CMIS Evaluation Primary Focus

The Primary Focus 2010 booklets have been sent to every Public Primary and District High School and the display of books is at two Perth locations this week. Everyone from any school/system/library is welcome to attend the closest display. The full itinerary is available on our website.

Primary Focus Fiction 2010

Primary Focus Nonfiction 2010

The main Fiction and Nonfiction booklets can be downloaded in PDF from the linked covers above or on our our Primary Focus webpages. The NEALS Licence [National Education Access Licence for Schools] allows you to use the contents for your own educational purposes within your school. WA Public School NEALS information

We are unable to include WA Private Schools in the purchasing contract, but the Primary Focus 2010 contractor, Margaret Walton at Child Education Services, or your regular supplier should be able to supply the resources at your normal school discount.

In China and around the world, over a billion people are preparing for Chinese New Year which falls on February 14, 2010 this year - the Year of the Tiger. Determined by the Chinese lunar calendar, this important holiday begins on the night of the first new moon of the year and ends 15 days later with the Lantern Festival, when the full moon is welcomed with parades of lanterns through the streets.

Share these books with your students to introduce this holiday festival, explore elements of Chinese culture, and invite discussion about other festivals and family observances.

Among the fiction books are Long-Long’s New Year by Catherine Gower, The lion drummer by Gabrielle Wang, The year of the dog and The year of the rat by Grace Lin.

Two other titles which are great for reading about the Chinese zodiac and how each animal earned their position on it are What the rat told me by Marie Sellier and The great race by Dawn Casey.

Other books that can be used to introduce children to Chinese culture and traditions are Ancient Chinese: dress, eat, write and play just like the Chinese by Joe Fullman and The China book by Li-Yu Lai Hung.

The topic of celebrating Chinese New Year can be extended into lessons on learning about other festivals celebrated in Australia and in other parts of the world.

You can find out more about Chinese New Year from these websites.

The Guardian newspaper profiles artist Inga Moore, whose most recent work, her illustrations for The Wind in the Willows, is one of the recommended titles for for the 2010 Primary Focus Fiction list.

In the ‘things-we-didn’t-know’ category is that Inga Moore spent her chidhood from the age of eight in Adelaide.

Former children’s laureate Michael Rosen gathers together the best children’s poetry from Agard to Zephaniah in this new collection. Presented alphabetically, the poems are a mix of some little known names as well as established poets like Wes Magee, Tony Mitton and Adrian Mitchell, (who sadly died as the book was being put together) among others.

As the title suggests everything is organized around the simple idea of finding good poets across the alphabetic range and ordering their poems accordingly. There is a poet for every letter of the alphabet with all of the poets except Allan Ahlberg (his poem consists of seven pages) contributing two poems each. There are two from Rosen himself, and also a few he composed for the letters of the alphabet for which a poet could not be found. In the book’s foreward, Rosen challenges readers to put together their own collection built on the same principle or to find poets whose names begin with the ‘missing’ letters (’I', ‘Q’, ‘U’, ‘V’, ‘X’, and ‘Y’).

Several of the poems are new and some are older, but the collection is diverse ranging from funny and silly to serious. There are a range of styles and themes, and the poems have been carefully chosen to show children that poetry can be fun, moving, evocative and intriguing.

This is a collection of poems in which readers can immerse themselves in, but it is also a great book for dipping in and out of. Although it is aimed at a younger audience, this anthology of poems will be equally enjoyed by adults and children alike.

The American Library Association’s gala children’s book awards night was held overnight, and with it the announcement of winners of arguably the most prestigious awards in the US. There are many categories in these ALA Awards, but the focus in Australia tends to be on the Newbery Medal, the Caldecott Medal for illustration and the Michael L. Printz Award for Young Adult Literature.

• Winner of the Newbery Medal is Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me. It will be published in Australia next month by Text Publishing.

• The Caldecott Medal for illustration has gone to a retelling of the Aesop fable The Lion and the Mouse, written and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. It is scheduled for an October release by Walker Books.

Earmark Thursday 25 February if you and your students want to be part of the Perth Writers Festival in 2010.

The following authors will be talking about their books and taking part in panel sessions, so this terrific program is sure to be filled quickly. Various morning and afternoon sessions are designed for middle and upper primary and lower and upper secondary school students. Of course there will be book signings. And long queues.

• Richard Newsome on The Billionaire’s Curse
• Andy Griffiths on Robot Riot
• Dianne Wolfer on Lighthouse Girl
• Magic and Spooks with Angie Sage
• Andy Griffiths on Just Macbeth
• James Roy on Edsel Grizzler
• Thrilling Tales with Mark Walden and Jack Heath
• Garth Nix on Lord Sunday
• Patrick Ness on Chaos Walking
• Kirsty Murray on Vulture’s Gate
• Angie Sage on Syren
• Kate De Goldi on The 10PM Question
• A Melting Pot of Ideas: Kate De Goldi and James Roy
• Dark Futures: Kirsty Murray and Patrick Ness
• So You Want to Be a Writer: Jack Heath, Richard Newsome and Mark Walden

All the details here.

