Picture book round-up

Thanks to the good folk at Templar and Hachette for sending me the following:

Thomas Docherty The Driftwood Ball (Templar).

Every year the badgers and the otters hold a Driftwood Ball, but they never mix. Then, one year, otter Celia and badger George meet and fall in love - can the star-crossed dancers overcome the prejudices of their families? This is a lovely tale about differences and the silly reasons we find not to like other people - they're too loud, or they eat the wrong kind of food. At the end, Celia and George are still dancing "but always to their own tune."

Jonny Duddle Gigantosaurus (Templar).

Many children love books on dinosaurs. Here is a glossy addition to the canon. It's in the form of a story and the Gigantosaurus is made up, but all the other dinosaurs are real and there is an information section on them at the end. Add to this fold out pages and a poster jacket with a timeline on the other side and you have a sure-fire hit.

Craig Shuttlewood Who's in the tree that shouldn't be? (Templar).

More paper engineering - this time lots of flaps to lift. Who's in the tree that shouldn't be? Who in the snow just does not go? The rhyme romps along and children will enjoy guessing which "wrong" animal is behind the flap and where that animal should rightly be. I'd rather they had all ended up in their natural habitats at the end though, rather than in the zoo.

Shaun Tan Rules of summer (Hachette).

Shaun Tan's picture books are generally for an older audience than the titles above. This is a dark and surreal tale of two boys and what they learned last summer. Some commandments are quite sensible (never give your keys to a stranger), while others are bizarre (never leave a red sock on the clothesline). All have terrifying consequences - the red sock, for instance, conjures up a horrifically red-eyed giant rabbit. Towards the end, the smaller boy is padlocked into a runaway steam engine and the older boy runs across a dystopian landscape to rescue him with bolt-cutters. If this sounds sinister, it is! Be careful which child you give it to.

As always, I'll be donating these review copies to a local library.

Picture book update: the latest Picture Kelpies

I was delighted to win copies of three Picture Kelpies via a Twitter competition from Scottish publisher, Floris Books, who also produce Young Kelpies for 6-9s and Kelpies for 8-12 year-olds.) There are child-friendly websites to go with the books - Discover Kelpies (including Young Kelpies) and Picture Kelpies - and Floris also sponsors the Kelpies Prize and the Kelpie's Design and Illustration Prize. I bought many Kelpies when I was responsible for a children's literature collection and generally found them to be high quality. However, I was not asked to write a review, favourable or otherwise, and these are my personal opinions on the three books:

Kate Davies: N is for Nessie : A Scottish Alphabet for Kids

This bright, colourful book gets well away from the "A for Apple" clichés. My favourite page is Puffins, because they are so cute, and the one that made me laugh out loud was the double page spread for U and V - Umbrella and Very, very wet! The clouds of Midges ran that a close second though. I wondered how X would fare - cleverly, there is no word, but a beautiful blue Saltire fills the page. However, non-Scottish children need not be confused: there is an explanation for every letter at the back of the book.

Lari Don and Claire Keay: The Magic Word

Despite the passing of decades, I can still remember the frustration of having to write thank you letters as a child. The first one was easy, but, oh dear, the repetition! It seems nothing has changed as Lari Don's Catriona despairs at having to finish her letters before Granny will let her play with her birthday gifts. Her attempts to make the task quicker are amusing, and become disastrous when she tries to use a spell (the magic word is, of course, please). Children will enjoy laughing at the mess she makes, but all ends well - the magic word reverses everything and she settles down to write the letters herself. And, guess what? It doesn't take nearly as long as she thinks. Some lessons in perseverance and politeness here, as well as a whole lot of fun.

Janis Mackay and Gabby Grant: The Wee Seal

This book has a beautiful island setting which very much reminded me of the illustrations in the Katie Morag books, so they might appeal to the same children. It tells the story of a fluffy, white baby seal and the efforts of Jamie to protect it from tourists who think it has been abandoned. They don't know that its mother goes hunting in the sea in the morning but always comes back at night. Eventually, the baby seal grows up, loses its fluffy coat and the two seals swim away together. A nice way to learn about the lives of seals - and the right way to treat nature.

I enjoyed all three books and will now be donating them to my local library so that lots of children can enjoy them too.

 

 

 

Winter's child

Angela McAllister and Grahame Baker-Smith: Winter's child.

