Puffin Short Story Award

Penguin Group (NZ) & Storylines Children’s Literature Charitable Trust team up again with nationwide Short Story Awards for children.

Following the success of the inaugural Puffin Short Story Awards last year, school children across the country are again invited to show off their writing skills in this unique competition.

The competition, which aims to nurture young writing talent, is now open and culminates in an awards ceremony at the Storylines Auckland Family Day on 28 August 2011. Entries are accepted in three categories: Junior (School Years 4-6), Intermediate (School Years 7-8) and Senior (School Years 9-11).

“ A writing competition for young writers is a splendid way of encouraging young people to realise the power of words to inspire, entertain, inform, persuade and to explore ideas. Becoming a writer goes hand in hand with becoming a reader. Budding writers feed on the words of the authors. As they see themselves in the author role they become more perceptive and critical readers. Storylines is delighted to work in partnership with Puffin/Penguin in this short story competition. It aligns closely with our aims to support New Zealand writers and illustrators for children and to celebrate reading and writing for young people. We look forward to those who enter the competition being among our published writers of the future.”
Dr Libby Limbrick, Chairperson of Storylines, Head of School of Arts, Languages and Literacies , Faculty of Education , University of Auckland.

This year, the prize up for grabs in each category is an Apple iPad. All three winners will also take away 50 Puffin books for their school library.

A team of judges recruited by Storylines will short-list up to 10 finalists per category, and the overall winner in each category will be selected by a high-profile children’s author.
Dawn McMillan is back to judge the Junior category, along with Joy Cowley in the Intermediate category. David Hair joins the team this year as judge in the Senior category. The theme for the competition is open, allowing participants to write about subjects of their own choosing.

The competition closes at 5pm on 3 June. Entry forms and full details are available at www.puffin.co.nz or www.storylines.org.nz

For further information please contact:
Lyn Olds | Penguin Group (NZ) | Tel: 09 442 7465 | lyn.olds@nz.penguingroup.com
www.puffin.co.nz

Books for Keeps

The latest edition of the UK children's literature journal Books for Keeps online is available http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/issue/187
I find it useful getting the email reminder.

Rosemary Stones' editorial mentions a couple of campaigns - Campaign for the Book organised by children's writer Alan Gibbons - see his blog as a forum for library advocacy - both school and public, http://alangibbons.net/ and for the Campaign Charter and signatories http://alangibbons.net/?page_id=206
Now the Bookseller has started a campaign to engage support for public libraries Fight 4 Libraries, and there is a Facebook site http://bit.ly/fight4libraries

Two obituaries of much loved authors - Dick King Smith and Brian Jacques, Michael Rosen on the language of the King James Bible, an interview with author Julie Hearn, a heap of reviews and much more...

Power point 20th century Cinderella

Power Point 20th Anniversary Cinderella is a Slideshare by Rowan Manahan with a modern powerpoint-speak version of the familiar tale, including "loss of 50% of shoes"...

The Willoughbys - Lois Lowry

A Novel Nefariously Written and Ignominiously Illustrated by the Author

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From the blurb : Villains, benefactors, no-nonsense nannies, abandoned infants, long-lost heirs, and late-life romance all make their appearance along with the irrepressible Willoughbys as the Newbery Award-winning author Lois Lowry pays playful homage to classic works of literature in this hilarious and decidedly "old-fashioned" parody.

This really appealed to my sense of humour and own childhood reading history - yes, I read and loved all those books - Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Heidi, Secret Garden, Mary Poppins, Ballet Shoes... I read this new book from Lois Lowry in a sitting and would love to pass it on to a young reader who will enjoy the various literary references and jokes, though you could enjoy the book very well without such background.

Lemony Snicket has written a great review for Publisher's Weekly,
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-618-97974-5

Don't miss the fabulous Glossary with its idiosyncratic definitions (of which Lemony Snicket says, "This critic even vaguely recognizes the stratagem of a glossary, in which the more toothsome words are defined unreliably and digressively" as he would !)
METICULOUS means extremely precise and careful. Surgeons have to be meticulous. Some people think great cooks are meticulous, but they are wrong. Great cooks read a recipe, maybe, but then they ignore the instructions and add extra garlic if they feel like it. Surgeons can't do that.

and there is a Bibliography "Books of the past that are heavy on piteous but appealing orphans, ill-tempered and stingy relatives, magnanimous benefactors, and transformations wrought by winsome children."