Here’s Mo Willems, the Knuffle Bunny and Pigeon man, in conversation over at School Library Journal.

And here’s an annotated list of some of his books from our CMIS Resource Bank.

If you’d like more, check out:

• his rather Willems-ish website
• his blog
• his other blog
• his Pigeon website
• or, follow the Pigeon on Twitter
• listen to this radio interview from the Eric Carle Museum
• watch him on YouTube for a whole 25 minutes as he speaks entertains at this year’s National Book Festival in Washington DC

For those times when too much Mo Willems is never enough.

From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by John Tenniel. Macmillan and Co, London, 1898.

The roll call is impressive – Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, William Horwood, Mary Hoffman, Philip Pullman, all writers who have lived (or are living) in Oxford and all of whom have brought us great literary treasure.

So it’s fitting then that Oxford is to become the home to a new museum of story and storytelling, to open in 2014.

The virtual Story Museum is to become tangible, thanks to an anonymous benefactor and £2.5 million. Pullman, along with Michael Morpurgo and Jacqueline Wilson, will become patron of the new Museum:

The Story Museum will be a wonderful gift from Oxford, where so many stories have begun, to the whole world,” Pullman said. “The whole atmosphere of the city is rich with fantasy. Indeed, the very idea of having a museum devoted to story is itself such a fantastical notion than no other city in the world could have given birth to it.

More here.

Image used under Creative Commons licence

There is still some misapprehension that little children need to “graduate” from picture books to “real” books.  Forty years ago this may have been the case but since then a thriving quality industry in children’s and adolescent books has burgeoned and with it the quality and sophistication of picture books.

School curriculum reflects our very visual age and the importance of visual literacy in its designated “Viewing” strand within the English learning area.  Students need to be taught to observe and read pictures and their nuances, from the very simple and literal that prompt understanding of the text (including plot, setting and characterisation), to the more complex that interact with the text/reader more obscurely through image, symbol, inference or contrast.

Reading and looking at  simple picture books assists sustained observation of the real world and thus promotes self-knowledge and awareness of others as well as the ability to observe in other areas such as Science.  Picture books, such as Graeme Base’s “Uno’s Garden“,  are invaluable as motivational bridges into other learning areas.

Analysis of complex picture books requires education in cultural and social history, values and symbol.  One thinks of Anthony Browne’s books and those of our own Shaun Tan and Matt Ottley (particularly Home and Away).  While young children would certainly appreciate the former on a superficial level, only older children would “get” the social critiquing that runs through Browne’s work.

Browne, the current UK Children’s Laureate, has made the encouragement of “looking” a priority for his term as Laureate and has this to say:

The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that they are incredibly important.  What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.  If children are encouraged to think that pictures are for babies and that to become educated is to leave images behind and concentrate purely on words, we risk creating a country of visually illiterate adults.

Research has shown that we spend, on average, 30 seconds looking at paintings in a museum and considerably longer reading the captions.  I’m sure we can change this by teaching children (and adults) to read pictures as well as words.  As adults, we’ve seen so much before that we often turn the pages of a picture book without really looking.  Young children tend to look more carefully.  It’s often said that children now grow up in a visual world of computer games, television, DVDs and films.  That’s true, but these are moving images, and what I believe we all need to do is to stop and really look at pictures and at the world.  By looking we learn so much. (Courtesy of The Guardian.)

As for Shaun Tan’s books:  How many children younger than 9 years can even begin to “read” the richness of meaning in his pictures?  Indeed, Shaun himself has addressed this issue of audience for picture books in his 2006 PETA article, “Picture books: who are they for?“

In addition to the literacy opportunity offered by picture books, what better introduction to the visual arts (colour, style, line, shape, technique) for Art’s sake?  Again to quote Anthony Browne:
I do feel, however, that in our rush for children to pass tests and tick boxes we are in danger of crushing their gloriously innate creativity and imagination.

Many of us, I’m sure, could wax eloquent on the value and relevance of picture books.  I, for one, am decades into adulthood and still joyously reading picture books, benefiting from them and advocating their use at all levels of education.

See also our Fiction Focus feature article, Why Picture Books?

The winners of the second annual Roald Dahl Funny Prize were announced last night.

Winner in the category of books for the Under Sixes was Mr Pusskins : Best in Show, one of our 2009 Primary Focus Fiction selections.

And for older readers, it was Grubtown Tales : Stinking Rich and Just Plain Stinky (Philip Ardagh and Jim Paillot).

‘Disgusting and horrible‘ is how former Children’s Laureate and one of the two judges Michael Rosen called it, so it is sure to appeal to lots of readers.

If you are looking for funny, the shortlist from which these winners came is here.