Scotland's Stories and Scotland's Songs

Have a look at these great new sites from Learning and Teaching Scotland.

Scotland's Stories:

"Scotland is a treasure house of stories, from myths and legends to wee tales told in the playground.
The strange and fantastical stories of Scotland have inspired writers, artists and poets for centuries. Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson both recalled as adults the tales of ghosts, magic and witches they had heard as children.
Stories, storytelling and storymaking can have an incredible impact on a child’s growing imagination. Scotland’s storytellers and the Scottish Storytelling Centre provide opportunities for everyone to celebrate and share in Scotland’s rich storytelling heritage, promoting storytelling as a vibrant contemporary art form."

Scotland's songs:

"Families and friends, heroes and villains, games and laughter, school and work, love and freedom – it’s all here in Scotland’s Songs. Listen to more than 130 songs and tunes, in Scots and Gaelic, and learn about the long and rich tradition of Scottish music, still very much alive across the nation and known and loved across the world.
You can learn about traditional songs and music, understand themes in Scottish music and find out more about Scotland's instruments, like the bagpipes and the clarsach.
There’s a short introduction to each song or tune, along with song lyrics and the musical notation for almost every tune.
Why not start by finding your favourite Scottish song?"

Additions to our list of children's literature internet sites

The House of Illustration - the world’s first centre dedicated to the art of illustration in all its forms. It is the brainchild of Quentin Blake, though not restricted to children’s book illustrations.

Storylineonline - Screen Actors Guild members read children’s books aloud (US).

Storybird - short, visual stories that you make with family and friends to share and (soon) print.
Modern language versions are also available.

For more sites, see the full list on our web pages.

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.

National Storytelling Week 2010

National Storytelling Week runs from 30th January till 6th February. Check out our own section on storytelling - why not borrow a storysack? Each one has a storybook, sometimes a non-fiction book as well, plus various other items such as soft toys, games , CDs etc. They're very popular.

Storybook soldiers

Soliders in Afghanistan are recording bedtime stories on CD to send home, in a scheme similar to Storybook Dads, which was set up to help male prisoners keep in touch with their children. Thousands of families have discovered that there is nothing more evocative than the sound of a parent’s voice, reading - the top bedtime stories are:

The Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson)
The Snail and the Whale (Julia Donaldson)
Room on the Broom (Julia Donaldson)
The Tiger Who Came to Tea (Judith Kerr)
The Night Before Christmas (Clement Moore)
The Gigantic Turnip (Alexei Tolstoy)

Museum of Story & Storytelling (Oxford)

From Lewis Carroll's Wonderland to JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth, CS Lewis's Narnia and the parallel universes of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Oxford has played host to some of the UK's most enduring literary creations. Now a £2.5m donation from an anonymous private benefactor means the first steps have been taken towards the creation of a museum dedicated to storytelling in the city. Read reports from the Guardian and CMIS Evaluation Primary Focus.

Coming soon...

Some events coming up:

Seven Stories, the Centre for Children's Books in Newcastle, has a Judith Kerr retrospective starting this month. In 2008, Kerr deposited an extensive collection of work with the centre, including finished artwork for The tiger who came to tea, all the Mog books and the line drawings for When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit.

Nearer to home, the Scottish Storytelling Centre is organising Tell-a-Story Day on 30th October. To take part in your school or other organisation, contact them for advice, inspiration and resources. See also our own page on storytelling.