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.

 

Julia Donaldson stirs things up

From yesterday's Herald: Children's author Julia Donaldson has blamed bureaucratic jargon in Scotland's new school curriculum for making teaching difficult.

What Julia is complaining about is an aspect of Curriculum for Excellence whereby teachers allegedly can't state what a child has achieved, but are expected to link it to the four underlying principles: that pupils be successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. She also goes on to criticise the pendulum in methods for teaching reading which swings to and from phonics, whereas she is more in favour of blended techniques and, in this context, mentions a new series of plays she has launched to encourage group reading. As a non-teacher, I wouldn't dream of entering either of these arguments, but it reminded me of an article that I read before Christmas and had forgotten to write about.

Glasgow's Westender Magazine (scroll to the December / January edition) also interviewed Julia and she spoke to them about her plays too (Bug Club Plays To Read, a series of 36 published by Pearson - a few are shown below). As she said to the Herald "Reading a play is a way of involving everyone and it is brilliant because it means the children can all take part and can have roles which reflect their reading abilities." It can also help reluctant readers by making reading more fun and improve shyer children's self-confidence. Her new website, Picture Book Plays, has been set up to help teachers dramatise stories themselves. So Julia might be stirring things up, but it sounds as though it could be to good effect!

Children's book miscellany

Stuff about specific authors:

David Almond has won the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award. Every other year IBBY presents this to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children's literature.

Theresa Breslin's web page is currently advertising a drama competition based on her latest novel, Prisoner of the Inquisition, in which secondary schools can win £1000 worth of books in a competiton.

Morris Gleitzman tells the Perth Writers Festival (i.e. the Australian one) about his latest book, and how he became a writer, in an hour long podcast.

Meg Harper writes about school visits in Being Nice - if you are planning on organising an author visit, read this first and learn how not to do it!

Eric Hill celebrates Spot's 30th birthday in the Guardian with an audio slideshow showing how he draws 'my little puppy' and explaining how fell into writing the books almost by accident.

More general stuff:

Author Hotline is a school resource of exclusive author, illustrator and poet profiles giving a unique insight into the creative process and enabling young readers to connect with published professionals.

Barrington Stoke publishes fantastic books for dyslexic and struggling readers. We have a selection of their books in our catalogue and link to them from our Reluctant Readers page. For an opinion piece on them, see Bookwitch's blog.

Mrs P is an award-winning free interactive digital storybook destination - classic children’s stories brought to life by Kathy Kinney as Mrs. P.

Storytubes is a US site where kids enter a competiton to make short videos about their favourite books. Award winning entries are on the site - many of the titles will be known to Scottish children too and would make great introductions to the books, or they might give you ideas for your own videos.

Cathy Forde's first play

Author of teenage novels, Catherine Forde, has written her first play, Empty. It's part of a season of three new plays written for young people and produced by the National Theatre of Scotland. Forde describes it as black comedy, and it centres round many parents' nightmare, the party that gets out of hand when they are on holiday. Read more in today's Herald and check out Cathy Forde's books from the library.

Make reading fun by creating plays from books

Bringing books to life through drama by Fiona Ingram. Ideas for teachers on the following theme:
"Children who don’t enjoy reading may need a different kind of stimulus to get them interested in books. Since most children love dressing up and acting out a part, using stories to create a play or dramatizing a poem is an excellent way of allowing children to explore their creativity and bring their imaginations into use."