From the jacket blurb about the author :
"Influenced in her childhood by a mother who insisted on surrounding her with books instead of roller skates and jump ropes, Lois Lowry grew up lacking fresh air and exercise but with a keen understanding of plot, character and setting.... "

A good readaloud for upper primary/intermediate maybe, but you'd need to read it yourself to see if it fits your sensibility with the children keen on the idea of becoming orphans and the parents keen on becoming childless... There is a useful review on Amazon which says "Perhaps it is not for all takers, but those with a keen sense of humor and a taste for the bizarre will enjoy this winsome tale of the beastly, the diabolical, the irascible, and the unkempt."

Hougton Mifflin press release

Advocay for the school library

AASL has started sending out a daily advocacy tips. From the simple idea of making sure there was a link to the library homepage from the main school page to setting up an advisory committee. Each day there is a little gems. Sometimes they are great reminders of things I keep meaning to do, but maybe haven’t quite the time. Sometimes they are ideas I hadn’t even thought of, and I start to wonder how that might work in my school. Every once in a while there is one that I know I’m doing! It gives me that feeling of “I’m on the right track!”

If you are a member of AASL you can get these little tips emailed directly to your inbox – once a day, once a week, or once a month depending on your preference. You also have the option to get them as an email or text. AASL also has been posting them on their Twitter. So, lots of ways to get access to these wonderful ideas! If you have ideas that you think make great tips, make sure to share those with the AASL office. You might see them as a future tip down the road.

Tags: AASL · advocacy · American Association of School Librarians · Professional Development · school library media programs

E books in prisons

Here is an interesting article about the potential of e-books in prisons, shared through Library Link of the Day.
http://www.corrections.com/news/article/25312

American Indians in children's literature

I haven't seen Barack Obama's best selling book Of thee I sing but I have heard about it - a letter to his two daughters, featuring 13 "groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation."
This is a post by Debbie Reese, a Nambe Pueblo Indian from the Upper Village, on her blog : American Indians in Children's Literature. She talks about the book in general and about the entry on Sitting Bull in particular - I found this thoughtful analysis interesting - with reference to this title, and in general about respecting indigenous cultures.
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-does-sitting-bulls-great-grandson.html

Science images

This seems to be a short-lived blog of just 3 pages and 1 week duration, but it is a great collection of scientific images...
http://wondergalleryofscience.tumblr.com/
Images like this and accompanying text would make great displays in a library.

Ever wonder why computers get "a bug" or need to be "de-bugged"?
http://wondergalleryofscience.tumblr.com/post/1506551925/moth-found-trapped-between-points-at-relay-70

Author Jenny Valentine

I loved Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine which won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize (see here for Jenny's happy account of the awards evening) , but have only just got around to reading any other titles by her that I could get my hands on, and thoroughly enjoyed them all - The Ant Colony, The Double Life of Cassiel Roadknight, and for younger readers, Iggy and Me. Still to read Broken Soup.

What I enjoy about the books is well and truthfully described here from the publisher's website :

"...all the classic hallmarks of a Jenny novel – a fantastically strong, sensitive and memorable first person narration; themes of loss and betrayal, family secrets and personal identity; truly quality writing that is 'literary' but never inaccessbile or pretentious..."

Intermediate / secondary for the novels, and mid primary for the Iggy chapter books - a modern version of My Naughty Little Sister, with patient and loving Flo managing the vagaries of her funny little sister Iggy.

There is an interview with her on the LoveReading4Kids website with a list of her various books, including her response to The colour pink. Discuss. "Let’s see… bubblegum, fake fur, rose petals, cold noses, underwear, marshmallows, candy floss, lip gloss…. how am I doing?!"

Heave Ho ! Heinz Janisch

A wonderful picture book - concise, clever, and - as proclaimed on the opening page "This story is told in twelve sentences. Start counting now." The text continues "In the first sentence, a cat runs into the story..." and so it goes as the cat, a dog and three mice co-operate to achieve their goal.
A quirky book which illustrates perfectly the power of picture books with a dozen simple sentences to tell a great story... and maybe a useful writing framework for students' own storytelling?

Available to borrow from National Library.

Scribble, scribble, scribble by Simon Schama

I'm enjoying this new book by Simon Schama - Scribble, scribble, scribble (Bodley Head, 2010)
Here is the blurb :

'Wednesday brought a pungent sheepy smell emanating from the greyish lamb and barley soup my mother optimistically called 'Taste of the Garden of Eden'. Expel me, please. Haddock in the air? That would be Thursday. The faintest whiff of roasting garlic? That would be what my sister and I uncharitably dubbed 'Friday Night Memorial Chicken'; a venerable object smeared on the breasts with a dab of marmite meant to cheer the bird up as it emerged defeated from the oven. Rattling inside the brittle cavity was that one solitary clove of garlic; the exotic knobble that my mother conceded as a romantic touch amid the iron regimen of her unvarying weekly routine.'

