The murmur about the first Paddington movie was that its creators nailed the family genre, and I think it’s safe to say that Paddington 2 is even more family friendly than its precursor.

It is quite simply a feel-good movie: cleverly animated, thoughtfully written and with just the right balance of humour and tender moments to entertain all members of the family.

With a plot that revolves around the theft of a pop-up book, the film will delight book-lovers. Paddington finds himself in prison after being wrongly accused of stealing the book from Mr. Gruber’s antique shop. Together with the Brown family and his fellow prisoners, Paddington must prove his innocence and crack the puzzle that will uncover the real culprit.

True to the charming, big-hearted and innocent spirit of Michael Bond’s original character, Paddington continues to be such a wonderful example and teacher of kindness, courtesy and good will. Hugh Grant is terrific in his performance of Phoenix Buchanan, the film’s theatrical villain, as are all the returning actors who make up the Brown family.

There are a number of laugh-out-loud moments (favourites include the accidental mayhem caused by Paddington in the barber shop and the prison cafeteria being transformed into a high-tea venue complete with cake and petit fours), but ultimately you will leave the cinema with a warm, tingling heart.

… and do make sure you stay for the surprise performance beyond the credits!

Highly recommended by Jackie and family. 

Our Favourite Paddington Books

Paddington 2: Paddington Pop-Up London (Collector's Edition)

Paddington Movie Storybook

A Bear Called Paddington Gift Edition

Paddington Here and Now

Further Resources

Paddington Bear Website

Paddington Bear App

Watch a preview

But we also had some little people in attendance who loved our activity stations designed around some of the books written and illustrated by some of our special guests.

Such a hit were they, that we thought we’d share some of the ideas for you to try at home. They’re simple but lots of fun.

 ENOUGH APPLES by Kim Kane and Lucia Mascuillo

‘The sweet smell reminded him of laden trees and tables. The scalloped edges reminded him of family thumbs all pressing into thick buttery dough.'

This is a gorgeous book with nostalgic, earthy illustrations about a man who owns an apple orchard. At first, he resists the change in the landscape happening around him until the new construction slowly starts to impact his orchard. He finds new ways to grow and appreciate nature’s gifts in a changing landscape and passionately shares his knowledge and love of apples with those around him.

What you need:

- Apple-scented playdough (Find recipe here)

- Cinnamon scented playdough (Find recipe here)

- Playdough tools (e.g. rolling pins, cookie cutters)

- Playdough mats (these can be found online and printed for personal use)

Activity:

Get creative with the apple pie playdough. Try:

-Creating apples

-Adding apples to an apple tree

-Filling a basket with mini apples

-Making a playdough apple pie

UNDER THE LOVE UMBRELLA by Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys

Under the Love Umbrella is the latest picture book by Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys celebrating the message of unconditional love and protection for children from all backgrounds and family structures.  The book’s vivid pops of colour inspired this activity.

What you need:

Black paper

Fluorescent or metallic markers/gel pens

Activity:

Use the fluorescent or metallic markers to create striking firework patterns on the black paper

1. As an Indigenous woman, how did you feel seeing Cathy Freeman win gold at
the Olympics? I was watching the race with family in Canberra and we were all so very excited. I was incredibly proud of her – even though I didn’t know her. Just knowing the amount of work and emotional, physical and physiological energy it would’ve taken to get that far. And then to win. I think all Australians watching that race would have been proud of Cathy Freeman that night.

2. When Mel and her family head to Sydney for Corroboree 2000 they are filled with hope for the future. Now, 17 years later, how would Mel feel about how things have progressed? I think Mel might be disappointed that while an Apology has been given to the Stolen Generations thanks to the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (2008), she would be old enough to also understand that there are other human rights abuses that need to be address, such as the NT Intervention and ongoing Black Deaths in Custody. Having said that, she would also know that the Reconciliation movement has continued and there is power in community coming together for causes.

3. Having a personal hero can be a powerful motivator for a child. Did you have any personal heroes growing up?  Both my parents where my heroes. They worked very hard and family was everything. I am who I am because of them. I also had Evonne Goolagong Cawley as a hero – I wanted to play tennis just like her.

4. Did you attend Corroboree 2000 and if so, can you describe the atmosphere? I was in Austria teaching at the time and was surprised to see how much international coverage the event got. Even in the little village where my father was born, people were talking about it.

5. What do you hope readers take away from Mel's story? I hope readers come to understand the power of words – for good and bad – and that we can impact other people’s lives through our words and actions. The role of ‘saying sorry’ is as much for the those who have been hurt as it is for those who need to say it. I also hope that the story reveals for readers some of their own heroes.

6. Looking back at question 3, I wonder if you have anyone now who you see as a role model or hero to you? My mum and dad are still my heroes – they are legends in my mind. My father has passed away but not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what he thinks about things I’m doing - would he approve? What advice would he give me? In a writing sense my heroes are the late Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Ruby Langford-Ginibi and my contemporaries Melissa Lucashenko and Alexis Wright.

7. Do you see your role as a writer of children's books important in terms of telling stories that Aboriginal children will hopefully see themselves in? Absolutely, it’s not rocket science, reading needs to be relevant if we want any children to pick up books. Everyone likes to see themselves reflected in the literature they see. I started writing adult novels because I never saw women like myself in Australian literature.

8. Your life as an activist, fundraiser, writer, academic and public speaker must keep you extraordinarily busy. Does running help keep things on an even keel for you? I guess you could say that. Running helps me clear my head at the start of the day (I mainly run first thing in the morning). I do a lot of thinking as I turn my legs over. I plan my stories, my dialogue, any speeches I am booked to give. And the endorphins that running generates means I am happy afterwards. It’s much easier to be productive when I’m happy and not miserable.

9. When is the best time to write for you? I write in blocks of time and nearly always in the morning (unless I am desperately late for deadline). When I was writing Our Race for Reconciliation, I was up early in the morning, sometimes at 5am typing away. It’s the best time of the day in my opinion.

10. Are you busy writing now? Can you share with us what's coming up next? I’m working on the Growing Up Aboriginal anthology which will come out in 2018. I’m the commissioning editor, so I get to read all the submissions and it’s an extraordinary privilege. I also have ideas for two new books, but I can’t tell you about them just yet. 

As well as the AFL Finals, September also sees the exciting release of Jo Stanley’s new series, Play Like a Girl, and the latest book in George Ivanoff’s You Choose series, Footy Fever. We thought we’d celebrate September with a list of our favourite AFL-themed books.

Whichever team you support, there is a book here for any footy fan!

FOR BABIES/TODDLERS

AFL: My First Series (Words, Numbers & Colours): 

AFL: Game Day

AFL: Where’s My Football 

PICTURE BOOKS

Why I Love Footy by Michael Wagner

Marngrook

Great Goal! Marvellous Mark! by Katrina Germein and Janine Dawson

AFL Footy Kids

EARLY READERS and CHAPTER BOOKS

Sporty Kids Footy

Maxx Rumble

Kick it to Nick

Specky Macgee

Nick’s Fabulous Footy Cards

Play Like A Girl by Jo Stanley

You Choose: Footy Fever by George Ivanoff

Diary of an AFL Legend

Footy Dreaming

NON-FICTION/BIOGRAPHIES/ACTIVITY BOOKS

A Footy Girl's Guide

Jumping at the Chance: From NBA Hopefuls to AFL Prospects: The Players of the American Experiment, Gil Griffin: 

AFL: Ultimate Sticker Book

AFL: Mascot Manor Colouring Book

AFL: Factivity

Book Week is a celebration for all Australian children! Schools, libraries and bookshops will have some wonderful events taking place during the week, but HOME is also a fabulous place to celebrate books with your children, particularly for families with pre-school children or in remote locations!

With ESCAPE TO EVERYWHERE as this year’s Book Week theme, here’s The Kids’ Bookshop’s quick list of ways you can celebrate Book Week in your home this year:

1. Set up a special space in your home where the kids can ESCAPE with a book.

2. ESCAPE to an imaginary or literary world by preparing  a morning or afternoon tea that your favourite book character would love!

3. Read and play with some of this year’s CBCA shortlisted books.

 For e.g.:

a) Use the pages of the books as a back drop to a small world play scene

b) Recreate scenes or experiences from the stories.

4. Set up a tinker table and use objects from around the house to create a form of transport that can help you ESCAPE TO EVERYWHERE! (Check out The Patchwork Bike for ideas)

5. ESCAPE TO EVERYWHERE by reading books about other parts of the world. Why not create a passport to keep track of your travels or use a map of the world to plot the places you visit with the help of books.

BROWSE AND PURCHASE CBCA 2017 SHORTLISTED BOOKS

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT BOOK WEEK AND THE CHILDREN'S BOOK COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA

Learning to read is like baking a cake (visit My Little Bookcase for more information about this analogy). Just like baking a cake, learning to read requires essential ingredients to successfully achieve a desired result, which in this case is the ability to read.

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS FOR LEARNING TO READ

Print Awareness: Understanding the basic components that underpin how text works (e.g. Words are made up of letters; letters can be presented in uppercase and lowercase; words are read in a particular direction; punctuation is used to organise words; print carries a message)

Phonological Awareness: An understanding of word structure and the ability to identify and manipulate parts of spoken words (e.g. rhyming, segmenting into syllables, identifying onset and rime).

Phonemic Awareness: The ability to hear and identify separate, individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words and to manipulate them (blend, swap etc.).

Alphabet Knowledge: A set of 26 single written symbols that, individually and in various combinations, represent the 44 sounds in the English language.

Phonics Instruction: Explicitly learning to match written letter symbols (graphemes) to the sounds (phonemes) they represent.

Whole Language Experience: A holistic approach to learning to read that places a focus on reading within the context of the individual learner and using a range of tools and strategies to see words as wholes.

Reading Strategies: Prompts or tools that children can draw on when beginning to read words on a page

‘Just Right’ Books: Books that enable a child to read with confidence and with a high accuracy rate when applying learned reading strategies.

TIPS FOR SUPPORTING YOUR SCHOOL’S APPROACH TO THE TEACHING AND LEARNING OF READING

-          Play word games (I Spy, Sound Tennis, Sound Scavenger Hunt, Book Detective)

-          Provide everyday experiences for developing prior knowledge (which assists in the comprehension of texts)

-          Read regularly to and with your child

-          Attend information and training sessions offered by your child’s school

-          Tune-In to stories before you start reading (E.g. walk through and discuss the illustrations before reading, predict the story based on the title or front cover, discuss prior knowledge/experiences before reading)

-          Become familiar with some reading strategies and prompts you could help your child to employ when attacking words on a page.

TIPS FOR FINDING THE RIGHT BOOKS FOR EMERGING READERS

Suitable book choice is essential for children who are learning to read independently. A fine balance needs to occur that allows the child to build their knowledge, consolidate information and skills they are learning, build confidence in their ability and be engaging enough that they are happy to read aloud regularly and practise their new and exciting skill of reading.

Look for books:

-          With a text that rhymes, is repetitive or uses language features such as alliteration

-          That include high frequency or most commonly used words

-          That are age and level appropriate

-          That are ‘Just Right’ (i.e. no more than 5 difficult parts on a page)

-          That are already familiar to your child (e.g. have been read before or have thematic content your child is familiar with)

-          Have minimal text to a page

-          Use a large-sized font

-          Include illustrations that support the text (colour illustrations are great too!)

