Sue Ellis stars in Michael Rosen's blog (and other news)

Our very own Sue Ellis, Reader in Education, spoke at the recent CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) Conference on Reading for Pleasure. Michael Rosen was also there, and his blog about the event features Sue's talk heavily, for example "Sue Ellis is precisely the sort of person this government and the last want to keep at arms length because she presents her arguments backed entirely by research" and "At the heart of her talk was a humanistic defence of reading, which can't come about simply or only through reading schemes, can't come about by simply working through set texts." He obviously approves heartily, as do we - Jordanhill is proud of you Sue!*

In other news, Jordanhill Campus had its closing ceremony on Friday. You can read more about the event in my Storify. I was pleased that the Library was mentioned several times in favourable terms, once by David Bell, Vice Chancellor at Reading, who graduated from here in Primary Education in the early 80s. He talked about Gene Kemp's 1977 book The turbulent term of Tyke Tiler which we still have in stock (well, it's in its new home in the Andersonian Library now). This was famous for the twist at the end, which was a surprise at the time, but really shouldn't be now. That's all I'm going to say - read the book to find out more!

Finally, Judith Kerr, author of the Mog books, The tiger who came to tea and When Hitler stole pink rabbit received an OBE in the recent honours list. Borrow all her books from Strathclyde.

*PS 22/6/12 Michael Rosen even dedicated a second blogpost to Sue!  He used some of her ideas as a basis for one of his workshops for teachers on writing with young people. Go Sue!

World Book Day - the Scottish story

Children all over the country celebrated World Book Day yesterday, as reported in today's Herald. A highlight was the live event at the BBC featuring Michael Rosen, which was also watched online by children in over 900 schools. This is the first in a series of Meet Our Author events to be organised by the Scottish Book Trust - this link includes a report and a video.  The Herald article also refers to a survey of parents, organised by Munch Bunch, to mark World Book Day by finding the top 20 bedtime stories - the favourite was Eric Carle's Very hungry caterpillar. The full list is in the Herald link above.

Michael Rosen's Reading Revolution

Michael Rosen's mission is to turn every school into a 'book loving' school, a place where books are prioritised and enjoyed. In his many years experience visiting schools, Michael has witnessed lots of activities in schools and classrooms that really help get children excited and talking about books. In his Reading Revolution website he shares some of those ideas, as well as some of his own.

National Year of Reading Poem

The National Year of Reading now has its own poem, Words are ours, written by the Children's Laureate, Michael Rosen. This is also printed at the end of a recent interview with Rosen in the Independent, "Give children books not SATS", in which he deplores the effects of testing on children's enthusiam for books.

Is Harry Potter boring?

In my original version of this post, I attributed the view that Harry Potter is "too boring and grown-up for young readers" to Michael Rosen. This was as a result of reading an article headlined just that in the Times (May 19th), which had provoked a lot of debate. However, this is not exactly what Rosen said - see his Guardian column published the next day, "What I really said about Harry Potter".

In the Guardian of 22nd May, Bidisha widened the discussion - "When Harry met sexism: critics just won't accept female fantasy writers as the latest round of JK Rowling-bashing shows" - saying that Rosen had picked up on the acceptability of belittling Rowling and that "according to the backlash, Rowling is swell for dim kiddies, along with Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones..........whie Philip Pullman and Philip Reeve are worthy of adult analysis."

Read them all and see what you think!

Rosen creates new children's prize

Michael Rosen has created a new book prize celebrating the funniest books for children as part of his work as Children's Laureate. It will be called the Roald Dahl Funny Prize because, as Rosen says, if there had been a prize for funny books when Dahl was about he would have won it every time. Read more about the award in this week's Bookseller.

Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen thinks he might have created the world's first video poetry book. Some years ago, he wrote a book of poems for children called The Hypnotiser which is now out of print. As he couldn't get anyone to reprint it, he asked his son Joe to film him performing the book. He might do more if this is popular - you can find it on his website. Jordanhill Library has a large collection of Michael Rosen books, including The Hypnotiser - click here for the full list from our catalogue.