Cookery is not necessarily a subject one immediately associates with Simon Schama - one of Britain's most respected historians and commentators. But this selection of his occasional writings is a treasure trove of surprises. Passionate, provocative, entertaining and informative, "Scribble, Scribble, Scribble" ranges far and wide: from cookery and family to Barack Obama, from preaching and Shakespeare to Victorian sages, from Leonard Cohen and Hurricane Katrina to 'The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of The Osbornes'. Never predictable, always stimulating, "Scribble, Scribble, Scribble" allows us to view the world, in all its diversity, through the eyes of one of its most original inhabitants.

Book covering videos

There are Raeco videos on youtube which might be useful if teaching some helpful school library book covering volunteers...
Here is on about covering paperbacks with Duraseal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L80EMSb4xh8
and one on Lyfguards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz7V782Cdbs&NR=1

Maori waiata

I was directed to youtube to watch a video of a waiata to practice for an event in Auckland and I came across this site http://folksong.org.nz/waiata.html which might be of interest...

NZ authors, teaching notes

From Sarah Forster Education Manager New Zealand Book Council

"I have just found these on Text Publishing's website. They are an Australian publisher, but have picked up a lot of our most popular authors, publishing Bernard Beckett, Lloyd Jones, Leon Davidson, Maurice Gee, and Anna Mackenzie. In case any teachers are looking for notes - I know some of these books are likely to be in class sets now! "

http://textpublishing.com.au/resources/teaching-notes

Picture books

A sad little piece from the NY Times about languishing picture book publishing and sales, and the pressure some parents feel to rush through picture books to get to the chapter book fiction and the "real reading" including this sorry tale :

"Some parents say they just want to advance their children’s skills. Amanda Gignac, a stay-at-home mother in San Antonio who writes The Zen Leaf, a book blog, said her youngest son, Laurence, started reading chapter books when he was 4. Now Laurence is 6 ½, and while he regularly tackles 80-page chapter books, he is still a “reluctant reader,” Ms. Gignac said. Sometimes, she said, he tries to go back to picture books. “He would still read picture books now if we let him, because he doesn’t want to work to read,” she said, adding that she and her husband have kept him reading chapter books."

Oh, dear.

Market Books - Whangarei

I wonder if Northland schools know about Market Books in Whangarei ? If not, it might be worth checking out...
http://www.booksellers.co.nz/members/member-profiles/market-books-%E2%80%93-using-book-month-promote-whangarei-store

NZ Post Children's Book Awards

The finalists have been announced for 2011 NZ Post Children's Book Awards
http://www.booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-post-childrens-book-awards/finalists-announced-2011-new-zealand-post-children%E2%80%99s-b
as selected by our own Dee Brooker, Librarian at Whangarei Boys' High School who is one of the team of three judges.

If schools haven't received their resource pack yet, then contact the Bookseller's Association to have one sent to you.

Apparently the Activity Pages for the 2011 books are due to be posted on the website any day soon. http://www.booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-post-childrens-book-awards/resources/finalist-activity-pages

Cover to Cover

Kerikeri High School's book blog Cover to Cover is a treasure trove of great posts, links, reviews...

Just a couple recent posts - a fun bookshelf reorganisation video and a post about The Guardian's new childrens and teen website ....

Lots of great stuff to explore here from this ardent blogger.

Gene Smith - hero librarian

Here are a couple of obituaries - from The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, for Gene Smith, a librarian whose passion, intellect, tenacity and enterprise "almost single-handedly ensured the survival of Tibetan literature..." He died in December 2010.

From The Economist obituary :
"Over five decades, Mr Smith made it his business to put Tibetan literature back together. He did it more or less single-handedly, fired by his love of the language and the culture and aided by a brain that rapidly became an encyclopedia of lineages, sutras, lives of lamas, and the history and ownership of every book he came across. Expatiating in serene but fearsome detail to friends in his rooms in Delhi, or Boston, or New York, all of them piled floor-to-ceiling with cloth-wrapped pecha, he could instantly find a page anywhere to illustrate a point.
Though people considered him a teacher, he was always a librarian, with a librarian’s love of catalogues and connections; but his Buddhism added to that a reverence for the transmission of texts, on which all spiritual progress rested."