-          With thematic content that interests your child

RECOMMENDED FIRST CHAPTER BOOKS

When the pieces start to fall in place for your child, we can almost guarantee that they'll start begging to read chapter books. It's important not to rush the process though. There are some fantastic FIRST CHAPTER BOOKS available that offer a wonderful bridge towards chapter books. Here are some of our favourites:

Billie B Brown

Hey Jack

Lily the Elf

Diva and Flea

Chook Doolan

Sporty Kids

Boris

Princess in Black

Henrietta the Great Go-Getter

EJ Spy School

The Cleo Stories

Ruby Red Shoes

The Bad Guys

The Faraway Tree Adventures

BROWSE OUR FULL SELECTION OF FIRST CHAPTER BOOKS

At about the age of eight, Belinda Murrell began writing stirring tales of adventure, mystery and magic in hand-illustrated exercise books. As an adult, she combined two of her great loves – writing and travelling the world – and worked as a travel journalist, technical writer and public relations consultant. Now, inspired by her own three children, Belinda is a bestselling, internationally published children’s author with a history of writing in her family that spans over 200 years. Her previous titles include her fantasy adventure series The Sun Sword trilogy and her seven time-slip adventures, The Locket of Dreams, The Ruby Talisman, The Ivory Rose, The Forgotten Pearl, The River Charm, The Sequin Star, and The Lost Sapphire. These books have been recognised by various awards, including CBCA Notable List 2012 and 2017, Honour Book KOALAS 2013, shortlisted seven times for the Young Australians Best Book Award (YABBA), and highly commended in the PM’s Literary Awards.

Belinda lives in Manly in a gorgeous old house overlooking the sea with her husband Rob, her three beautiful children - Nick, Emily and Lachlan, and her dog Rosie. She is an Author Ambassador for Room to Read and Books in Homes. Visit her website at www.belindamurrell.com.au for more information about Belinda including upcoming events and how to book a school visit. 

1. How did you become an author?

When I was about eight, I started writing poems, plays, stories and novels in hand-illustrated exercise books just because it was fun!! I kept writing all through school and university, then when I left uni I worked as a technical writer, journalist and freelance travel writer, but all that time I had a dream to write books. When my own children were young I started writing books for them, and then one day I was brave enough to send a manuscript off to Random House – the first book in The Sun Sword Trilogy. They loved it and I’ve been writing kids’ books full-time ever since. My first novel was published in 2006 - and now I’m working on my thirtieth book!

 2. What do you love most about being an author? 

Definitely seeing children love my work! Getting emails from children saying, ‘that was the best book I’ve ever read!’ or watching a boy walk down the street and bump into a light post because he was reading one of my books!

3. Tell us about your new series?

This year, I am so excited to be launching a completely new series, called Pippa’s Island, for girls about 8 to 10 years old, as a step up from the Lulu Bell books. I was inspired to write the books after hearing from lots of parents and young girls that they loved Lulu Bell, and had read all the books over and over again, but now needed something that was more challenging and slightly older.

Pippa Hamilton is a fun-loving, cheerful, eleven year old girl who loves to doodle, design things and write in her notebook. Her mum says she is kind, lively, funny and friendly, but when Pippa and her family move from London to a tiny tropical island on the other side of the world, everything changes. Pippa has to leave her home, her school and all her friends behind her, which is really tough.

Her family includes her Mum, her brother Harry and her little sister Bella. They move to Kira Island where Mum grew up, to stay in a caravan in Mimi and Papa’s back garden. Mum decides to spend their very last pennies to buy an old, tumbledown boatshed on the beachfront at Kira Cove. She plans to renovate it and turn it into a café and bookshop. But Pippa is worried that they will lose all their money in this crazy venture.

Pippa soon makes friends with a gorgeous group of girls. There is Charlie Harper, a boho beach-babe who loves to sing and play the guitar. Cici Lin is the cupcake queen, who bakes delicious treats and is a stylish fashionista. Meg O’Loughlin is the quietest, but most caring who Cici calls the Wildlife Warrior because she is on a personal mission to save the world. Together they form a secret club called Sassy Sisters, who meet after school in a round tower on top of a boat-house. Their motto is ‘Be brave. Be bold. And be full of happy spirit.’

 4. Why did you set the series on an island?

When I was growing up, I always loved the idea of living on an island. There is something romantic and adventurous about being cut off from the rest of the world on an island that can only be reached by boat. My love of islands was probably inspired by some of my favourite childhood books such as the Famous Five, where George had her very own Kirrin Island complete with a ruined castle and secret tunnels. Also, when I was growing up my dad used to take us on many sailing adventures off the Queensland coast exploring tiny deserted islands, swimming with dolphins and sleeping on deck under the stars.

 5. Is there an island that particularly inspired Pippa’s Island?

During our travels around Australia and overseas, I have visited many, many beautiful islands and together some of these have inspired the gorgeous tropical setting of Kira Island, with its frangipanis and palm trees, coral white sand, turquoise water and dolphins splashing in the waves. One of these is stunning Lord Howe Island, 600 kilometres off the NSW coast and some of the beautiful tiny islets of the Whitsundays in northern Queensland.

 6. Do you have a favourite island in the world?

So hard to choose!  My family and I spent a wonderful time exploring the Greek islands including Crete, Samos, Mykonos, Naxos, Paros and Santorini, but my favourite was probably the island of Amorgos, with its whitewashed cottages, crystal clear water, and arid steep mountains, crisscrossed with narrow donkey tracks. Completely different but stunningly beautiful were the wild, windswept islands off the West Coast of Scotland, such as Luing, with its colourful fishing boats, emerald green fields, wildflowers and ancient stone crofter cottages. Its wild beauty stirred my ancestral Scottish blood. 

 7. What was your favourite childhood novel? 

 When I was growing up, the book that most fired my imagination was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. I loved its enticing mixture of adventure, action and fantasy. My sister and I would dress up in silver chain mail, with swords and bows and arrows, and play Narnia. I was enraptured by the idea that it might be possible to pass through a secret door into a magical world, full of talking animals and adventure.

 8. How long does it take you to write a book?

It takes me about a year to write a time slip book like The Forgotten Pearl or The Lost Sapphire. I spend about three to four months doing the research, about three to four months writing the book, another two months editing the book and when the new book comes out I spend about two months on tour – visiting schools, doing signings at bookshops, speaking at festivals and doing media interviews – so it keeps me very busy!! With Pippa’s Island, I’d been playing around with the idea for about three years, and it took me about 18 months to write the first two books in the series, but a lot of that time was imagining the characters and setting, and getting the voice right for that age group.

 9. Can you describe your workspace for us?

 I work in my beautiful office, which is lined with hundreds of books, has a fireplace and looks out over my gorgeous garden. My dog Rosie keeps me company, sleeping in front of the fire. It is a gorgeous place to work.

 10. If you were stranded on a desert island, who (apart from your family) would you take and why?

My book club girls. I have a group of gorgeous friends who have been meeting every few weeks for over 16 years. We read books and get together to chat about them. But mostly we laugh, share our problems, talk about our lives and eat yummy food. We get together to walk our dogs, celebrate our kids, and have had wonderful holidays together.  With those friends by my side, I think we could solve any problem in the world and have lots of fun and laughs along the way.

Books 1 and 2 of Pippa's Island are available now. Also visit Visit The Kids' Bookshop to browse other books by Belinda Murrell. 

My Hogwarts House... 
Ravenclaw

My favourite character...
I’ve always loved Lupin, though I’m not really sure why. And Dumbledore, I have always wanted more of his story.

My favourite moment... 
When Mrs Weasley vanquishes Bellatrix Le’Strange.

Image source: Charactour.com

What Harry Potter means to me...
I came relatively late to the Harry Potter series, not starting until Goblet of Fire was released. The first two books are wonderful magical realism, but I think it is in Prisoner of Azkaban where the story really takes off. Rowling’s ability to intertwine storylines and her attention to detail is what I admire most and what makes the series stand out for me. She is extremely clever. I rarely re-read books but have read the series, back to back, a couple of times and every time I find new details that add to the story. But most of all, it was the look of joy on my 5-year-old’s face when he realised that Harry Potter “was for kids too”, he has seen the books being read so many times in our house that he thought they were only for grown ups. Neither of us can wait until he is old enough for us to be able to share them together and I’m sure this will open up a whole new level of enjoyment.

TEGAN

My Hogwarts House... 
Hufflepuff.  I was expecting Ravenclaw and secretly hoping for Gryffindor.  I’ve come to accept the truth, though.

My favourite character...
Just one?  Do Fred and George count as one? And Luna…

My favourite moment... 
Nothing tops Harry’s first introduction to the wizarding world for me.  The hope and amazement and Hagrid.  Maybe Hagrid is my favourite character.

Image source: Jim Kay, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone-Illustrated Edition (pottermore.com)

What Harry Potter means to me...
The series was a wonderful escape from the ordinary and something I experienced with my little sister.  I read the entire series aloud to her (firstly to get her into reading and then because it just became our thing).  I used to have a great Hagrid voice and I’m pretty sure I mispronounced Hermione for the first few books.

JACKIE

My Hogwarts House... 
Ravenclaw
(Funny that The Sorting Hat sorted each of my family members perfectly! You must try the Sorting Hat quiz.)

Image source: Jim Kay, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone-Illustrated Edition (jimkay.co.uk)

My favourite character...
Most definitely Professor Severus Snape, empathising with his complex, conflicted and perfectly flawed character. 

My favourite moment... 
J.K. Rowling had me from the start-of-term banquet, with the starry ceiling, unusual ghosts, floating candles, never-ending dishes of food, self-cleaning plates…and, of course, the Sorting Hat. No place has ever been quite as wondrous and lavishly indulgent for me as Harry’s first night in The Great Hall.

What Harry Potter means to me...
When I think of Harry Potter I naturally think of my first year of teaching and the students of 7G who introduced me to Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling. Wet behind the ears, but incredibly keen and dedicated, I immersed myself in the world of my students, which meant reading what they enjoyed reading in their spare time. Hooked immediately, we enjoyed planning our end of year excursion to the cinemas at Crown to watch the first film.

Now in its anniversary year, I am excited to revisit the series with my daughter. As a very young child, Cammy always sensed my love for Harry Potter and often badgered me to read it to her. Seeming far enough in the future, and without giving it much thought, I told her we could begin the series when she was in Grade 2- not realising, at the time, that her Grade 2 year would coincide with an anniversary milestone. We’ve completed the Sorting Hat quiz and Cammy, much to her excitement, was sorted into Gryffindor. She’ll be receiving a Harry Potter- Gryffindor Edition to celebrate her 8^thbirthday next month…and our new reading adventure will begin.

 Taking just one story path is never satisfying for the reader, making them highly addictive. We were keen to ask George a little more about how he sets about writing these, and we encourage your students or children to have a go at writing one on their own!

 How did the YOU CHOOSE SERIES come about?

I loved the original Choose Your Own Adventure novels back in the 1980s. I was a little bit obsessed with them at the time. Now, as an author, I remembered how much fun they were to read… and I wanted to recapture the experience I had had and let today’s kids discover the fun of an interactive book. So I pitched the idea to my publisher.

 I love that with these books, I can put the reader into the story. I love that readers will be able to make choices along the way – choices that will affect the outcome of the story.

 And you know what? These books are just as much fun to write as they are to read!

 What do you find most satisfying about writing for young readers?

Getting feedback from readers. Kids are a lot more honest with their opinions than adults. They’ll tell you what they like. They’ll tell you what they dislike. They’ll tell you what they want in future books. And I take that all on board.

 Many of the latter books in the series are based on the feedback I’ve been given by readers. So many kids were asking me for a sports themed YOU CHOOSE book and one about video games, so I wrote Super Sports Spectacular and Trapped in the Games Grid. I met one boy at a school festival who very earnestly said to me: “You know, your books would be a whole lot better if they had fart jokes in them.” Consequently, there is an entire storyline about farting in Super Sports Spectacular.

 How do you map out the possibilities for where the story could go?

I use a magnetic whiteboard. I write plot points onto individual cards, which I then stick up on the whiteboard. Then I move them around and draw lots of arrows until it all starts to make sense.

 This whiteboard is a pretty accurate representation of the inner workings of my mind.

I know this is a standard kind of question but obviously there is no shortage of ideas…. Where do the ideas come from?!