The weather has changed, and as we hurtle towards winter it's time for the seasonal books to come out. When I bought children's books for a library I was very sparing in my purchases of anything that would only be used once a year. It would have to be a very special book to get onto my list. This one wouldn't have made it, but it's an attractive book nonetheless and comes with a good pedigree: author and illustrator are both award-winning. Angela McAllister won the Red House Children's Book Award in 2011 and Grahame Baker-Smith won the Greenaway Medal in the same year for Farther. Their first book together, Leon and the Place Between, was short-listed for the Greenaway Medal in 2010.

Tom wishes that winter would never end, but the cold is having a terrible effect on his elderly grandmother. While Tom enjoys playing with a new-found friend who shares his love of snow and ice, his grandmother gets sicker. Eventually, Tom realises that his friend is Winter's Child, and for the seasons to go on they must say goodbye until next year. After pages of wintry illustrations (I feel cold just looking at them) the final spread is of Spring in all its glorious colour.

So - not an essential, but a pleasant modern fable on winter if you are looking to add to your collection of stories about seasons.

Boys, birds and beasts: a trio of picture books

And what do the boys, birds and beast have in common? Well, all three books have a theme of escape - from home or from hunters, including the human kind. Let's start with the birds.

Gareth Edwards and Elina Ellis: The littlest bird.

Seven green birds share a beautiful nest at the top of a tree, but the littlest one is not happy. The nest is cramped and it's crowded and she doesn't get enough attention, so she packs her bag and sets off to find a better place. Eventually, she finds a nest which is empty apart from one large egg - but what's that loud cracking sound? Suffice it to say that Little Bird gets a very big surprise and decides that home is best after all - where, of course, everyone has missed her.

This would be a comforting read for any child who occasionally feels crowded out by the rest of the family (i.e. all of them at some point.) I liked the little birds whose chubby bodies reminded me of the Twitter bird or a more benign version of Angry Birds.

Adam Stower: Troll and the Oliver.

A boy and a mythical beast now. Troll and the Oliver (yes, that is the right way round) start off as enemies. Troll is determined to catch and eat the Oliver who is usually too quick and clever for him. Finally, Troll succeeds in catching him, only to find that, actually, Olivers taste REVOLTING and Troll spits him right back out. Fortunately, the Oliver is a nifty baker, they discover together that all trolls love cake and harmony ensues. There's even a recipe from Trolliver's Cookbook on the back endpapers in case you ever need to feed a passing troll.

I liked big, blue Troll with his marvellously expressive eyebrows, but was less fond of the Oliver with his teasing, self-satisfied ways. The book is beautifully produced with one half-page "reveal" and a cutaway cover. I'm afraid I always look at those with the eyes of a librarian though. Where are we supposed to stick the labels, for goodness sake?

Nahta Noj and Jenny Broom: The lion and the mouse.

More paper engineering in this retelling of Aesop's well-known fable. A lion helps a mouse reach her favourite food, but scoffs at the idea that the favour can ever be repaid. How could a tiny mouse help a mighty lion? He finds out when the hunters catch him in their nets....

Every page is die-cut so that the reader makes the story happen by turning the page which, for example, lifts the nibbled nets from the lion. (There is also a hole in the cover, but plenty of room for labels, hurrah!) The illustrations are colourful and cheerful, but I found the brightness and the lack of an outline to the figures detracted from clarity, so that sometimes I just seemed to be looking at a big pattern. Maybe that's just me and a child would do better!

I was sent these books by Templar Publishing, but was not required to write a review, favourable or otherwise. The books will soon be on their way to a local library and will, I hope, be enjoyed by many children.

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 2

Phew, made it to the second week of Friday roundups! Except that it's Saturday - oh well, near enough. A lot caught my eye in the past seven days, so here they are in the order I spotted them.

Black History Month is coming up in October. You might find useful titles scattered through Strathclyde University's Children's Booklists page - see the lists on Diversity, Global Citizenship, Refugees and Slavery.

Lizzy Ratner asks in The Nation "What are children's books for?" She's inspired by an exhibition at New York Public Library on the history of children's books. It runs till March 2014, but I don't think I can contrive to be in New York before then, wonderful though that would be.

Malorie Blackman's piece in the Guardian on the value of libraries has been widely circulated on social media so you might have seen it. Libraries' huge contribution to children's literacy is threatened by swingeing cuts across the country. "Where is the outrage?" she asks.

