The Fierce Little Woman and the Wicked Pirate

It was going to be hard to match the original version of this story published in 1984 by Shortland Educational Publications with delightful illustrations by Jo Davies capturing the spirit of the story so perfectly, but Gecko Press have done it, with a new edition of Joy Cowley's story illustrated by Sarah Davis. As the author herself says "I’m in love with this book! Everything about it is utterly beautiful: the design, the colours, the characters... [Illustrator Sarah Davis] has turned it into a classic that people will hug for generations."



Here is a link to Joy's website, with various resources for getting to know Joy - her books and her life, and this page has some useful tips for "Getting young authors started" http://www.joycowley.com/stories.shtml

The artist, Sarah Davis is a New Zealander, now resident in Sydney, and here is a link to her website and her blog called Pseudoarmadillo, a Links page with various connections to "internet goodness" and a few pictures from her Sketchbook.

Mirror - a new picture book from Jeannie Baker

This innovative and effective new picture book by Jeannie Baker is a work of art - clever, simple, powerful, gentle... The covers open to reveal two books, the English on the left, the Arabic on the right, which you can read simultaneously to reveal the parallel stories of two boys - one in inner city Sydney and one in a small, remote village in Morocco, North Africa, and how their lives are different, how they are the same...

Here is a link to Jeannie Baker's own website http://www.jeanniebaker.com/ which says about Mirror
"These worlds couldn’t be further apart, yet with the showing of the parallel lives of the two families, we see a simple truth. We see that in the context of strikingly different lifestyles, remotely different countries, landscapes, differences of clothing and all. The families are essentially the same. They care for each other, they need to belong, to be loved by their loved ones and be a part of their community. The simple truth is that even with all these differences we are all the same. We are the mirror of each other."

The Walker Books website has a fantastic Classroom Ideas kit for teachers about using this book : http://www.walkerbooks.com.au/statics/dyn/1278035825169/Mirror-Classroom-Ideas.pdf
This resource was put together by Jeannie Baker and the Western Sydney Young People’s Literature Project and is a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration for ways to use Mirror with students to generate thoughtful responses, discussion, activity and understanding...

And if you are lucky enough to be travelling to Sydney in the next month, there is an exhibition of the art work at the Museum of Sydney on until 10th October.
http://www.hht.net.au/whats_on/exhibitions/exhibitions/mirror_by_jeannie_baker

Mirror - by Jeannie Baker ISBN 9781406309140 Walker Books, August 2010
A must-buy for all school libraries.

Welcome to the Bream Bay Cluster

Hi to the teachers at the Bream Bay Cluster National Library workshop last Thursday... If you are reading this, then good on you for visiting the JuLS blog!

I've followed up by email to you with all the various bits and pieces, including the powerpoint, articles and links, but just to say that the wonderful collection of picture books we shared is available to browse online at the BBCJuls LibraryThing account.
Just go to http://www.librarything.com and log in with the details which I've emailed to you.

Don't forget that all the books are from National Library and can be borrowed from Curriculum Services - free phone 0800 356 000.

Follow up from National Library session on picture books last term

Hi JuLS teachers - I thought I'd do a quick post on the blog to follow up from the busy afternoon session last term - from the evaluations some people liked it but some people found it too rushed - I'll ensure more discussion time next session...

The focus for the session was to celebrate the picture book and some of the ideas were :

• getting to know them yourselves - increasing your knowledge / setting yourself reading challenges / sharing children's literature in your school with other teachers - the importance of teachers as readers
  
• reading picture books aloud every day / more than once a day to your students and encouraging parents to read aloud http://www.literacyconnections.com/ReadingAloud.php
  
• borrowing from National Library Curriculum Services - here is the online order form link http://www.natlib.govt.nz/cis-online-request
  
• focussing on the wonderful rich vocabulary - word of the day, word wall...
  
• visiting LibraryThing and setting up a class LibraryThing of your favourites http://www.librarything.com/
  
• exploring the pictures / teaching visual literacy - looking for the details, allusions and references, use of colour and space etc - What is going on in this picture ? (seeing and interpreting) What else can you find ? (from observations to stories in pictures) What do you see that makes you say that ? (visual evidence to support opinions)
  
• talking about authors and illustrators - getting to know their style, discussing preferences
  
• using the language of books - jacket, spine, endpapers...
• sharing reading responses - eg using the Aidan Chambers tell me questions to facilitate thoughtful reading responses and discussion
  
• comprehension strategies such as making connections
  http://www.readinglady.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=2&MMN_position=4:4
  
• using picture books as mentor texts to inspire students' own writing http://www.writingfix.com/picture_book_prompts.htm
  
• using wordless picture books - teaching ideas from ReadWriteThink (IRA website) http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/creative-writing-through-wordless-130.html and here is a booklist http://nancykeane.com/rl/317.htm
  
• developing extension activities around books - examples shared around The Smartest Giant - art, reviews, website activities, writing etc http://www.gruffalo.com/index.html
  

Phew, it was a lot in one session ! You might like to look again at the powerpoint which I sent out and review the various handouts ?

We'll start our next workshop together (workshop 4 - 9th June Whangarei / 16th June Kaitaia) by sharing what things you have done with your students and picture books in your classroom and be inspired by each other's practice... As well as general feedback, please bring along at least one idea in particular that you'd like to share with the rest of the group.

How about posting something about what you have done on the JuLS blog ?! What picture books have you read read recently that your students loved ?

Did you get a chance to read the Michael Rosen talk ?

By the way, has anybody done anything with maps in their classroom ?

I'm looking forward to seeing you in week 8 and 9 of this term.
Cheers, Jeannie