CMIS Evaluation Primary Focus

Emily Gravett’s whimsical Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears is this year’s winner of the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal, which was announced in London last night.

Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears is on this year’s Primary Focus list along with Meerkat Mail and Monkey and Me.

As reported on The Guardian website, Emily’s technique in the making of this book was rather unorthodox. The Guardian website also contains a set of eight of Gravett’s illustrations from all of her books to date.

A detailed background article about Gravett and her winning book is available on the CILIP website. You can also view the press release and the judges’ comments on the 2008 shortlist.

The Reading Bug (Revised Edition) by Paul Jennings is an accessible and humorous book aimed directly at parents wanting to help their children learn to read. It explains the role parents or carers can play in developing a love of reading in their children because according to Jennings, parental involvement is the one single factor that indicates how well a child will do with reading.

In writing this book, Paul Jennings drew extensively on his personal experience as a parent and on his professional experience as a teacher, an academic and a writer. Every bit as readable as his stories, The Reading Bug is full of amusing anecdotes and cartoon illustrations.

Jennings covers a range of issues, such as the importance of choosing the right book for your child, the use of picture clues, phonics, and the value of rhyming stories.The book also includes an insightful chapter on reluctant readers and a new chapter on boys and reading, plus an extended and updated reading list for the different stages of development.

This book contains clear and practical information about the writing process and has some great ideas for writing activities which parents and teachers will find useful for teaching reading.

Books, especially picture books, are meant to be viewed. The following websites offer more than just lists of book titles, blurbs and reviews. They allow pages of entire books to be viewed and most have a facility for illustrations and text to be enlarged for ease of reading and studying. Whether used as a selection aid or with students in the classroom, these sites are worth having a look at.

Lookybook
Authors, illustrators and publishers can post picture books onto this site. Books can be viewed page by page.
CMIS review of Lookybook website

International Children’s Digital Library
This site collects children’s books in different languages for reading and viewing online. A very useful resource for LOTE.
CMIS review of International Children’s Digital Library website

Children’s Books Online: The Rosetta Project
Specialising in antique books, the library on this site provides access to the illustrations and texts of entire books, including a large number of classics, folk and fairy tales myths and legends.
CMIS review of Children’s Books Online: the Rosetta Project website

Children’s Storybooks Online
This site contains stories created for online reading and is a useful example of online story creation and illustration.
CMIS review of Children’s Storybooks Online website