Ideas are everywhere. They are in the things that I do, the things that I see and the people that I meet. It’s a matter of taking these everyday things and asking myself… What if? The scary stories tend to come from the things that I am afraid of. Creepy Crawly Chaos is a result of my fear of spiders, while Night of the Creepy Carnival came about because I think that clowns are kind of TERRIFYING! But the things that I like also inspire my stories. I’m a bit of a sci-fi fan and I love the idea of giant robots stomping on city buildings – so I did City of Robots just so I could write that scene.

My BIG pop-culture obsession is Doctor Who. I’ve been a fan since I was 10 years old. That series has inspired many individual scenes in the YOU CHOOSE books. And, in fact, there is a hidden Doctor Who reference in every book.

Tell us about the most exciting aspect of being a writer?

I just love the fact that for my job, every day, I get to make stuff up. That is fun and exciting. And I wouldn’t swap it for any other job in the world.

Completely smitten by this book with a heart-warming message of love and protection, we were keen to interviewed author, Davina Bell, on the inspiration behind the book. I’m sure you’ll agree that Davina Bell is a thoughtful and reflective author to look out for when searching for books to share with your family.

Who do you hope will read this book?

Donald Trump. Obama. And everyone who is looking for another way to express the depth of their love to a child.

What inspired the story?

The concept of a love umbrella came from a family holiday beach story a few years ago. My dad insisted on bringing my grandma’s enormous 1970s yellow tassled beach umbrella to a Christmas Day swim, against everyone’s advice. It weighed as much as a small bulldozer and had no pole to stick in the sand. A sea breeze picked it up and hurled it into the ocean, practically impaling some innocent body surfers. My sweet English four-year-old cousin looked out at the umbrella and up at me, and said, ‘Do you cherish that umbrella? Because I think it might be gone.’ It was such a sweet and serious and profound thing to say, and when I looked down at him, I had a feeling that I loved him so much, I wanted to protect him always. I think that was the moment when love and umbrellas fused in my mind. The rhythm and structure came later, when I was riding the subway in New York on a sunny day. I had that feeling of endless possibility that New York can give you, and my heart felt full, and the words just appeared in my mind, bumping along to the the rhythm of the L-Train.

Where did the metaphor of the love umbrella come from? Were other metaphors considered at all?

The text arrived so fully formed that I didn’t really consider anything else, and the metaphor wasn’t really conscious. Some books you slave over for ages, pondering the symbolism and reworking the language, but this one arrived like a gift, whole.

How universal is Under the Love Umbrella?

The illustrator, Allison Colpoys, and I based the four main characters on children we met on our last book tour, and then had great fun imagining the home lives of those kids. As a result, the book features children of different nationalities and situations – a boy who’s really into science , who has bright blue glasses and two mums; a girl with Asian heritage who loves floral prints and lives with her single dad; a little guy who goes everywhere with his doll and is from a big Indian family; and a scruffy, outdoorsy girl who clearly hates brushing her hair and is cared for by her grandmother. Our hope is that this broad spectrum of home situations will convey the universality of the message: that wherever children roam in the big, wild world, whatever their situation, they are loved by someone at every moment of every day. I love the idea that children might find some aspect of themselves in the pages.

Your books tackle big emotions that children experience. Is this an intentional theme in your writing?

My books with Allison are definitely what we call my emo books! And I think that’s because she and I are both quite sensitive people who feel emotions keenly, and want to offer comfort and understanding to children who might be similar. And for children who don’t experience the world in that way, I feel it’s helpful to understand that there are those who do.

For so long, I thought that being a sensitive person was a weakness, and that being shy was a failing. It took me well into adulthood to understand that introversion wasn’t a weakness, but rather just a different way to be in the world. So I think I’m writing to kids who might be similar to my childhood self, trying to offer the assurance that feeling these big emotions doesn’t mean you are ‘wrong’. More than anything, I want my books to say to kids, You are not alone. You are perfect just as you are.

Do you experience feelings of loneliness and/or anxiety yourself?

Is there anyone who doesn’t?!

Do you have a favourite element of the book, a favourite page or illustration?

Every time I read the book again, another aspect of Allison’s ingenious illustrations jumps out at me, and I wonder at her talent anew. At the moment, my favourite is the page where Joe is moving house. The moving truck is outside, and the rest of his family are rushing up to the front door, but Joe is just standing there, statue-still amidst all the flurry. His body language says so much about his internal landscape in such an understated way. It jabs at my heart every time!

The colours in this book are striking. Is there any symbolism behind the chosen palette?

Allison’s background is in book design, and her sense of colour is unfathomable. We wanted the book to feel warm and comforting but also fresh, and I think that’s why she gravitated towards the bright neon orange and also the soft mauves and rich purples. When I describe it, it sounds like a total mash-up that shouldn’t work at all, but together, it just sings. Truly, she is a colour genius!

Describe your own love umbrella.

I have always been a bit obsessed with the colour wheel, so I think it would be like a giant colour wheel. And the handle (wooden) would definitely have that umbrella-y curve at the end. None of this straight up and down nonsense!

Do you know how many umbrellas appear in the book?

Sure do! (I think?!?)

What’s next for you (i.e. any upcoming books)?

In 2018, I have a new series of Junior Fiction coming out about a character called Lemonade Jones, which is illustrated by the immensely talented Karen Blair. I also have a picture book illustrated by the one-and-only Freya Blackwood, which I co-wrote with Jane Godwin, about babies – delicious! And Allison and I will be launching another book together, which we’ve just started working on. We’re in my favourite phase, scribbling lots of manic notes on a tiny little dummy book, while high-fiving each other a lot and feeling ridiculously lucky to have the chance to do what we do together.

We’ve always been keen to meet each of the new characters in Anna’s world, especially since Anna created our very own Batboy. Anna’s characters always possess heart and conviction, and little Mae is no exception. Her love for the natural world is truly infectious.

When guests arrived at the beautiful Glasshaus Nursery venue, they were immersed in Mae’s world; one in which she cultivates a little natural oasis amidst the concrete jungle that is her new home.

Glasshaus Nursery- nestled in the back streets of Cremorne where greenery is lush and beautiful, and perfumes are strong- is just as we might imagine Mae’s leafy forest in the city to be. 

It really was the perfect venue in which to introduce Florette, meaning ‘little flower’ in French, to the world. Guests certainly felt invigorated in 'Florette’s Garden'.

Testament to the admiration people have for Anna’s work, the launch was well attended by family, friends, colleagues and literary fans- both young and old. Friend and publisher, Jane Godwin, spoke highlky of Anna's dedication.

The celebrations went well into the evening, as Anna patiently and attentively signed books for hundreds of guests who also treated themselves to exclusive prints and library bags handmade by Anna with fabric featuring the endpapers of the Florette.

‘If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.’― Rudyard Kipling.

I love this quote. It reminds me of the importance of sharing stories – especially the wonderful tales from the past. I’m a history hunter. I enjoy searching for lost explorers and glittering treasure, delving into mysteries and solving famous cold cases – and most of all, I love sharing the amazing stories that I find.

In my new History Mysteries series, I have selected some of the wildest, coolest stories from Australian history to intrigue and inspire curious young readers. To me, writing about the past is like time travelling. I enjoy delving into stories that have been lost or forgotten, and I often find inspiration in little known slices of history.

The creative process of reconstructing journeys, quests and challenges of curious characters like Diamond Jack and Ludwig Leichhardt can be sparked by an object or an image.

The spark to write Diamond Jack came from a visit to the Broome Historical Museum. I was curious about the town’s wartime history and intrigued by one particular photograph. It showed five men beside a bullet-riddled aircraft. They’d been sent on a mission to locate a missing treasure. One of the men in the photo was Diamond Jack. I began collecting information about him from libraries and archives.

In March 1942, an allied aircraft was preparing for a desperate midnight escape from Java, taking refugees to safety in Broome, West Australia. Just before take-off, the pilot was entrusted with a mysterious, wax-sealed package. When the plane was shot down by the enemy and crash landed on the Kimberley coast, the package was forgotten - until a beachcomber stumbled across the find of a lifetime.

To ‘colour in’ the past, I begin by researching primary sources – the original documents – the building blocks for everything we know about the story. I find further inspiration in secondary sources - the writings of other authors who have shared my curiosity for the topic. I’ve included some of the research material I discovered in each History Mystery book for readers to examine – maps to interpret, clues to unravel, documents, photos, and illustrations.

The goal of all this research isn't just to gather documents and collect information. The goal is to tell a ripping yarn about what happened, how and why. On the surface, the story of Diamond Jack is a remarkable wartime adventure and a tale of survival against the odds. Beneath the surface, it is an incredible true story of an endearing character, forced to confront the consequences of an amazing discovery.

The mysterious disappearance of Ludwig Leichhardt is one of Australia’s greatest unsolved mysteries and the inspiration for The Lost Explorer.In 1848, the famous explorer set out on an epic journey. His aim was to cross Australia from east to west. He never reached his destination and no one from his expedition was ever seen again.

This baffling history mystery has always fascinated me. Some time ago, I stumbled upon an article about a gold prospector and a teenage boy who inherited a small relic, said to have once belonged to the explorer. I began researching – brushing away layers of time. The discovery of the relic was a story within a story and a possible clue to the mystery.

My intention in writing The Lost Explorer was to encourage an understanding and appreciation of the sacrifice made by explorers like Ludwig Leichhardt, who went forth into the unknown at a time when Australia’s interior was uncharted by Europeans.

I hope the stories I’ve selected connect readers to characters and situations so that the past lives and breathes. My aim is talking that these History Mysteries will become a springboard for deeper study and learning.

BOOKS BY MARK GREENWOOD

DIAMOND JACK and THE LOST EXPLORER are published by Penguin Random House

Visit The Kids' Bookshop to view other books by Mark Greenwood.

FURTHER RESOURCES:

a) Teachers' Notes are available at www.markgreenwood.com.au

b) Throughout 2017, Mark will be touring schools, libraries and festivals to talk about History Mysteries. Follow Mark’s adventures on:

http://www.markgreenwood.com.au
http://www.facebook.com/markgreenwoodauthor
http://www.instagram.com/markgreenwoodauthor

While teachers have diagnostic tests available to help them find books that meet a child’s reading level, finding books that engage both avid and reluctant readers continues to be a challenge for many parents and teachers.

We believe there are five factors to consider when helping your child to find a book that is right for them. These factors inform the recommendations we provide to parents and teachers who visit our store and are also embedded in our book search filter.

Ask yourself the following questions when trying to find, or help your child find, the right book for them:

1.       What books are appropriate for my child’s age?

Age recommendations by publishers and bookstores usually hit the mark with reader capability, but they also ensure that books are developmentally appropriate and that the thematic content is appropriate and relevant for children at each life stage. For example:

- Cloth and board books are suitable for babies who like to chew on books.

- Short, engaging texts that feature rhyme, repetition and rhythm are suitable for toddlers and pre-schoolers, along with books that encourage interactivity.

- Early chapter books with minimal text, repetitive vocabulary, large font and illustrations are suitable for children who are beginning to read.

-YA fiction might refer to themes of romance, drugs, alcohol and sex making it unsuitable for children under the age 16,  despite their reading capability.

 2.       What is my child interested in and what captures their attention?

Tap into your child’s interests when trying to find the right book for them. This can be done by searching for specific text types or for books on specific themes. You can search for books from over 50 themes in The Kids' Bookshop to help you find a book for your child that features people, places or topics that are of special interest to them.

In addition to themes that interest your child, consider your child’s natural learning style to help find a specific text type that will truly engage them. For example:

 - Visual/Spatial learners might be interested in illustrated texts, graphic novels or books with maps and opportunities to draw alongside the story.

- Auditory/Musical learners might engage with books with sound, music or narration.

- Logical/Mathematical learners might find non-fiction and puzzle books interesting.

- Verbal/Linguistic learners might be interested in books that play with language or in verse novels, poetry, screen plays or theatre scripts.