The life of a teenage bodysnatcher - McLeod

Another great read - for secondary schools - The Life of a Teenage Bodysnatcher by Doug McLeod (Penguin, 2010)

Best let the author tell about it...

http://www.readings.com.au/news/the-story-of-my-book-doug-macleod-on-the-life-of-a-teenage-body-snatcher

and there is a full page review by Allison Paterson in Magpies Vol 25 Issue 3 July 2010 p14 (the cover book). She ends her review "Our mid-secondary boys will find the off-beat, bizarre story of Thomas Timewell very much to their liking and will be asking the question "When's the next one coming out?" We really must have more of the Timewells and their eccentric existence."

This was a surprising, entertaining, occasionally gruesome read, but with an ethical heart, Dickensian flavour, and a good sense of humour, and I strongly recommend it - along the lines of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book and just as good.

Pull out all the stops ! Geraldine McCaughrean

Geraldine McCaughrean's latest book is Pull out all the stops! (OUP 2010) - to be published in America as The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen (Harper Collins, 2011). It continues the story of Cissy and Kookie from Stop the Train but you don't have to have read the first one to enjoy this one.

I am a great fan of Geraldine McCaughrean's writing - every page seems to have an image or description which I find I want to read it out aloud to someone and say "listen to this..." Here's one on a page I just opened - old Elijah who steers the riverboat has an unreliable memory "Memories only came to Elijah sporadically - like post to an African explorer."

Here is a synopsis from the publisher's website : Cissy Sissney has always longed for a life filled with adventure, and her wish is unexpectedly granted when she is sent to live aboard the Sunshine Queen—a shipwrecked paddle steamer that houses the Bright Lights Theater Company. When the showboat is carried back out to sea, the motley crew on board embarks on a wild and hilarious journey. But along the way, one of their own falls into grave danger…and Cissy learns that the stakes of fame are higher than she could possibly have imagined.
Renowned storyteller Geraldine McCaughrean weaves a rip-roaring river adventure that’s chock-full of sidesplitting humor and daring escapades. Readers won’t be able to resist riding along on the Sunshine Queen’s thrilling journey in this fun and accessible tale.

Set in 1894 on the Missouri River and its tributaries, it is funny (the part with Kookie in the river with the alligator had me laughing almost too hard to read it aloud to a friend) and action packed - a tall tale, full of larger-than-life characters in life-and-death situations, imaginative, adventurous and brilliantly written.

Here is a review on LoveReading4kids by Julia Ecccleshare :
http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/book/5854/Pull-Out-All-the-Stops!-by-Geraldine-Mccaughrean.html

It would make a great readaloud, and there is an audio book too.

Here is Geraldine's website : http://www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk/

Wild self story starter

Here is a cool site a friend shared with me (thanks Marisa!)
Build your wild self http://www.buildyourwildself.com/ from New York Zoos and Aquarium.

Here you can design your human self and then add your favourite animal parts to create a whole new you - one with wings or a prehensile tail !

Here are a few links to blogs with how this has been used in the classroom...
http://sharpsav.com/blog/fresh-look-fridays-build-your-wild-self.html

http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk/2009/02/build-your-wild-self/

http://www.edgalaxy.com/literacy/2010/10/4/build-your-own-wild-self-just-like-where-the-wild-things-are.html (this blog tags itself "cool stuff for nerdy teachers")

Reading Superheroes

Have you caught up with the fantastic Reading Superheroes competition as part of the national Book Month celebrations ?
http://schools.natlib.govt.nz/nz-book-month-2011

Reading Super Hero competition

All students can enter this nationwide competition and affirm reading role models in schools. Tell us your story in 100-150 words and reading super heroes could win great prizes.

To enter the competition, please fill in the form.

See also the accessible, useful, inspiring brochure on Reading Aloud which is free for schools to download and share with their school community...
Read Aloud brochure [PDF 167 KB]

Hello again !

Well, I've had a great long holiday and loved every minute of it - lots of visitors staying, lots of sewing - quilts and other projects (including getting my name on the Thorburn Family Cup for Needlework at the North Hokianga A and P show at Broadwood!), plenty of reading - a tottering pile of books here to share, some wonderful sailing in the Bay of Islands and Whangaroa, and a certain amount of sorting - my house and my grandmother's estate... This all meant very little computer and desk time - hence my poor neglected blog... I wonder if I have any readers left ?!
Anyway, I'm getting back into real life, with busy days at work and a growing collection of things that I think - hey, I should put that on my blog, so here goes, a sunny Sunday morning and a bit of a catch up - and then business as usual with the various bits and pieces that I come across.
If you haven't abandoned the idea of visiting LibraryZest over this hiatus, thanks for your patience and hello again !