Book Week Scotland and other stories: posts of the week 3

The programme for Book Week Scotland (25/11/13 - 01/12/13) was announced this week. Some items particularly relevant to children are:

• Three free picture books will be given to every Primary 1 pupil in Scotland. The titles consist of the shortlist for the Scottish Children’s Book Awards 2013: Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb, What's the Time Mr Wolf by Debi Gliori and Jumblebum by Chae Strathie and Ben Cort.
• Scottish children’s illustrator and author Mairi Hedderwick will bring her most famous character, Katie Morag, to life for children across Scotland during a special live broadcast in partnership with the BBC on 28 November.
• Book Week Scotland's Author Ambassadors include children’s author and illustrator Nick Sharratt. Along with popular fiction author Shari Low and poet Ryan Van Winkle he will lead the push to spread the joy of reading throughout the country.

There's a new edition out of Books for Keeps, the online children's book magazine, featuring news, reviews and features on authors such as David Almond, Patrick Ness and Neil Gaiman.

New sites discovered this week include Outside In World - the organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children's books in translation - and Picture Books in ELT which has just won the Best English Blog Award from Really Learn English.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Lynne Rickard's work as a Writer-in-Residence in Methil in Fife where she has been collaborating with a group of women to produce a picture-book on healthy eating. In the project's blog, The Methil Makars, this week there is an account of a workshop with Alison Murray, author of Apple Pie ABC. It's an interesting insight into how an illustrator gets from first sketches to finished book.

Last week, I mentioned an exhibition about children's books in New York. Slightly closer to home is the British Library's Picture This exhibition about ten of the most iconic illustrated children's books of the 20th century. The Telegraph lists all ten (my favourite has to be Paddington Bear) and the Guardian also has more information. It's on till 26th January if you happen to be in London before then.

Kirsty's Blog has a piece on drama and children's literature (not new, but I've just spotted it) - Kirsty is a B.Ed (Primary) student in Australia. Here, she writes about the work she did with her class based on Night of the gargoyles by Eve Bunting, and there's a lot more on drama elsewhere in the blog.

The BBC reports on a new survey by the National Literacy Trust which suggests that fewer children across the UK are reading in their own time and one in five is embarrassed to be caught with a book. This is sad for all sorts of reasons, not least the evidence that children who read do better at school and in life - most recently, again from a BBC report, the Institute of Education report found that reading improved performance not only in English but in Maths. Not to finish on a negative note, let's take this full circle and return to Book Week Scotland - a chance to get more children reading and try to increase the two in five in the survey who thought that reading was cool.

That's all for this week! Happy reading.

 

Posts of the week

This is a hostage to fortune, but I thought I would start a weekly feature of blog posts that have caught my eye over the past seven days. If I'm absent next Friday, then you know that was a very bad idea! In no particular order, here is this week's selection.

Elaine Aldred is a Doctoral student in Education at the University of Nottingham. Her blog, Strange Alliances, aims "to explore all different kinds of writing and storytelling, through examining the craft of writing." The post that interested me was Gez Walsh. A style all of his own. Gez, a former social worker, first started writing when he was trying to get his dyslexic son to read and felt the available books were too boring. They started writing a poem together and things took off from there - it resulted in his first book, The spot on my bum. Now, he says "I devote my whole life to working with children. I work with kids that nobody else wants to work with. I’ve also written some books for their parents too, because you got vicious cycle of having parents who can barely read who won’t buy a book for a child because they don’t put any value in it." Worth checking out.

Over at Book Riot, Kelly Jensen writes about Books for boys and books for girls: problems with gendered reading and concludes "The more we expose young readers to the wide variety of reading possibilities, the wide variety of how books look and feel and grow in our hands and minds, the more positive steps we take in combating gendered reading. Maybe while we’re at it, we also stop writing about “books for boys” and “books for girls.” Books are for readers." Do you agree?

I've added The Cambridge Children's Literature Students' Blog to my "Favourite blogs" page. It's written by graduate students at the Cambridge-Homerton Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature - in their latest posts, they tell of their exploits at a Picture-book Conference in Stockholm. Lucky them!

We love this book's newsletter pops into my inbox every Friday. One of the articles they are highlighting today is Hating the happily-ever-after, an examination by Holly Bourne of romantic clichés in teenage novels. Have fun thinking of books to match each category!

Last, but not least, Scottish Book Trust has an interview with Lynne Rickards in its Spotlight On feature today. In it, Lynne talks about her influences, her writing and her work as a Writer-in-Residence in Methil in Fife where she has been collaborating with a group of women to produce a picture-book on healthy eating. We also find out that Lynne likes dark chocolate, fresh fruit and crunchy organic carrots - two out of three for healthy eating Lynne, two out of three!