- Physical/Kinesthetic learners will likely engage with activity books or books with texture. They might also be interested in procedure books or books with experiments.

- Social/Interpersonal learners might find memoirs and biographies interesting or fiction that portrays the perceptions of multiple characters. They might also enjoy books that they can read collaboratively with others such as screen plays and theatre scripts.

- Naturalistic learners might enjoy non-fiction texts.

 3.       How difficult is the text?

When encouraging children to read for pleasure, the act of reading should not be a difficult task. We firmly believe, when it comes to recreational reading, that it is much more beneficial for a child to be reading a book that is ‘too easy’ rather than to challenge a child and risk dampening their enthusiasm for reading.

Listen to your child read one page of a book; It is usually a good indication that the book is too difficult for your child if there are more than five words on a page that stump them. 

 4.       Have I given my child some choice?

Free choice can be a very powerful tool. Of course, you should monitor reading material for suitability, but otherwise allow your child to choose what to read in their free time.

 5.       What are other people reading?

Take notice of what other people are reading and enjoying, including what is popular. Start by asking your own friends what their children are reading, then branch out to the local and online community for more ideas. Chat to:

- Friends

- School teachers and librarians

- The staff at The Kids’ Bookshop (and what are we recommending in our newsletters)

- Book reviews and recommendations in the print media and book blogs

- Book clubs and communities (e.g. Good Reads)

The year was 2007 … another lovely day in the Surry Hills Penguin office, followed by another lovely day at the Camberwell Penguin office in Melbourne.

You see, I’m one of those bi-city people … since 2004 I have lived in Sydney and headed up the Penguin Children’s Publishing team that, back then, primarily operated out of Melbourne.

Why the Laura Harris work history?  Because it meant a lot of my time was spent on plane trips between the two cites – I came to know it as quiet time and a chance to read a magazine or two, or an engrossing manuscript … I should use the time for manuscript reading really, but I like the bubble of frivolity that  plane trips gives me as well.

One day I was flicking through an industry magazine – US Publishers Weekly- (not Who Weekly on that occasion)  - and there was this tiny little corner spot about an on-line Diary being acquired by a publishing house. Happens all the time but there was something very familiar about it all …

You see, when Jeff Kinney was working as a game developer for educational publisher Pearson, he started publishing daily entries from Greg Heffley’s fictional diary on Pearson’s Fun Brain website. That was back in 2004. Penguin was part of the Pearson Group then and one of our very gifted editors had alerted me to that part of the Pearson website … many of us were reading those entries and laughing out loud …they were hilarious and subversive and truthful and had wonderful drawings accompanying each days event - and we weren’t the only ones hooked.

With comical sketches and a light-hearted tone, Kinney found an enthusiastic audience; by the end of that first year, the site had 12 million unique visitors. Within a year-and-a-half, the figure reached 20 million.

So, on that fateful flight to Melbourne that little piece made me smile –and then it made me send an email. You see, it was US Publisher Abrams who were signing Jeff and Wimpy Kid and collating the pieces into a book – why hadn’t I thought about that instead of reading and chuckling on-line? Technically we worked for the same company – he was in my inter-company email address book, so I could have gone straight to him, but I didn’t … but I did the next best thing.

I went directly to Abrams and shared our enthusiasm for Greg and Wimpy and our familiarity and I’m sure that helped secure us the deal. We were very early adopters and fans of Wimpy Kid and Jeff responded to that.

And once I saw the first book in pages, all put together, I knew something special was about to happen. Did I know they’d sell millions of copies all over the world and we’d be up to Book 11, Double Down now? Hell no, no idea, but I knew both The Dairy of a Wimpy Kid and Roderick Rules (Book 2), which we released together in early 2008, would entertain and amuse and speak directly to all sorts of children we knew. And that was good enough reason to want to publish these books.  They were comic but also real. Family, as well as friends were part of Greg’s world.

We are up to Book 11, Double Down now and have a three book deal in place going forward, and have sold over 3 million copies in Australia so far – not too shabby.

And while I have finally grown out of reading Who Weekly, I still flick through the tiny pieces at the bottom of the page in Publishers Weekly.

Red, the narrator, is the son of Mary Read, owner of The Smuggler’s Curse Hotel which sits high on the cliff overlooking Roebuck Bay in Broome. I borrowed her name from a famous 18th century female pirate of the Caribbean, as well as Red’s name from the pirate, Red Rackham. The other main character, as far as I’m concerned, is a beautiful Baltimore Clipper sailing ship called The Black Dragon owned by Captain Bowen.   

On holiday a few years ago, I stayed in a lighthouse on the southern tip of the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland, where I discovered I was in the exact room where Robert Louis Stevenson had written Treasure Island, my favourite book as a kid. Later that night, imaging to the ghost of RLS looking over my shoulder, I tried to write my own pirate story set in 1810, but it quickly evolved into a smugglers’ tale. Later on, I moved the story up to 1895 and reset the plot in Broome and South-East Asia.

The plot is grounded in real history, as are all the places mentioned such as Broome, Singapore, Sumatra, Aceh, Cossack, Fremantle and Albany. There was a fierce and bloody war raging between the colonial Dutch and the Sumatran resistance fighters at the time, Chinese and  Malay pirates roamed wild and Broome was a hotbed for smuggling pearls and opium. Into this late part of the 19^th century,  I added my characters and gave them perilous adventures. There are possibly a few more explosions and guns firing than in the real Broome at that time.

Reading a lot about Broome and the pearling days, I had no idea smuggling was so rife in the colony. Among all the other contraband goods, opium was hidden in banana boxes from Singapore and pearls smuggled out in payment.

To absorb the atmosphere and imagine scenes, I visited Broome, Singapore, and the places in South-East Asia where I set the action in the book, including treking to a longhouse in Sumatra where the recent descendants of head-hunters still have skulls hanging from fishing nets in their ceilings. That was a shock. Luckily, they ceased collecting them about 1948.  

I also discovered the little-known Aceh Independence War and learned about Ibu Purbu, the female leader of the Sumatran resistance, who continued the war against the Dutch invaders for almost forty years. When her father and husband were captured and executed, she immediately took over as leader and led a savage revolt where over five thousand Dutch soldiers were killed. She is now a national hero in Indonesia, with her picture on the 10,000 rupiah note. Having discovered her story, and being impressed with her courage, I couldn’t resist including her as a character in the book. 

Although the story begins in Broome, it quickly moves to South East Asia, where the tropical feel of the heat, the humidity, the vivid colours, the huge tides and unfamiliar culture all impact on Red and the crew of The Black Dragon. The ongoing fate of Red, the young hero, remains, however, the main focus as we see him fighting bravely, sometimes against impossible odds, and being forced to grow up very quickly indeed.

I hope it is an exciting yarn. I had a lot of fun researching the history and locations, but my most enjoyable experience was imagining the perils Red, Captain Black Bowen and the rest of the crew encounter. I wanted the settings, the seamanship, atmosphere and life on board the Dragon to be as realistic and as authentic as I could make them. I learned how to haul in a jib, handle a ship’s wheel, read a compass, shoot a blowpipe, fire a musket and load a cannon, all essential skills for a smuggler.

Recently, I made a visit to Cocos Islands District High School as Writer-in-Residence, where the school kids provided me loads of fabulous ideas for an exciting story about The Black Dragon being shipwrecked off their island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They want a sequel to The Smuggler’s Curse, so I had better start thinking about it.

We’re excited to have her here to chat about her latest and much anticipated book for pre-teen girls, Girl Stuff 8-12.  

TKBS: Girl Stuff has become a bible for teen girls over the last few years. When did you decide there needed to be a ‘pre-teen’ edition for girls?

KC: I would have loved the first book - Girl Stuff-Your Full on Guide to the Teen Years - to cover ages all the way from 8 to 18, but in the end it wasn't possible. Some parents still give that book to younger girls, and that's fine, but it made sense to do a special one for younger girls. That way, I can tell them all about first periods, and body changes, and friends and bullies, but leave out stuff they don't need to know yet, like alcohol and drugs and boyfriends and girlfriends.

A special edition for younger girls was suggested by a friend who works in a bookshop and said parents often ask for one. I still update the big sister, Girl Stuff for teens, regularly to make sure they're getting all the latest medical or online info. 

So many girls are now getting the changes of puberty as young as 8, and that's totally normal for modern girls, even though older people sometimes think it's early. It's normal to get your first period any time between about 8 and 16, so it's great to know what to expect before it happens. And then there’s all the other stuff we need help with - snappy, cool things to say to mean comments; what to do when we feel strong emotions; what we need to know about having a phone; or how to react to getting body hair… all sorts of new things.

TKBS: You have very successfully ‘unpacked’ some important ‘stuff’ without overloading the book with too much information. There isn’t not too much text, there are plenty of cartoons/illustrations and your usual dose of humour is there; Was it hard to get the balance of (too much vs not enough) information right?

KC: What I love about writing books is that, especially, when you get closer to publishing, you stop being this loner in your pyjamas at home and start working in a team of clever people: a publisher, an editor, a book designer, a publicist. So, in terms of the words, I worked with editor, Rachel Scully, and we talked early in the process about what to leave out, and needing to rewrite for the younger audience, what they needed to know, what we could leave out. Girls don't need to be 'talked down to', they're smart, so I didn't change my writing style much at all, just rewrote with them in mind. At first I disagreed (cheerfully!) with Rachel about whether to include the stuff about how to get on well with your family, but in the end, she persuaded me and I could see she was right. 

In terms of the look of the book, we knew we could only have one 'spot colour' as well as black words on the pages - in Girl Stuff for older readers it's a sophisticated non-Barbie hot pink. We quickly decided on aqua as a colour that's cheery and that lots of younger girls like. And I had worked with book designer, Adam Lazczyk, on the Girl Stuff book for teenagers - he won an award for that, so he already had a good feel for the format, which includes different headings (based on my hand drawn lettering), quotes on 'Post it' notes, lots of easy lists, the book text, some useful info corralled into boxes, and the cartoons. 

For me it's so important to have the cartoons; They're fun, and they're a big part of showing that being a girl doesn't have to be scary or weird once you know what's going on and how to deal with it. Once you know the stuff in Girl Stuff 8-12 you can just concentrate on having fun with life. 

The overall feel we wanted was a friendly, light book you could slip under your pillow. I also wanted to include the designer pages at the back where girls could fill in their own heroines, lists of favourite things, day dreams, adventures, etc. 

TKBS: We imagine there is a LOT of research undertaken – can you talk us through what happens before you even started writing the book?

KC: Ha! That story is here: https://penguin.com.au/books/girl-stuff-812-9780143573999/article/1003-kaz-research

TKBS: We love that you have looked at not just the physical ‘stuff’ but the emotional and well-being issues too (e.g. Friendship, Family, Bullying etc.).  They are issues that are all connected but did you find they were particularly prevalent within this age-group?

KC: For sure. Girls aged 8-12 are often finding friendships and friendship groups difficult to understand and they want to learn how to deal with meanness or even issues like friends drifting apart. It's important that girls know their feelings are okay, that they are feelings shared by lots of people even if nobody else is talking about, and there are practical ways to feel better.

Adults forget that when you're a kid you still have lots to learn, and if nobody helps you, it takes longer to learn how to deal with everything, and life isn't as much fun because you're trying to guess your way through stuff. Girls this age want to be reassured, and informed about emotions and moods as well as practical things, and I love sharing info about that. 

TKBS: The book is a very useful resource for parents too – helping them with their approach to talking to their pre-teens about what they will potentially go through. Was this your intention as much as providing young girls with a fab resource?

I did include a couple of bits that parents should read - one's a message about how they must take bullying seriously and one's a list of what to know and do and what age your kids should be before you give them a phone. Parents often read the book before they give it to their daughter, and say this helps them heaps in knowing what's ahead and what girls need to know. But Girl Stuff 8-12 is written FOR girls to read ABOUT being a girl, and it's totally for them.

