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.

Carnegie / Greenaway - how were our predictions?

A few months ago, Gordana's guest post described a nomination event she attended for the Carnegie / Greenaway Awards. The shortlists have just been announced, so how did she do? Really well for The Kate Greenaway Medal for illustration - of the five books she singled out for mention, three made it on to the list: Again! by Emily Gravett, I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen and Black Dog by Levi Pinfold. She was less successful with the Carnegie Medal for writing, predicting only The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan.

Whoever wins the Carnegie will be a first-timer, and if it's Roddy Doyle (nominated for A Greyhound of a Girl) he will be only the second author (Penelope Lively being the other) to win both the Carnegie for a children's book and the Booker, for an adult novel. There is also history-making potential in the Greenaway with both Gravett and Helen Oxenbury (King Jack and the Dragon) in line for an unprecedented third win.

For more information, see CILIP's press release, the article in Books for Keeps and The Bookbag's Carnegie reviews.

Carnegie shortlist

  

Greenaway shortlist

 

Scottish Children's Book Awards - and other World Book Day news

It's World Book Day today, an entirely appropriate time for the winners of the Scottish Children's Book Awards (SCBA) to be announced. And here they are, left to right:

Jonathan Meres - Winner for 8-11s for  The world of Norm: may contain nuts

John Fardell - Winner for 3-7s for The day Louis got eaten

Barry Hutchison - Winner for 12-16s for The 13th horseman

Congratulations to all - STV Edinburgh has been quick off the mark with an interview with Jonathan and John.

It's also the day for the Blue Peter Book Awards - an embarrassment of riches. They'll be announced later today on a special edition of the programme.

Other recent prizes that you might want to check out are the Red House Children's Book Awards and the Cybils. The former is the only national book award voted for entirely by children; the latter is the Children's and Young Adult Bloggers Literary Award. Jacqueline Wilson and John Burningham have both been nominated by IBBY UK (International Board on Books for Young People) for Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2014.

More snippets:

As well as news about SCBA, the most recent Scottish Book Trust newsletter has information about new resources on Coraline, a forthcoming Authors Live event with Polly Dunbar and a new range of CPD opportunities for librarians and teachers on reading for pleasure and creative literacy.

The National Library also has a new information literacy resource, Project Blaster, featuring six fun and informative videos narrated by popular children's author Allan Burnett. Project Blaster has been specifically designed to meet Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence aims and objectives.

The Harriet Branford Writing Competition is now open to children and young people under 19. Entrants should write a story of up to 1500 words following on from a starting paragraph by Annabel Pitcher. The closing date is 26th April.

Cool not Cute! is a new(ish) website dedicated to starting a debate on gender bias in picture books. Do you agree that "the output of the picture book industry reflects girls' tastes far more than it does boys' and that this bias is exacerbating the gender gap between boys' and girls' reading abilities"? Yes or no, head over to the site to join the discussion.

Competent at peever: Liz Lochhead at Scotland Street

I loved this exhibition at Scotland Street School Museum! Competent at peever is the result of Liz Lochhead's year-long residency at Scotland Street and comprises poems, drawings and collages on the themes of childhood and primary school. This would be a great exhibition to take children to - while I was there, several classes passed through, all very well behaved. Student teachers would also appreciate it - I bought a collection of poetry, but even the booklet which accompanies the exhibition reproduces several of the poems and could be used in the classroom.

The highlight for me was Liz's art school project from 1968 in which she went back to her old school - it brought back so many memories since that was the year I finished primary. Not all pleasant unfortunately - I enjoyed learning "sums" with the cuisenaire rods she illustrated, and there's a real set to look at elsewhere in the museum (and also in Strathclyde University's Education Resource Centre), but my headmaster was not as benevolent as Mr Ritchie of Newarthill, and I still smart with humiliation from an undeserved punishment. You could have an interesting discussion about teaching methods then and now just based on that section.

If you're in Glasgow, hop, skip and jump over to this exhibition as soon as you can! It's on till 7th April. If you're not a Scot and you don't know what peever is, that last sentence should give you a clue - or read Poem for my sister: "I like to watch my little sister playing hopscotch.........She is competent at peever."

For more photographs of the exhibition, see my travel blog.

National Libraries Day in Scotland - the results!

Instead of having an event for National Libraries Day this year, GLTU (Glasgow Library Tweetups) decided to create a Twitter snapshot of Scottish libraries – what people use them for and why they value them. After much tweeting and retweeting, we got a great response. It’s obviously not comprehensive, but there’s a geographical spread from Orkney down to Dumfries and Galloway and representatives of public, academic, school and special libraries, so that’s pretty broad coverage. There are cute kids, a dog, a cat (cheated a bit on that one) and cake – what’s not to love? Head off to the Storify to see the full results – it’s too long to embed, but if you just have time to look at one part of it (it’s quite long), scroll down to Dundee Libraries and check what they did. It is truly awesome - here's a taster. And isn't this just what the day should be all about? Getting people to read.

National Libraries Day. What libraries can offer #14 Pull up a seat, get comfy & read. #nld #nldscot #nld13 twitter.com/dundeelibrarie…
— Dundee Libraries (@dundeelibraries) February 9, 2013

International Book Giving Day

Almost as soon as National Libraries Day is over we have International Book Giving Day. This is a volunteer initiative aimed at increasing children’s access to and enthusiasm for books. Do you know that:

• Most children in developing countries do not own books.
• In the United Kingdom, one-third of children do not own books.
• In the United States, two-thirds of children living in poverty do not own books.

Go to the link above to read more about how you can help, find out what other people are doing, download bookplates for your gift and much more. Afterwards, if you have a blog, you can write up what you did and add it to the blog hop. Last year, I sold my old banger! See if you can top that.
 

National Libraries Day in Scotland

It's National Libraries Day on Saturday, and libraries up and down Scotland will be having special events. Here's something very easy you can do to celebrate the worth of your own library, especially if you use social media.

A group of librarians, including me, is hoping to create an online record of what goes on in Scotland’s libraries. What do you use your library for? What does your library mean to you? If you are on Twitter, tweet the answers to those questions from now until Saturday. All sorts of libraries count, e.g. public, school, academic or special. Use the hashtag #nldScot, as well as the official one #nld13, so that we can gather the tweets together into a document which we hope will be the start of a larger project celebrating Scottish libraries. Make sure you mention the word library or libraries and consider adding a picture to make your tweet even better – though if you include anyone else in it, you must have their permission. If you don’t want your photograph online, you could take a picture of your hand holding the books you have borrowed or a card saying what you did in the library, e.g. “I used the computers to search for information.” For ideas, see this project.

Not on Twitter? Maybe you have a blog or other online site you could post on? Leave a link on our blog, or this one, or if you don't have anywhere to post just leave a comment about your library and we will tweet it for you. Please help!