I knew most of them) and articles - the most interesting consider books making the leap to films, apps, websites and electronic devices, all of which could play a role in encouraging reluctant readers.

In conclusion then, if you know a lot about children's books already you aren't going to learn much here, but if you want a good, basic introduction these supplements are worth a look. You can read the content online by following the link above, or if you prefer to look at the paper copies I have put them in our Cuttings File - ask at the Lending Services Desk for numbers 1227 for ages 0-7 and 1228 for 8+.

Reading with kids

The Guardian and Observer are publishing a two part guide to reading with kids this weekend. It sounds useful, they say:

For more expert opinion, useful tips, and the very best in children's reading from picturebooks to pacy teenage fiction, discover our two-part guide to Reading with Kids, free in the Guardian and Observer 22-23 October 2011

I think I'll buy it myself (and I'm usually now a read-the-papers-online kinda gal) to see if I've missed any good titles we should have in the Library. Also, because the advertising video is great  - some very cute kids telling us why they love books and reading, and that can only be a good thing. (Video is copyright of the Guardian and for your own personal use only.)

 

Commercial over!

Jacqueline Wilson Festival

There's a Jacqueline Wilson Festival tomorrow (Tuesday 18th) and Wednesday 19th October 2011. It’s taking place in Preston, Lancashire, organised by Askews & Holts Library Services and the University of Central Lancashire, and runs from 4pm to 6.30pm. However, you can attend online. Log in on the day, type your name into the ‘guest’ box and select ‘enter room’ to join in.

There's also a Jacqueline Wilson exhibition on at Seven Stories in Newcastle right now. If you can't make it down to Newcastle, you can see some information about it on the Seven Stories site and read a couple of first-hand accounts of the opening from Bookwitch and Lynne Rickards. There's also more on Achockablog and the BBC.

The usual plug for our own services - you can borrow all Jacqueline's books, and books about her, from us: full list here. They're a good read.

Our competition winner

Mhairi Bell and Anabel Marsh

Last month, we ran a competition to promote Scottish Book Trust's online event with David Almond. The prize was one of David's books, Clay, and the picture shows me presenting it to our winner, PGDE Primary student Mhairi Bell. Mhairi was delighted to win and, although she had not read any of David's books before, was looking forward to reading this one and using it with the children in her class when she goes on placement.

This was our first experiment with a competition like this, so now that it has been successful we might try it again - watch this space! We are indebted to Scottish Book Trust for providing the prize this time and, if you would like to catch up with the David Almond event, you can watch it on their website now.

I'm also indebted to my colleague, Lynne Marshall,  for taking the photograph.

Class writes its own book!

Picture book author Lynne Rickards had an event at the Edinburgh Book Festival this year, and afterwards she signed a copy of her book I do not eat the colour green for the P2 class at Broughton Primary. When they got back to school, the class decided to write their own book called I only eat the colour green and then they sent it to Lynne who has scanned it and put it on her blog. It's an absolutely fabulous example of a class writing project which any student of primary teaching should certainly take a look at.

We have several of Lynne's books and storysacks in our catalogue - I do not eat the colour green is available as part of The green bag.