I do want parents to know they can trust me when I give info to their daughter; and that parents do get to decide whether their kids are at the mercy of big advertisers for info and what other kids say or show them on their phones, or whether their kids get info that has been checked with age-appropriate experts and is delivered by someone, in this case me, with their best interests at heart. 

TKBS: Is there anything else you’d like to add Kaz?

KC: My favourite responses to the book so far are the parents who say their girls take the book and then go into their rooms or up a tree and read it straight through, sometimes looking serious, sometimes chuckling away. 

I loved hearing about the girl who said 'Even if I get one bosom bigger than the other one, Kaz says that's okay'.  

‘I don’t know what to write.’

‘My writing is not good enough.’

‘I don’t know how to start.'

There are many reasons that contribute to children feeling overwhelmed when it comes to writing, especially creative writing. But, getting kids to put pen to paper doesn’t have to be a hard task. In fact, by following a few simple tips, kids can soon learn that creative writing is fun:

1. -          Keep writing tasks simple; don’t ask too much of children.
2. -          Less thinking/More writing: Encourage kids to write down every thought that comes to mind regardless of         relevance or quality (they can review and edit later).
3. -          Encourage mistakes and imperfect handwriting.
4. -          Think outside the square: Find different ways to record stories (E.g.  audio, video, illustrations)
5. -          Find inspiration everywhere. Every experience and thing around you can become an idea for writing. 
6. -          Use prompts to get kids started (see below for prompt ideas)

5 PROMPTS TO HELP CHILDREN GENERATE IDEAS FOR WRITING

1. Begin with tactile play

Providing children with a range of play props develops imitation, imagination and can lead to some spontaneous storytelling. Stories can be recorded using audio or video equipment, by scribing for children or by asking them to write a recount of their play.

Some play props might include story stones, puppets, toys, felt and magnet boards.

2. Use books as resources

There are wonderful books available that provide children with great visual prompts and questions, helping to scaffold and inspire stories. You can find some under our ACTIVITY category.

Likewise, favourite books can be used as mentor texts, by asking child to imitate the text structure or language used in a favourite favourite book to create writing of their own.

3. Be inspired by the everyday

Use props for storytelling: Fill a bag, basket or box with a range of items and invite your child to use the items as props in a story. Children can use all or just a selection of items from the box, depending on how many you placed there. (Items might include toys, pieces of nature, household items, souvenirs, school supplies, clothing, food packaging, and photos etc.)

Keep a written or visual journal: Arm your child with a journal or a camera and encourage them to record anything that captures their interest (e.g. a billboard, a man asking for directions, a piece of artwork, a duck crossing the road or a leaf floating down a creek etc.). Help them to take notes about what they see or observe (or take a photo to capture the moment or inspiration) while simply exploring your neighbourhood, walking to school or undertaking a special adventure. These tidbits of information become wonderful stimuli for writing. It’s precisely how Picture Book of the Year 2016, Mr Huff, began.

Lost and Found Items: Invite your child to choose an item from a ‘lost and found’ box or from an Op shop and build a story using imaginary responses to questions such as:

1. - Who does the item belong to?
2. - When did they get it?
3. - What did they use it for?
4. - Where were they when they lost it?
5. - How did they lose it? 

4. Write letters

Writing cards and letters to family, friends, and even imaginary or magical characters such as fairies or rag dolls is a great way to get kids writing because for many children letters seem less formal. Children take a keen interest in others and become eager to hear back from their pen pals.

5. Provide kids with a starting point

Sentence Starters: Provide children with a starting sentence and ask them to continue the story.

Prompt cards: A prompt card gives a child a starting point for writing. It could be as simple as a word or a single theme, or they can be more specific by providing children with a setting, a character, a problem, a scenario or a question to answer. E.g.:

1. - Sleep
2. - Harmony
3. - Fairy Penguin
4. - What would you do if you were locked in a toy store all night?
5. - Where would you go on a magic carpet ride?
6. - What steps would you take to plan a birthday party?

At the core of preparing for any transition, including the starting of school, is to seek answers to what seems foreign or unknown.

TKBS team has collated 10 top tips for preparing for school and helping children become familiar with what lies ahead.

1. Read relevant books

Reading books can be a great way to help children understand that they are not alone in the way they feel. Picture books give children relatable characters to empathise with. They often provide constructive coping strategies in the storylines, and give children an accurate idea of what to expect and look forward to when they start school.

Browse our collection of 'STARTING SCHOOL' books.  

2. Visit the school for a walk or play in the school grounds

School can be such an overwhelming space for children, and some worry that they might get lost. Some schools are locked during weekends and holidays, but if you can access the grounds of your child’s school, it is a great opportunity to get accustomed to the grounds. Taking a walk or having a play on the equipment can help it become a place of familiarity and enjoyment for children.

3. Practise walking (or travelling the route) to school

If your child’s school is locked up after hours, you could simply take a trip to the school, to give your child an idea of where the school is in relation to your home and familiarise them with the daily route.

4. Play school

There are many new routines and procedures for children to learn when they start school. Some children worry that they will not remember them all.  Set up a play school and invite your child to role play the routines and elements associated with school (e.g. daily schedule, listening to a story, sitting at a desk, packing up, snack time, walking to the library etc.)

5. Start your morning routines early

One of the biggest changes for children can be the morning routine, and having to get ready within a limited time frame. Changes in routine can be difficult for children, so you don’t want to bombard them with a new routine on the first day of school. It is best to start the new morning routine a few weeks before school starts. Prompt cards or charts can help children develop some level of independence, but having tasks to complete can also distract them from their worries in the morning.

6. Write to your teacher and classmates

Not knowing anyone or worrying whether they will make friends are common worries for children starting school. Writing a letter, card or drawing a picture for their teacher and classmates can be a great way for anxious children to feel like they are already connecting with their teacher and classmates, even before school has started. Delivering the letters can be a great introduction for nervous or anxious children too, and will make other classmates feel quite special.

7. Encourage your child to practise writing their name.

a) They could help you label their school items

b) They could check the letter box daily, sorting through the family’s mail and sifting out anything addressed to them

c) They could write their names on Christmas cards to family and friends.

d) They could write postcards to new classmates and their teacher

e) They could look for their name in books

8. Provide opportunities for your child to practise new skills

Some children worry that they won’t be able to complete tasks without their parent’s help, such as tying shoe laces or opening new lunch boxes. While the teacher will be there to help, you can help your child develop confidence by giving them the opportunity to practise these tasks on their own during the holidays. What a great excuse for a picnic at the beach!

9. Provide your child with a variety of daily experiences

Enjoying experiences with your children helps to create beautiful family memories, but these experiences will come in handy when your child starts school. They will give your child something to talk about, write about and will help them take part in classroom discussions and activities.

As your child learns to read, he or she will draw on these experiences to help them make meaning of the stories they read.

10. Start a journal 

Help your child start a journal before they start school, which they can use (with your help) to record their thoughts, feelings and worries as well as their school adventures and successes. Take a look at this School Adventures Kit as an example. 

Book Week 2016 is almost upon us. Are you ready?

The Kids’ Bookshop team has collated a list of 10 simple and fun ideas to help you incorporate Australia! Story Country into your school or home celebrations:

1. Read Australian stories

We have a huge collection of Australian books in our store, featuring stories written by Australians, for Australians and set in Australia.

2. Read or listen to Indigenous stories or invite an Indigenous storyteller to your school.

3. Use picture books to create Spine Poems about Australia 

4. Make Australian-themed bookmarks.

Paper bookmarks are common and easy to make, but we've been experimenting to create some absolutely 'charming' place-holders for our favourite Australian books. Simply add charms to the end of some braided thread. 

5. Conduct an Australian Book Scavenger Hunt

Jackie has created a template to make it easy for you to download, print and use without any fuss. Just click on the image below. 

6. Host a Book Week Parade

Dress up as your favourite Australian book character. Search our store for ideas.

7. Invite parents and grandparents to share their stories with the class

Or ask them to read their favourite Australian picture book.

8. Set up an Australia-themed reading corner

...We’re thinking flags, banana-lounges, Australian animal plush toys, towels, Akubras…

9. Host an Australian Book Swap

Serve food from Australian picture books such as Possum Magic and encourage guests to bring and swap Australian books at the party.

10. Have fun exploring the CBCA shortlisted or winning books for 2016

We’ve shared some more ideas below. All 2016 CBCA shortlisted books are available in our store.

My Dog Bigsy

- Set up an invitation for children to play or retell the story of My Dog Bigsy. You might include toy farm animals, a variety of fabrics, fences, wood discs and playdough.

- Make a list of the verbs used in the story, and use these to organise a Farm Relay Tournament. Instead of simple running relays, children must also participate in races by completing some of the actions from the story e.g. barking races, bouncing races, flying races etc.

Piranhas Don’t Eat Bananas

- Ask children to write messages on bananas for friends using toothpicks

- Design and build a food chute that sorts types of food (i.e. food groups)

Perfect

- Write a Recipe for a Perfect Day

- —Create a ‘Perfect Day’ Bucket List

The Cow Tripped Over the Moon

- Re-write your own back story for another classic nursery rhyme

- Make and test cow-themed rockets to see whose can fly the highest.

Mr Huff

- —Create an Emotions Calendar to show and record your emotions each day.

- —‘Cloudy with a chance of rain’- Write and present a weather report that depicts your mood.

Ollie and the Wind

- Make a set of wind chimes

- Conduct an experiment to create and test the effect of wind in the classroom (e.g. from a fan) on various objects (e.g. feather, paper, pencil t-shirt, book etc.)

Suri’s Wall

- Mark heights of each student on a wall

- Create a school wall of bricks that feature wishes or hopes for the world.

One Step at a Time

- Create your own linoleum print

- —Conduct class debates on the topics of landmines, logging and animal cruelty

Ride Ricardo, Ride!

- Pull apart, explore and rebuild a working machine

- Create a visual mural to show the uses and impacts of bikes to people all over the world.

Flight

- Plot the events of the journey on a timeline.

- Can you identify more than one refugee story in this book? Research the history of refugees to Australia over time.

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

- —Find and listen to an audio clip of the original song created by Eric Bogle.

- Use the lyrics and Bruce Whatley’s illustrations to write a Senses Poem that shows what young soldiers experienced at Gallipoli in 1915.  

My Dead Bunny

- Create and use shadow puppets to re-tell the story with music and sound effects.

- Explore the features of electrical devices and build your own electricity circuits using switches, batteries and light bulbs.  

Let us know how you will be celebrating Book Week! 

So when I started to write TRTW, I was determined to create a book that engaged young readers, both as a page turner and as a text that challenged their world view. Hence, the story romps along at a fast pace, told through the eyes of sixteen year old Finn Morrison, a boy surviving on his own in a quarantined coastal town after a massive virus wipes out his community, including his parents. Finn hunts and fishes to stay alive, trading food with Ray, an old farmer living out of town. But his world is turned upside down when Rose, an escaped Siley – the name given to asylum seekers – is chased into town by the Wilders, who rule the country to the north.

The book addresses current and relevant issues, including relationships, identity, survival, violence and the treatment of asylum seekers. Adolescent readers can relate to Finn, Rose and her sister, Kas, because of the way they view their world and interact with each other. Their responses to the challenges thrown at them when all law and order has broken down are determined by their experiences – in Finn’s case, an idyllic childhood in a small town; in the girls' case, the harshness and cruelty of slavery and abuse.

In presenting these issues to a YA audience, you have to be careful as a writer not to be seen to be preaching or talking down to your readers. They need to be treated like adult readers – respected for their ability to make connections for themselves. While they may be young, they still have a developed sense of justice they want to see reflected in believable characters. While Finn is a character with a strong moral code that determines his actions, he is also an awkward adolescent boy, hamstrung by his inexperience with girls and a speech impediment that makes it difficult to communicate. Rose is older than him, suspicious and hostile towards the world that has only ever hurt her. Kas is the same age as Finn, less damaged than Rose but still angry at her treatment by adults who have seen Sileys only as a commodity to be bought and sold.