Vivienne Smith at Reading Fictions pays tribute to Margaret Mahy (1936-2011) with particular reference to a title I heartily approve of, The Librarian and the Robbers, concluding "If you aspire to a life full of unexpected exploits and all things delightful, become a reader! Treasure awaits us all on the shelves of the library." Hear, hear!

I've discovered that Seven Stories now has an online Enid Blyton exhibition, with one on Judith Kerr coming soon. For those of us who can't get to Newcastle to see their exhibitions live, this is a great new idea.

I've added Rhino Reads to my RSS feed of useful blogs to follow. It was the post I've linked to on gender non-specific characters that I first noticed, but it all looks worth a read if you are interested in picture books.

UKLA (UK Literacy Association) has announced its 2014 children's book awards longlists - for ages 3-6, 7-11 and 12-16+. The winners will be announced in July.

A bit of fluff to finish with. Regular readers will know of my love for Anne of Green Gables. Green Wedding Shoes offers an Anne of Green Gables Wedding Inspiration (posed) with "Anne" and "Gilbert" looking divine. So if you're a red-haired woman thinking of getting married it could be just the thing for you.

That's the end of this week's Children's Literature Roundup. No extra charge for the wedding advice.

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.

Fairy tales, feelings and fish: three picture books reviewed

It was a lovely surprise earlier this month to find a parcel of picture books from Templar Publishing awaiting my return from holiday - though it's taken me a few weeks to get round to reviewing them. Here they are now:

Alison Jay: Little Red Riding Hood. (Text rewritten by Katie Cotton.)

This retelling of a classic story is firmly aimed at children who are already well-versed in fairy tales. The text is much less important than the illustrations - crackle-glazed paintings in (according to the blurb) "Alison Jay's much admired style". Personally, I don't care much for the tiny-featured faces and spindly limbs, but I do love the concept. Although Red Riding Hood is the main character, she lives in Fairy Tale Village, where her Mum runs the tea shop, and all around her other fairy tale characters are taking part in their own stories. Children will have great fun spotting these - I found more every time I looked - and could be encouraged to tell the story of, say Hansel and Gretel, themselves. NB the fates of the baddies in these tales have been considerably toned down! No wolves appear to have been harmed in the telling.

Tor Freeman: Olive and the bad mood.

Olive is having a really bad day - something has put her in a bad mood (make sure you start reading well before the title page to find out what) and she just can't snap out of it. Not only that, it makes her behave badly towards her friends (a variety of animals in clothes), putting them down in a most unpleasant fashion. Then - she passes a sweet shop and a bag of jelly worms puts all to rights! Except that, she discovers, her friends are all now in bad moods - I wonder why? It doesn't occur to Olive that she might be the cause, but she passes her sweets around, cheering everyone up, until the bag is empty and her bad mood returns. Primary school children often learn about feelings through stories - see Strathclyde University's list of suitable picture books - and this title is a good addition to the canon. Some might object to Olive's bad behaviour going unpunished, although she partially makes up for it by sharing her sweets generously. Children have mood swings like the rest of us and need to learn about the less positive emotions too, helped here, for those who can't yet read or aren't good at interpreting facial expressions, by the little black clouds which appear over the unhappy heads.

Andy Mansfield and Henning Lohlein: Fish food.

Children love pop-ups, and paper engineer Mansfield and illustrator Lohlein have done a grand job with this one. The story is minimal but pleasingly repetitive as each fishy character gets eaten up by a bigger one. This could be a useful introduction to the concept of the food chain, though possibly not for the over-sensitive - that shark's teeth are awfully big! The strength of the book though is, well - its strength. Many pop-ups are fiddly and flimsy and soon fall to pieces, but this one seems sturdy enough to survive multiple readings.

Thanks to Templar for sending me the books. They'll all be on their way to good homes in local libraries soon.

Journeys from images to words: picture books in multilingual classrooms

An article in last week's TES, Pictures really do tell a thousand words, alerted me to this interesting research from Glasgow University. Sub-headed "Glasgow researchers find that images can build language skills", it sounds a bit obvious at first. However, there's more to Journeys - from images to words and back again than the heading implies. Working with classes which included refugees and asylum seekers as well as native English speakers, the researchers were looking for a way to help the children with poor English. However, they discovered that picture books were also of benefit to those whose first language was English, even advanced readers (the classes were P6, so were aged around 10).  They started with completely wordless books and moved progressively to books with no illustrations. Work included putting picture books into words and creating artwork to illustrate text. The research found that these visual strategies “provided a level playing field for all students because there were no expectations about success or failure based on the traditional reading and writing skills”. Find out more at the links above, and see the books used below.

The rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan. This is a story which represents an allegory of colonisation using images and minimal text.

 

Gervelie's journey: a refugee diary by Anthony Robinson and Annemarie Young, illustrated by June Allan. This is a non-fiction book with text illustrated by line drawings and photographs. It's part of a series in which the authors wanted to allow children to "put their feet in the shoes" of others.

 

Boy overboard by Morris Gleitzman. A chapter book consisting entirely of words, this tells the story of two children who journey from Afghanistan to Australia.

 

 

 

Update 26/08/13

 Since posting the above, I've come across a blog post by Trevor Cairney at  Literacy, families and learning which is relevant to the idea that pictures can help improve literacy. See "How drawing can improve reading comprehension."



The world through picture books

The world through picture books is an IFLA project to create an annotated list of picture books from around the world, as recommended by librarians. There's a list of favourites from 30 countries (10 from each). Can you guess what the UK chose? Not too difficult! here they are:

Would you have chosen any differently?

We have lift off!

This lovely picture book by Sean Taylor and Hannah Shaw has lots of appealing factors for young readers - animals, a space rocket and a good dose of humour. In addition, there's a strong environmental message.

Farmer Tanner keeps his animals in cramped conditions and pollutes his farm with junk. At the same time, his own house gets bigger and bigger - and the animals get madder and madder! They decide to build an intergalactic rocket to escape to the clear, clean stars where there are no humans to mess things up. Unfortunately, none of the animals can quite get the hang of the test flight and then - horror of horrors - Farmer Tanner discovers the rocket! You can probably guess the twist that is coming next - suffice it to say, the farmer is never seen again and the book ends with a stern warning that "if you're one of the people who makes a mess of our planet - WATCH OUT! It could be your turn next!"

Thanks to the publishers, Frances Lincoln Children's Books,who supplied this book via a Youth Libraries Group draw. Neither required me to write a review. We have lift off will now find a happy home in my local library.

PS 22/5/13 - here's a fabulous review from of We have lift-off! from Playing by the Book, including follow-up activity ideas

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.

Picture book Apps - literature or technology

With the development of touch screen technology for phones and tablets, Apps aimed at young children have been developed which perform a function similar to picture books, but in an animated electronic mode. There are book apps based on existing print works and more recently the cross pollination has worked in the opposite direction, with App first publications being taken up by print publishers and turned into hard copy. Children's author Moira Butterfield posted on the Picture Book Den blog on the necessity for greater collaboration between children's authors and "techies" to combine the creativity of both camps in bringing the best picture book apps to todays readers. See also the Guardian 30 July 2012.

(Guest post by Alison Forde)

Picture books for maths

Over the years, Jordanhill Library has produced booklists of fiction to support non-fiction topics. This could be one of the last, if not the last, before the library closes on June 1st as part of the University of Strathclyde's single campus project. Karen Wilson has compiled a list of picture books to help with maths for very young children. Counting, adding & subtracting, shapes, size - all this and more. There's a taster in the slideshow below:

 

Bramble and Coultoon

If you are interested in the Hebrides, in particular Islay, you might like these two children's books about two ponies, Bramble and Coultoon. There's also a lovely article about how they came to be written in Argyll News. The authors are Catherine Wilson and Ruth MacLean - find their books at J 808.33 WIL.

November is Picture Book Month

Celebrate picture books throughout November - check out the details on the Picture Book Month site. We have loads of good picture books upstairs in the children's section - shelved at J 808.33 - as well as giant picture books and a small selection of dual language picture books. To see the latest additons to stock use our LibraryThing page and look for those titles tagged Picture Book. Finally, did you know you could search SUPrimo, the library catalogue, for picture books by theme? We add a subject tag to all children's fiction so that you can use it to support projects in school. For example, here's a list of picture books on Christmas. If you aren't sure how to do this for other subjects, come and ask in the library - I'll be glad to help.

Why Patrick Ness is better than Tom Cruise and other miscellany

Well, the snow and the end of term have got in the way of blogging for quite some time, so here are some of the items I'd been meaning to write about all thrown together in an end of year pot pourri. No particular order, but I've put Patrick Ness first because I liked the headline!