PS I would go for the dark chocolate myself, preferably washed down with a nice glass of red. Speaking of which, wine-o'clock is not far away so time to finish this post and start thinking about dinner.

Polly Dunbar: online event 25/4/13

Image courtesy of Scottish Book Trust

Those of you familiar with the Author's Live programme will be delighted to know that Scottish Book Trust and BBC Scotland Learning are about to bring you a new one (suitable for 4-7s) with Polly Dunbar. This will be streamed live from the BBC Scotland Learning website on Thursday, April 25th at 11am and available to watch again later the same day.

So what's it about? Polly will be bringing her latest book, Arthur's dream boat to life with the help of Long Nose Puppets - see them above - a touring company which she co-founded, and which comprises "a variety of charismatic hand-puppets, full body costumes and masks". Sounds great!

In my last post, I wrote about two picture books on penguins - a third I could very well have included is by Polly Dunbar. Penguin won several awards in 2007/8 and was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal - it's also one of the other books that have been adapted by Long Nose. Coincidentally, while researching this post, I noticed that there is a lovely piece about Pink! by Lynne Rickards, one of the books I wrote about before (it's about Patrick, a pink penguin) on the SBT blog, specifically about creating the costumes for Pink! The Musical. Puppets are involved here too - the themes of the day: penguins and puppets!

Try your local library for books by Polly Dunbar or, if you are a member of the University of Strathclyde, there are several in the library catalogue there, including Arthur's dream boat.

PS 19/4/13 - juts noticed Polly Dunbar's article from yesterday  on the Guardian's children's book site about the top 10 picture books that would make great puppet shows.

Pppppick up a penguin...in Peril, or in Pink!

Winning books through social media or email draws seems to be quite a talent of mine - I read them, then pass them on to the library, where staff say my record is about one per month.

A couple of weeks ago, Penguin in peril, a picture book by Helen Hancocks, popped through my letter box. It's great fun - the story of three hungry cats who steal a penguin to catch fish for them. Understandably, the penguin is not happy and makes a run for it, hoping to get back home to the zoo. Along the way, he manages to hide in amongst other black and white figures: waiters, nuns and men in bowler hats. As you can possibly tell from that list, it's quite retro in style, and it's also quite French - the policeman at the end is definitely a gendarme. The illustrations remind me a bit of the Madeline books by Ludwig Bemelmens - borrow them both and see what you think. Thanks to the publishers, Templar, who supplied the book via a Youth Libraries Group draw. Neither obliged me to write a review.

Another picture book about penguins is Pink!, by Glasgow-based author Lynne Rickards, which has important messages about being different and accepting yourself the way you are. It has just been made into a musical, and Patrick the pink penguin will soon be touring Scottish schools. See pictures on Facebook and check Hopscotch Theatre Company for dates and prices.

PS Update - Lynne herself has done a lovely blogpost on the musical with great photos.

Patrons of Reading

If you are a School Librarian or teacher, you might be interested in the Patrons of Reading scheme which aims to match up authors and schools to work with each other and promote reading for pleasure. The first partnership started in Wales between Helen Pielichaty and Ysgol Esgob Morgan and the first Scottish Patron was Nicola Morgan who is now working with Larbert High School. There's a list of authors still available, including two in Scotland: Joan Lennon, based in Fife, and Lynne Rickards of Glasgow.

While we're on the subject of promoting reading, there are more ideas from the winners of the Siobhan O'Dowd Trust's competition last year to promote the joy of reading. As with the Patrons of Reading scheme, both primary and secondary age-groups are covered.

So, short and to the point - this is the first post of 2013. I'll try to write more next time and in the meantime, as the graphic says, Happy New Year!

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.

A book blog for kids: Lynne Rickards

Lynne Rickards' new blog differs from most of the others I've mentioned before in that it's aimed at children rather than at the adults who buy books for them. I think they would really enjoy it. Each post has a theme plus a photo or other illustration and (usually but not always) a forgiveable plug for one of Lynne's books. For example, today's post is about snails and relates back to Jacob O’Reilly Wants a Pet - but it also has some practical information about building a snail hotel. Not my cup of tea but it might well appeal to small children who are less easily revolted!

Lynne has also created book bags around some of her stories and we have them in the library in the storysack collection. The Pink Bag celebrates diversity with the story of Patrick, the pink penguin. As well as a copy of Pink! it includes, amongst other things, a Circle Time lesson guide, a pink toy, a quiz and a letter from Patrick. The Pets Bag is based on the aforementioned Jacob O’Reilly Wants a Pet and includes the book and a cuddly snail in its contents. Finally, the Green Bag explores good nutrition in an appealing way along with recipes and classroom activities. The book in this one is I do not eat the colour green. See Lynne's website for more details.

Storysacks have grown immensely in popularity since we started stocking them a few years ago. For our full range, see this list from SUPrimo.