The dystopia created in TRTW is harsh and unforgiving but it really just provides the background to a character driven novel. Readers will be asking themselves the what if questions – how would I survive in this world and what would I be prepared to do to protect the people I love? It is a story that provides hope through the resilience of the young people who form its core. There are no wizards, no magical powers, no chosen one, just kids using their wits and strength to survive, and even thrive, in a hostile world. 

National Simultaneous Storytime (NSS) is an annual event hosted by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), which sees children in a range of settings enjoy the same book at the same time as part of the mammoth nation-wide event.

In 2016, NSS will take place at 11am on Wednesday 25 May.  Children are sure to be entertained with this year’s selected book, I Got This Hat by Jol and Kate Temple and illustrated by Jon Foye.

To help you make the most of your NSS storytime event, we’re curated a fun list of activities suitable for the home and the classroom; most can be adapted for a range of ages.

BOOK DETAILS                               

Author: Jol and Kate Temple

Illustrator: Jon Foye

Publisher: Harper Collins, 2013

Themes: Fashion, Health and Safety, Gifts, Souvenirs, Travel, Humour

ENGLISH (LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND LITERACY) BASED ACTIVITIES:

1) —How are full stops and capital letters used in this story? Compare this to other books and discuss whether the use of punctuation in I Got This Hat is common or uncommon. Discuss why the authors have chosen to use (or not use) the punctuation in this way.

—2) Find examples of rhyme and repetition in this story. What effect do they have on the story?

—3) Investigate the sentence structure used in this story.

-          Find the nouns, verbs and prepositions in each sentence. 

-          What do the sentences have in common?

-          Add adjectives to the sentences to make each one unique and interesting.

-          Change the sentences by using alternative verbs in place of ‘got’.

—4) Undertake some research to find and interpret a list of hat-related idioms used in everyday language.

—5) Use DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats to analyse and discuss the book (Some example questions are listed below, but you could devise your own).

-          White Hat (Facts): What facts do you have about the book (Title, author, illustrator, publisher, character, setting, theme)?

-          Blue Hat (Process):  Summarise the story. What do you think is the purpose of this book?

-          Yellow Hat (Benefits): What are the benefits of each hat in the book?

-          Black Hat (Cautions): What dangers can be avoided by wearing each of the hats shown in the book?

-          Red Hat (Feelings): What are your feelings, thoughts and opinions on the book?

-          Green Hat (Creativity): Use the information in the book to help you design a hat that represents multiculturalism in Australia.

—6) What assumptions can you make about the main character? What don’t you know about the character? Attempt to create a character profile for him.

—7) Search the media (magazines, newspapers, internet, news broadcasts, television) to find examples of hats. Cut and paste these images onto a graphic organiser according to their purpose, and discuss why they are reported in the media.

 8) Find, explore and compare others stories (and songs) that feature hats (See an example book list below)

—9) Create more pages for this book by writing sentences about other types of hats.

—10) Which hat from the book do you think is the best for wearing in Australia? Write a persuasive text to support your view.

—11) Write or tell a creative story using one of the hats from the book as stimulus.

—12) Devise debate topics around the theme of hats to debate with your classmates.

—13) Create a short story of your own based on a different type of collection you might have (e.g. stamps, erasers, feathers, postcards, shells).

CROSS-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES:

—1) Use a hat rack and a range of hats to create a hat-themed dress-up corner.  

—2) Play in the hat- themed dress-up corner, changing your actions, vocabulary and voice to suit the hat you are wearing.

—3) Collect a range of images featuring book characters who wear hats, and ask your friends to name the characters. Some examples include: The Mad Hatter, Peter Pan, Pinocchio, the Seven Dwarfs, Mary Poppins, Captain Hook, Cat in the Hat, Paddington, Madeleine, Where’s Wally? and Curious George.  

—4) Count how many hats appear in the illustrations of the story.

—5) Sort and classify the hats into groups.

—6) With as much detail as possible, describe for family, friends or classmates a special hat that belongs to a member of your family.

—7) On a map of the world, show the location of places mentioned in the book. Undertake a personal inquiry into one of these places.

—8) Explore the official I Got This Hat app.

—9) Design a hat and take part in a hat parade.

KEEP READING-MORE HAT-THEMED BOOKS:

Further develop your storytime session with more hat-themed stories. Some examples include:

Ollie and the Wind, by Ronojoy Ghosh (A CBCA  Shortlisted Book, 2016)

I Want My Hat Back, by Jon Klassen

This is Not my Hat, by Jon Klassen

Newspaper Hats, by Phil Cummings and Owen Swan

The Magic Hat, by Mem Fox

Keith the Cat with the Magic Hat, by Sue Hendra

Hooray for Hat, by Brian Won

The Queen’s Hat, by Steve Antony

I Could Wear That Hat, by Ben Sanders

I had a Favourite Hat, by Bony Ashburn

Aussie Easter Hat, by Colin Buchanan

Rosie’s Hat, by Julia Donaldson

Hairy Maclary’s Hat Tricks, by Lynley Dodd

Cat in the Hat, by Dr Seuss

FURTHER RESOURCES:

Explore the following links for more fun ideas and activities.

ALIA WEBSITE

THE LITTLE BIG BOOK CLUB

THE BOOK CHOOK

STORY BOX LIBRARY-View Anne Edmonds read this entertaining story

STORY BOX LIBRARY BLOG

HARMONY DAY WEBSITE

I’m a ranga. There’s no two ways about it.

I even own the word.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I like the word. Or any of the oh-so-creative nicknames for redheads like Fanta-pants, bloodnut or fire-crotch. Instead, I’m trying to ‘own’ the word. To take back its power. That’s a thing, right?

I’m the red sheep of my family. Neither of my parents are redheads. Nor my two brothers. I guess I just got lucky. And even now as I rapidly approach middle age the grey hairs are still holding out on me. My crimson crop is not going anywhere.

The good news is apparently being a ranga is a ticket to success. The University of Tennessee and Dalton State has found that redheads are four times more likely to be CEOs. It’s our bold, unique features that set us apart. And as a teenager these characteristics also meant that I was four times more likely to be single. (NB I am not a CEO just yet. But I’m sure that can’t be far away because my uniqueness really is off the charts.)

In the scheme of things, being a redhead is no biggie. As Dr Evil might say, redheads are the Diet Coke of minorities. Just one calorie, not minority enough. In fact, to be honest we may even be the Coke Life. Yep, redheads are certainly at the shallow end of the minority pool and there are plenty of other sections of the community facing bigger challenges, but when you’re a kid you can sometimes lose perspective.  Especially when you’re reminded about your hair colour every single day, thanks to those creative schoolyard nicknames. I mainly used to get ‘carrot top’, which seems tame now. But my ten-year-old self didn’t think so.

When I was young I really wanted to feel cool. I really wanted girls to like me. And therefore I really wanted to pull my own hair out. Things have certainly changed because as an adult all I really want now is a new Doc Martin episode and a good night’s sleep. I suspect if I’d had more redheaded role models as a kid it may have helped my frame of mind. Hardly any of the books, TV or movies I liked featured ginger lead characters. The only one I can recall now is Tintin. And I always felt Snowy was the real star of that series anyway… So, why no redheads?

What’s wrong with rangas?

My tiny mind would’ve been blown if Pugwall hadn’t merely called his band ‘Orange Organics’ but if that had also been the name of his colour boosting shampoo. Or if the red Power Ranger had lived up to his title and removed his mask to reveal long auburn locks. Or if the entire Round The Twist series had been told from the gross little brother Bronson’s redheaded point of view. Actually, forget that last bit. Bronson’s ‘Smelly Feat’ episode was more than enough.

In real life these days we have Prince Harry, Ed Sheeran and Conan O’Brien flying the flame-haired flag. But it still seems that prominent fictional redheads are in short supply. At least we have Fireman Sam, the hero next door. Or maybe Dexter should count too, assuming we can overlook the whole serial killer thing. And the fact that former Homeland star Damian Lewis is being touted as a possible new James Bond fills my heart with joy. I just hope he gets a gadget that squirts out sunscreen.

So now - as a fully functional grown man with a beautiful wife and kids - I’ve written Dale, a kids’ book that proudly features a ranga as the lead character. But the story is not just for the 2% of the population who want to identify with a fellow redhead. It’s also for the other 98% who aren’t CEO material. Because beneath his fiery fringe Dale is simply an underdog. And hopefully most of us can relate to that.

If you’d like to support the Ardoch Youth Foundation by owning a word, head to

ownaword.org.au

But remember, ‘ranga’ is taken. Hands off.

ANZAC DAY – Using books to provide context and meaning on this moving historical anniversary.

This year we visited the Australian War Memorial.

To be honest, I spent most of the visit trying hard not to cry and become too emotional about what I was seeing and hearing but it was difficult; it is difficult not to be moved by the memorabilia on display, the stories that are told and the photographs that reveal a war beyond our comprehension.

The poppies that have been placed panels of the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial are a beautiful and moving tribute - a personal commemoration if you have a relative who is listed and all the more moving because of the sheer number of names listed on each panel.

It made me wonder how we translate these important but distressing historical events to our young readers. Because it’s important for them to understand the events that have shaped who we are as a family, a nation, a population, a world, a community.

Of course the Australian War Memorial does a brilliant job of bringing these historical events to people both young and old in an accessible, interesting and respectful manner and books are an important resource that can complement a museum visit or indeed, be used as the main source of information and support.

And so on ANZAC Day when young readers see elderly men and women march at dawn and the media celebrate the men and women who fought and died or fought and survived as well as the men and women who supported the war effort away from the frontline, it is important that they have some context with which to process what they are seeing, hearing and recognising. This will hold them in good stead for the rest of their lives as each year this anniversary comes around.

Here are some books that we recommend but you will find many others in the bookstore. Simply search by Theme ANZAC and filter by the age of your reader/price etc

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/kidsbooks/theme-anzac_day/ :

RED POPPY

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/9781775430704

ANZAC BISCUITS

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/anzac-biscuits-paperback

REFLECTION

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/reflection-remembering-those-who-serve-in-war

A SOLDIER A DOG and a BOY

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/9780734416377

MY GRANDAD MARCHES ON ANZAC DAY

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/isbn9780734410368

THE POPPY
http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/9781925000313

ONE MINUTE’S SILENCE

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/9781743316245

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/9780857981936

You will also find excellent resources to use in the classroom or at home here:

http://www.shrine.org.au/Education/Resources/Anzac-Day--Activity---Resources-Sheets

http://splash.abc.net.au/newsandarticles/blog/-/b/1818164/top-10-resources-to-commemorate-the-anzac-centenary

If you’ve read my bio, you will have heard that I’m a circus performer. This was my career for ten years. I trained hard, made shows with small groups of other performers and toured to theatres and schools across Australia. A lot of what I learned and experienced in these years comes out in Squishy Taylor.

Firstly, I loved training. I loved being physically strong and how that translated to a kind of emotional strength. I loved trusting my acrobatic partners and being trusted by them. Working in circus, there is a lot of play, but it’s underscored by the seriousness of physical danger. I loved the daily life of facing fears, trying ridiculous things and knowing that good communication with my fellow performers was a matter of everyone’s safety. I did my best to take all these elements into writing Squishy Taylor. She scales high walls, learns bunkbed acrobatics from her bonus-sister and figures out how to talk about her needs with the people around her. Though she’s not an acrobat, those parts of my performing life are very present in Squishy.

Touring circus shows for children was actually a fabulous apprenticeship for writing fiction – because you get such direct, immediate feedback. In theatre, if the audience is bored, you know it! If the crowd is full of bright faces responding with silence, gasps and laughter, you’re doing your job. I learned a lot from those audiences. Writing a novel is very different, but as I wrote Squishy, I tried to carry all those children’s responses with me in my head.