Why Patrick Ness is better than Tom Cruise comes from those nice people at Scottish Book Trust who recently took Ness on tour around Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire. Alison, the librarian from Clydebank High School, posted on their blog to talk about the effect of Patrick Ness on her pupils. There's also a video from the tour.

Still with Scottish Book Trust, did you know about their Teachers' Online Bookgroups? There's one each for books for primary and secondary age children, and one for professional development. Each has downloadable material to go with the texts, e.g. for Choke Chain by Jason Donald (a book for secondary children) there are teachers' notes, an interview with the author and a podcast of him reading an extract from the book.

Picture books do still work for kids - an article in October in the New York Times suggested that picture books were no longer a staple as parents tried to push their children towards "chapter books". This has promted responses from both CBS News and Publisher's Weekly - don't write the obit for picture books yet, they say. Certainly not in this Library, where they remain very popular.

Enid Blyton falls out of children's favour is an article in the Telegraph which relates that Blyton has fallen out of the top ten list of children's authors for the first time in decades because youngsters cannot relate to her language. Hmm, we don't stock her anyway because we don't consider her good enough quality (though I read them all when I was growing up and I turned into a librarian, so they can't be that bad!)

If you want quality, Julia Donaldson is a safe bet. An article in the Guardian's Books Blog praises Stick Man as a potential Christmas classic.

Looking for fiction for 10-14s? Look no further than the Literacy Adviser (Bill Boyd, latterly of Learning and Teaching Scotland) - and happily, most of the recommended titles on his long list are in stock here. The rest of the site is worth a look too. I now subscribe to his blog, and after the New Year I hope to create a Blogroll of this and others that I consult regularly.

Another good blog to follow for children's and teenage fiction is Tall Tales & Short Stories. For example, here's an interview with Keith Charters and Graham Watson of Strident Publishing - a Scottish publisher based in East Kilbride, many of whose books we have in our catalogue.

David Almond is a popular, and award-winning, author whose My Dad's a Birdman is now a play - Observer review here. Skellig, of course, was made into a film and we have both book and DVD in stock.

If you like Michelle Paver's Chronicles of Darkness series you might want to listen to her reading from the 6th and final title, Ghost hunter, in a Guardian podcast.

Books for Keeps has started a film-review section. Guess what the first review is? Harry Potter of course!

And finally - the "Books of the year" lists have started coming out. Here are 32 gathered together (not all children's) by SCC English blog and an international collection (all children's) from Chicken Spaghetti.

Season's greetings to everyone. See you in 2011!

What's hot in picture books?

Today I've been following two of my Twitter friends (@nosycrow and @Booktrust) who've been tweeting from the Bookseller's annual children's conference in the British Library Conference Centre in London. One interesting thing I learnt (via the talk from Philip Stone, the Bookseller's Charts Editor) is that the overall market for books is down 4% for the year to date - adult non-fiction is down 8% and children's books are down 2%. However, within this last category, picture book sales are actually up 2%, driven by the likes of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Apparently, in picture books, animals and monsters are hot but princesses and fairies are not hot. So you might want to bear that in mind next time you choose books to go out on placement! Here are just a few animal and monster book suggestions that we have in stock - find locations through SUPrimo.

Are some picture books too "creepy" in their message?

How carefully do you think about the underlying message in some of the picture books you read to young children? An article by Lisa Belkin in the New York Times Magazine yesterday caught my eye (via Achuka Blog) - Children’s books you (might) hate. It started with a discussion of The giving tree, by Shel Silverstein, about a boy and a tree who are friends, but the boy takes everything form the tree. To quote Belkin: "For the next 60 pages that little boy takes and takes and takes from the tree — selling her apples when he needs money, chopping off her branches when he needs shelter, cutting down her trunk when he needs a boat to sail far away. In the end, the boy is an old man, and he comes back to the tree and sits on her. Which, we are told, makes her happy." She asks if this is a good message, that you can keep taking without giving back. This leads on to further examples such as Marcus Pfister's Rainbow fish, about a beautiful fish who gives away all his scales, which could be read as a warning not to be unique or different. The article provoked lively discussion with lots of suggestions in the comments of books people disliked for similar reasons.

We have both the books mentioned above in the Library, multiple copies in the case of Rainbow fish which is always popular. When I checked this morning, The giving tree was out and also has an active loan history. So are Belkin and the others she quotes over-analysing? Or, if they are right but children like the books anyway, should we just let them get on with enjoying them? What do you think?