CMIS Evaluation Primary Focus

Used with permission HarperCollins (ABC Books)

Recently published is a must-have resource for all school libraries and parents’ bookshelves.  Entitled 1001 Children’s Books you must read before you grow up, it includes one page reviews (many by well-known authors) of the best of children’s and adolescents’ books from different countries and from different periods of history.  These are grouped into broad age bands: 0-3, 3+, 5+, 8+ and 12+, and most are illustrated with the original cover art.

The preface, written by Quentin Blake, and the introduction, written by the general editor, Julia Eccleshare, are well worth reading.  Blake takes us inside the illustrator’s head and gives a valuable insight into how he dialogues with the text, with the prospective reader in mind, to produce his pictures. He also spotlights the professional concerns which authors face in writing children’s books. Eccleshare writes about the selection as being “a lesson in history and cultural change as much as it is a journey of literary discovery.  Snapshots of attitudes to children, expectations of them, and messages thought suitable for them are all held within the pages of these stories.” (p.11)

If you hurry over to the UK’s Independent newspaper site, you can download free audio books for the next few days. Available so far is Polly Dunbar’s Penguin (a long-time favourite in our house); The Gruffalo (Julia Donaldson) and Cock-a-Doodle Doo Mr Sultana (Michael Morpurgo).

Two more to go, but we don’t know yet what they will be. So hurry.

Take a trip down memory lane with Lucy Mangan as she browses the Puffin Archive in Rugby, Warwickshire, UK.  The exercise may also trigger some classic purchases for the school library.

Although we were aware of the British publication, Riveting Reads Plus: Boys into Books 5-11, we had neglected to mention it here, until a nudge from the Create Readers blog (a great site from the NZ National Library) reminded us. So here is where you can download it.

If you would like another annotated list of books suitable for boys of this age group, just do a CMIS topic search in our online catalogue with the topic keyword boys’ reads, and limit the search by selecting the Phases of Development Early childhood and/or Middle childhood, and at the moment you will come up with 87 titles (but additional titles are added regularly).

The 2009 Shortlist for the Book of the Year Awards and the Notable Australian Children’s Books have been announced by the Children’s Book Council of Australia.

The winners and honour books will be announced on Friday 21 August 2009 at the beginning of Book Week.

Book Week runs from 22 August to 28 August.

The theme for Book Week 2009 is Book Safari.

For your start on this exciting safari, the CMIS Resource Bank has reviews of most of the Shortlisted and Notable Books. 

More information about the reviews organised by category can be found on the CMIS Evaluation Book Week webpage. 

They may not all have reached Australia, but it’s always nice to look. The New York Times has declared its selection of the best illustrated children’s books for 2008 with a slideshow. Here.

Suddenly, reality television makes sense. Michael Rosen, the UK Children’s Laureate, is doing a Jamie Oliver:

with a new BBC show in which he attempts to get a Cardiff primary school to fall in love with literature in just 10 weeks.

From The Guardian.

It might appear here on pay TV, if we are lucky.

More here and here.

Copies of the 2009 Primary Focus booklets are on their way to all public primary and district high schools in Western Australia. They are designed to help with selection of resources for school libraries and include the best of the fiction and nonfiction resources that we have seen in the past 12 months.

The covers this year are really bright, so look out for them in your school.

The two displays are starting their trip around the state, so check the Itinerary and go to look at the resources when they are in a school or District Office near you.

… and there are new books to share with your students.

Popular illustrator, Dee Huxley, has brought to life the C.J. Dennis poem, A bush Christmas.

For very young students, there is a new Kilmeny Niland title, An Aussie day before Christmas, based on the rhythms of Clement Moore’s poem, The night before Christmas. A Tenth Anniversary Edition of this famous poem illustrated by Jan Brett is also just out.

If your students enjoy the books of Jackie French and Bruce Whatley, they have created an engaging Christmas story about a gloomy Bunyip in Emily and the BIG BAD Bunyip. Glenda Millard and Stephen Michael King have also combined to produce a gentle Australian nativity story, Applesauce and the Christmas miracle. And, for a fun read for those who know their fairytales, Mark Burgess and Russell Ayto have given us Where teddy bears come from.

For more titles that may be already in your school library, check out the Christmas list in the CMIS Resource Bank. There is also a CMIS Christmas theme page with its rationale for discussing Christmas with students and links to some of the most useful of the Christmas websites on the Internet.

	Sadako, only two years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima to end World War II, was diagnosed with Leukaemia at age eleven in 1955. She was given a folded paper crane by her best friend. According to Japanese legend, a wish is granted to anyone who folds a thousand paper cranes.
Wishing for good health, Sadako began to fold paper cranes. She died at the age of twelve having completed 644 paper cranes; another 356 paper cranes folded by her friends were buried with her. In 1958 a monument of Sadako holding a paper crane was built in Hiroshima Peace Park. To express their hope for world peace, people fold paper cranes each year to place at the base of the monument.

Share Sadako’s story with students by reading them the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. In class, students can exchange knowledge on Japan and World War II. They can discuss war, conflict, loss, peace, similarities and differences between their culture and that of others.

How to Fold a Crane is listed on the Gander Academy Origami website under the heading Paperfolding Instructions Sites. Explore this website for photographs and illustrations of models, instructions, information and resources on origami.

CMIS Evaluation review of Gander Academy Origami web site