While I was performing I did a lot of thinking about being looked at. The default costumes for a female circus performer are often skimpy, sequinned and, in many ways, quite fabulous. Obviously a big part of the job of a performer is to be looked at. This can be really fun – but it was something I didn’t want Squishy to be thinking about. I didn’t want the people around her to be looking at her or talking about how she looked. I wanted Squishy to be too swept up in the adventures, the mystery and the action of the story to even glance in the mirror.  

I was also thinking about moving away from all the bookworm characters there are in children’s fiction. I wanted to appeal to the kids who aren’t bookworms – the ones who are usually too busy playing on the monkeybars or hanging out with their friends to read. I want these kids to find themselves in this story, to be immersed and to forget they’re even reading.

A side-effect of all this is, I think it makes Squishy more accessible to boy readers. I’m well aware that many folks in the book industry say that girls will read a book with a boy protagonist but it doesn’t go the other way. Boys won’t read a book with a girl protagonist. I would just love for Squishy to prove them wrong! But if she doesn’t, I won’t be too heartbroken. It will be plenty for me if girls love Squishy, are carried away by her adventures and maybe find a part of themselves in the stories. 

I suspect that in addition to the natural fascination writers tend to have with people and their stories, my interest in Noël’s story was partly due to some bizarre fascination we all seem to have with the fame of tragedy: “Oh, so you were in Manhattan on September 11? Wow! What was it like? Tell me everything!” But I think that my main interest was in this gently, funny man who seemed so calm and balanced and well, despite having lost much of his family in a terrible human catastrophe. Noël was now living in western Sydney with his son and wife, and working with fellow African immigrants, and I immediately found myself thinking about the opportunities that might exist to work with him on a book.

Before going any further, I think it’s important to point out that One Thousand Hills is not Noël’s story. It’s a story about a boy of nine or ten – just as Noël was in 1994 – living in a town in Rwanda, just as Noël did, watching society begin to implode as various forces both political and social began to take his country past the tipping point. Without wanting to ruin the book for anyone, personal loss is a major theme in this book, just as it was for Noël. But Noël was from Butare, in the south-east, where the Rwandan Genocide Memorial is situated. Our character, Pascal, lives in the north-west of the country, in a fictional town called Agabande, a short distance from Volcanoes National Park, which is home to the mountain gorillas.

So if Pascal isn’t Noël and Agabande isn’t Butare, what was Noël’s contribution to writing this book? The answer to that has two parts. First, he offered me personal insights that helped me to understand the rising unrest and fear as the events of April 1994 approached, and the terror that was unleashed once these events in earnest, especially as seen thorough a child’s eyes. Of course I studied documentaries, read books, pored over images, and watched movies such as Hotel Rwanda and the superior (in my opinion) Shooting Dogs, starring John Hurt. But none of that is comparable to hearing a survivor speak about the way the peaceful life his family enjoyed was destroyed almost overnight. The chores, the climate, the house, the family, the church, the school, the village – all of that texture was critical to getting the story right. But it was also small, chilling details. The one which stuck in my mind the most was Noël’s description of a particular sound: the tip of a machete being dragged along the surface of the road. This sharpened the tip, but it had the secondary effect – or maybe this was the main point – of emitting a loud, metallic scratching sound that struck fear into anyone who found themselves on the wrong side of this conflict.

Noël was raised a Catholic, and he remains a Catholic. I asked him once how this could possibly be, when many Catholic priests and nuns were complicit in the horrible events that took place.

I’ve forgotten the exact wording of his answer, but I remember hearing it and thinking that this complexity which emerges when we push aside binary assumptions about protagonist and antagonist, goodies and baddies, that’s where the good stories and the proper truths lie.

Of course, there is a greater purpose behind writing One Thousand Hills, beyond telling a story that resonates as an honest account of certain events. I’m reluctant to use the word “message” or “moral”, because nothing will destroy interest in a story faster than using those terms. But is this book saying anything?

I hope so, and I think I can best sum it up this way: every book for young people set in a different country, culture, world, society, needs some kind of “relatability" with the reader. If he or she isn’t allowed to see something of themselves in the character and the situation the character finds themselves in, the story is largely meaningless. This is why I played down many of the differences between a kid from a Rwandan village and an Australian reader, and instead emphasised the similarities. Like any Aussie kid, Pascal fights with his brother, he thinks that his sister is spoilt, he gets in trouble for lying or dodging his chores, he has a crush on his teacher, he finds sermons boring… All of this is entirely relatable. The main point of difference – the “what if that were me?” kick in the guts for the reader – is when Pascal comes home to find his family gone. And really, that is the “message” – that terrible tragedies such as the one Noël witnessed don’t just happen on the other side of the world in central Africa. They can happen anywhere, to anyone. The young adults of today will become the adults and leaders and voters of tomorrow. It would be nice if they had all the facts, even if they’re told second- or third-hand through a novel like One Thousand Hills.

Middle Readers in Middle-earth:

Reflections on the Fantasy Genre for Young Readers

By Christopher Richardson

Words seem cheap nowadays. They roll beneath our fingertips on social media feeds, via text messages, and on the news-sites and blogs we browse on trains and buses. First thing in the morning and last thing before sleep, we read. In this world of words, literacy remains as important a tool as ever, perhaps ever more so. Words snake beneath our news screens and they flash, almost subliminally, on shop screens, restaurant screens and underground train station screens. Yet seldom do we give any of these words our full attention. We read and walk. Read and talk. We read three things at once. We have become textual omnivores, eating quickly before moving onto the next bite. Sometimes, on those very same screens, we read listicles warning us that our attention spans are failing. In our busy lives, we fear there is no time for slow cooking, let alone slow reading. This is the world today’s children are raised in. A world we have created for them, not the world they created.

Yet visiting schools since the publication of Empire of the Waves: Voyage of the Moon Child, a maritime fantasy of some 90,000 slow-cooked words, my experience has been this. The primal yearning to stop the clock and sit still, to lean in and pay attention to words at the expense of all is alive and well. The ritual is by now familiar. Under the watchful eye of teachers, students listen as I tell them how I became an author, and how the tale of Anni Tidechild came to be published. Understandably, some are more interested in this than others. I sure fidgeted when sportspeople spoke at my school. It is only when I stop to read aloud from the novel that a transformation starts. The fidgeting ends and clandestine texting ceases. All lean in and eyes widen, as together we share something numinous: the communal pleasure of storytelling, of attention focused and shared. For ten minutes, we are in Salila together, all of us sprinting with Anni Tidechild around the stormshield of Pel Narine as the cannons of the Hornet Clan strike. No, attention spans have not died. They are waiting for something to pay attention to.

I’m biased, of course, but middle readers (upper primary and lower secondary) are my favourite demographic. Typically, middle readers balance a childlike sense of wonder at the infinite possibilities of the universe with an almost, but not quite, adult intelligence and sophistication that realises such possibilities are not, in fact, quite so infinite after all. For the most part, they are not yet consumed with self-awareness, or the need to appear cool before a world of images. There will be time for that later. Whilst YA literature tends to hold little (or nothing) back, children’s literature and writing for middle readers need only point towards adult realities. As the late great American film critic Roger Ebert wrote of Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, “A good story for children should suggest a hidden dimension, and that dimension of course is the lifetime still ahead of them.”

Indeed, the intellectual and emotional tools required for interpreting and navigating Middle-earth, Earthsea, Lyra’s Oxford orSalila are the same tools young minds require to interpret and navigate our own world too. For a young person, the adult world, with all its peculiarities and paradoxes and perils, is just another fantasy to be decoded and explored. He or she may peer through the curtains in wonder or in terror, but cannot wholly dwell there. Not yet.

Moreover, myth and fantasy allow societies and cultures to open dialogues about themselves that might otherwise be hard to have. From the Iliad to The Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter, the genre offers an opportunity to work through communal experiences, triumphs, fears and traumas, in ways that adults and children may respond to together. We should be infinitely grateful, for instance, that J.K. Rowling was there to shepherd a generation of children through the post-9/11 era. And, of course, thanks to Peter Jackson, Tolkien too, his World War mythology revived for a new age of anxiety and doubt. The greatest fantasy, of course, being both universal and particular. Far from an “escape” from reality, the genre is, in fact, one of our most powerful means of engagement.

I have found there to be four things in Empire of the Waves my young readers respond to most. Above all, it must be said – and thank God for that! – most respond to the pure and undiluted pleasure of storytelling. A child will tell me about a favourite character, or favourite moment of action or suspense. Then there are those who engage seriously and thoughtfully with the mechanics of Salila. These readers want to know more about the floating cities, more about the pre-Copernican universe of the spheres. Even better, many want to tell me about them! Unprompted, one launched into a discussion about medieval cosmology, explaining how he always took “the music of the spheres” to be a most wonderful metaphor. How true!

Then there are those readers who delve deeply into themes. These young people write of Filip Able’s political machinations, of the morality of war, of the challenges of family, the pleasures and sorrows of friendship, and the sting of betrayal. Some of the most sophisticated commentary emerges from the pens of nine and ten-year-olds, as well as the eleven and twelve and thirteen-year-olds. Little seems beyond them. Finally, there are those who explain how the novel helped them through the day. They write how they related to the challenges facing Anni Tidechild and Duck Knifetooth, and found comfort in the solidarity they forged with these characters. This always moves me most of all. Stories sustain lives, and sometimes even save them.

To conclude a recent school visit I invited a hundred Year Seven students to create their own pirate clans, to populate and describe them, and then decide whether their clan was in it for the loot and plunder, for revenge, adventure, or perhaps because they harboured other ambitions. Invited to share in my created world, to add to its texture and detail, the students unhesitatingly produced creative and perceptive and intriguing and surprising work. Their hearts and minds and wits were sharpened. Words came to life and we were in the world together. For Narnia, Earthsea, Middle-earth and Salila are our own worlds after all.

Take, for example, The Little Mermaid. I have always been aware that the original version is nowhere near as cheery as Disney makes it out to be, though I was not aware to what extent. For example, on giving up her voice and literally splitting her tail in two to create legs, Ariel is condemned to a life of agony in order to be able to walk on land.  All this she endures gladly, for a man she has never met yet is madly in love with. She meets her prince and he is taken with her, though more as one is taken with a new puppy.  She follows him around, he patronises her and asks her to sleep on a cushion outside his room so she may be near to him.  All the while, she carries herself with grace and silence so he does not know of the pain she endures and everyone admires her beauty. Ultimately, he falls in love with someone else, telling Ariel that because she loves him, she should be happiest of all. Heartbroken, Ariel is given one last chance to return to her family – she must kill the prince. Of course she cannot and would rather die herself. Reading this story made me so uncomfortable, though that is often the point of fairy tales – to challenge, frighten and teach.

In Thumbelina, a tiny girl is stolen by a mother toad as a present for her son who needs a wife. He is fat and hideous and Thumbelina is frightened. Eventually rescued before the wedding, she is taken in by a field mouse who gives her shelter. In return, she is told not to leave the burrow. The mouse’s next door neighbour, an old, blind mole, takes a liking to Thumbelina and claims her for his own. Convinced by the field mouse that it is a “good match” and any young girl should feel grateful, Thumbelina goes along, reluctantly, with the idea. Rescued again, this time by a bird she has saved from certain death, Thumbelina ends up being taken to a community of fairies, where she meets the prince, who sees her as the ideal wife, and decides to stay there.

In The Steadfast Tin Soldier, the soldier is in love with a paper dancing doll. She does not speak or move, keeping her ballet pose perfectly still. However, by the end of the story, when the soldier is ultimately thrown into the fire, she follows him, instantly turning to ash.

I could go on. In these stories girls and women are commodities to be sold or stolen. They must endure pain with grace and silence. Their only goal in life is marriage, and they are lucky if their marriage is a happy one with someone they actually love. If they don’t die first. I have always been baffled by the idea of fairy tales being for the very young – I actually don’t think they are. I have no problems with a lack of happy endings, with stories that frighten children, but I do think these stories should be read at an age when a child is old enough to question what they are reading. Old enough to discuss what these stories really mean, the choices that are made, etc.

Finally, one thing I did expect was that the stories would be well written, I was disappointed. This could be the fault of the translation, I am not sure.  Most were clunky, some were downright absurd. I will be totally honest and say I didn’t even bother to read the last three stories, I just wasn’t interested. I expected beautiful language and flowing prose, in most cases this was not what I found.  In short, I am not sure that I would revisit these stories again and I certainly won’t be reading them to my kids while they are very young.

The relationship between Summer Skin’s main characters, Mitch and Jess, is examined in that setting and that context. They’re both at the same uni, but moving in different worlds. Mitch is at a privileged same-sex college. Jess lives at a co-ed college, and is state-school educated and proud of it. When they first meet, Mitch is really only seeing Jess from the neck down. But she decides to challenge that, and what follows is a kind of gradual unpeeling, until finally, they’re both vulnerable.

So, as much as it’s a novel about sex, it’s also a novel about intimacy. I feel like our online lives have come at the cost of intimacy. To put it simply: what happened to talking? Very early on, I realised that what I was actually doing was writing a story where the relationship happens in reverse. At the start, things between Mitch and Jess are sexy, but by the end it’s more about whether or not they can trust each other.

The college setting also gave me permission to examine some really ugly misogynistic attitudes. The sort of stuff that is ubiquitous online. And I also wanted to look at how social media can affect a person’s emotions and behaviour.

I had a couple of prerequisites for the story. One was that at no point would I ever pretend that girls didn’t feel desire too. Nor would the girls in my story be helpless. It wasn’t necessarily about being ‘feisty’ or ‘strong’. My characters are definitely struggling to figure things out. But they are also capable of having a laugh at the whole thing, as well.

Humour—that was my bottom line. If you can make people laugh at something, then they hopefully feel comfortable enough to talk about it. And some of this is stuff we really need to talk about. But talking is HARD—I learned that recently when I smugly reached for Where Did I Come From?, sure it would help me to answer those questions coming from Miss Six, only to find she hijacked the sermon by becoming utterly fixated on whether or not the duck in the bath tub was going to peck that worm looking thing!

Stories and humour are a way of exploring difficult territory, not just for the reader, but also for the writer—and that was definitely the case for me in writing Summer Skin. 

I’ve always loved Surrealist art – in a gallery it’s always the surreal works that draw my eye straight away, and I always find myself thinking: imagine if that was real! Iris and the Tiger started with that very idea, that I could create a place where surrealist paintings came to life, that what was assumed to be a painter’s imagination at work was, in fact, one hundred per cent real.

I love the classic kids book setup of a young person leaving home and visiting a mysterious and odd place where their mettle is tested to the max. Spain has been home to many famous Surrealists so I decided to send an ordinary twelve-year-old Australian girl to meet an eccentric aunt on a country estate in rural Spain.

One interesting fact is that Iris Chen-Taylor started life as Iris Taylor – blue eyed and red-haired, a sort of quasi-Anne Shirley (studies have been done about the fact that redheads are overrepresented in fiction!). She stayed that way for several drafts, before I had a realisation.

 I talk frequently at schools about my first two books, This Is Shyness and Queen of the Night, and one of the topics I always talk about is the need to show diversity in my created worlds, as a mirror of the diverse world we live in. I have a Chinese-Australian background, and I grappled long and hard with identity issues as a young person (at times it felt like the identity issues would never end - I wrote about some of them in the Growing Up Asian in Australia anthology).

So it’s very interesting to me that my default setting for a protagonist is still someone that is not like me.  I made the decision that Iris would have a similar family background to me, but I also felt strongly that this was only one aspect of her character. Just because she is Chinese-Australian doesn’t mean I immediately have to fill the book full of cultural references and Big Issues. Iris is a heroine that just happens to be Chinese –Australian.

There were so many other things I wanted to explore in Iris and the Tiger – friendships across ages and nationalities, how to be confident and creative, how to stand up to your parents and develop an independent sense of right and wrong, what to do if you see giant sunflowers playing tennis, how to cope with shoes that run away with you, and so on…

by Jackie Small

New experiences, making and keeping friends, meeting teacher and parent expectations and working out what to do at lunchtime.

These are just some of the worries first time school-goers and seasoned learners will likely stew over as the first day of school approaches.

Books are always a good starting point for parents and teachers when helping children overcome their worries. Below are some recommended titles that tackle these issues of new experiences, friendships and anxiety.

EXPECTATIONS

All Through the Year by Jane Godwin and Anna Walker

Although not exclusively about school, All Through the Year is an ideal book to read at the beginning of a new year. It begins with kids having fun in the sand during January before starting school in the dry, hot February. The book continues to set the scene for the year ahead.

Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan

Rules of Summer is a picture book that can be read with children in all year levels. It offers a wonderful stepping stone back to school for children who’ve enjoyed a long summer break, where rules aren’t as clear or as rigid as they might be at school. The book provides an opportunity to compare and contrast holiday experiences, of rules that might be unspoken, personal and random, with their (and your) expectations of the school year ahead.  

ABOUT SCHOOL

Starting School by Jane Godwin and Anna Walker

Starting School gives children a very realistic picture of what to expect of school.  Five diverse children approach their first day of school differently, each with unique thoughts, worries and experiences.

Little Lunch by Danny Katz and Mitch Vane

This is a collection of seriously funny, little stories about the kinds of things kids get up to at playtime. They are guaranteed to have kids chomping at the bit to get back at school.

MAKING FRIENDS

Jessica’s Box by Peter Carnavas

Jessica worries most about making friends on her first day at school. She learns, after some trial and error, that making friends is easiest when you learn to be happy with who you are.

The Terrible Suitcase by Emma Allen and Freya Blackwood

The Terrible Suitcase is an endearing story about play and imagination sparking wonderful friendships.

Wonder and/or Augie and Me- Three Wonder Stories by RJ Palacio

These thought-provoking stories, told from the perspectives of different individuals, will encourage children in the upper primary levels to look beyond stereotypes, question the effects of exclusion and bullying and understand the importance of friendship.

ANXIETY

Noni is Nervous by Heather Hart-Sussman (please note there is a three week delivery window on this title)

With the help of a new friend, Noni models ways to control her nerves and work through her anxiety when she feels nervous about play dates and her first day of school.

Penelope Perfect by Chrissie Perry

By learning that it’s not always possible to control situations and other people, Penelope also learns, in this gorgeous series, how to manage her high expectations and anxiety.

Stuff Happens by various authors

This series showcases a range of problematic scenarios encountered individually by a group of primary-school boys. Emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills are put to the test.

For the pre-schoolers

The Littlest Bushranger

The Littlest Bushranger is for the little kids who are left behind by their big siblings when school returns. Big sister, Lil, leaves behind a telescope for Jack to play with when she returns to school, and it inspires Jack to conjure up the wildest of adventures without having to leave his backyard.

We also asked the Kids' Bookshop team and teacher friends to nominate their recommended titles for children and teachers starting (or starting back at) school:

Bron recommends: 

My Teacher is a Monster

Erin recommends:

Hey Jack! The New Teacher

Max & George

Sunday Chutney

Kristin recommends:

New Boy

The Coco Banjo series 

Growing up can be tough. In her new book, Ask Me Anything, Rebecca Sparrow answers real questions, from real girls, and gives heartfelt and sage advice on everything from friends and boyfriends, to bullying and self-esteem. Bec very kindly shared the below extract with us.

I had a fight with my best friend and haven’t spoken to her in six months. Everyone wants me to forgive her but I don’t know what to do. Should I forgive her?

Yes. Yes you should forgive her. And I’ll tell you why. Because you don’t need to be walking around with a bubble of resentment in your soul. You’re young. You’ve got stuff to do. You don’t need to be weighed down with festering anger towards your best friend. All that does is continue to make YOU feel bad.

But here’s what I know to be true: forgiving and forgetting are TOTALLY different things. You can forgive your friend, but that doesn’t mean you will forget what happened. You’re wise now. You’ve been burnt. Your eyes are open to the way in which even a close friend can let you down. And if that means she has to earn back your trust in order for you to be friends again – so be it.

You know why else you should forgive her? Because we’re all human. At some point you too will do something terrible to a friend, something that will make you feel guilty or ashamed. That’s the thing. We all screw up and the key is to learn from it and keep going.

So ask yourself, ‘Is our friendship bigger than this fight?’ If it is, then forgive her. But do that for YOU. If you feel like you can’t be friends again, then that’s okay. But still forgive her. Wish her well in your heart and move on knowing that next time your eyes will be wide open.

I’m ugly. So how will I ever get a boyfriend?

Define ‘ugly’ for me.

Ugly in what way? Because let me tell you what ugly means to me. ‘Ugly’ is someone who is racist or homophobic or sexist. ‘Ugly’ is the person who belittles others to make themselves feel better. ‘Ugly’ is someone who is disloyal and unkind. ‘Ugly’ is the person who is verbally or physically abusive to others.

But I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about.

You’re calling yourself ugly because you have too many moles or sticking-out ears or chubby thighs. You think you’re ugly because you hate your stupid flat hair or your boobs which are too small (or too big).

Darling heart, that’s not ugly. We all have things we dislike about ourselves – even supermodels like Megan Gale and actors like Jennifer Lawrence. ‘Beauty’ is subjective. So often it is our physical flaws which make us unique.

Life is about learning to love what you’ve got. And it’s about putting your best self forward. If you’re feeling like one big hot mess (and everybody does at least once a week!), there’s nothing wrong with reading up on how to dress to suit your body shape or talking to a hairdresser to get a haircut that beautifully frames your face.

But it’s not your face or your cute skirt or your haircut or a thigh-gap that someone falls in love with. It’s your spirit, your personality, your talent. It’s the way you really listen when people talk. It’s your ability to see the good in others. It’s your glass half-full attitude. It’s the way you always nail the art and culture questions when you play Trivial Pursuit. It’s your kindness, your patience, your famous lip-smacking chocolate cake. It’s your joy, your compassion, your empathy. It’s the way other people FEEL when they’re around you. It’s the delight you take in laughing at yourself. It’s your passion for human rights or saving the orangutans or student politics or all of the above. It’s your magnetic confidence when you walk into a room with a smile that says you know who you are.

You’re ugly? No, you are not.

And the boyfriend will come. Give it time. Wait for the person who notices the quirky things about you that make you special. Wait for the person whose eyes light up when they see you. That person who truly loves you will arrive. There is a lid for every jam jar, as my friend’s grandma used to say.

PS You don’t ‘get’ a boyfriend. YOU get to CHOOSE that certain someone. If you wanted a boyfriend (or girlfriend) that badly you could have one by now – you and I both know that. You could just nod your head at the next desperate teenage boy who walks by. But I think you’re talking about someone special.

PPS Maybe you’re not quite ready for a boyfriend yet, anyway? Because if you can’t appreciate how awesome and magical and beautiful YOU are – then how can someone else see it? Fall in love with yourself first, and that will give permission for others to follow your lead and fall in love with you, too. 

Astrid Lindgren has long been revered as one of the greats in children’s literature.  I think this because she taps into the fantasy that every child has of being able to do whatever they please. As much as children love their parents, there is always curiosity about what life would be like if the children were able to make all their own decisions – cookies for breakfast, staying up late, not going to school, picnics every day. I heard an author say once that in all the great children’s stories the parents/responsible adults must be removed to allow the children scope to fully own the story (think Enid Blyton, Harry Potter, etc) and Pippi is the embodiment of this. She is not sad about her lack of parents, it’s just the way things are. Pippi may not go to school, but she is worldly and easily able to defend and look after herself (her extraordinary physical strength certainly helps!). However, this book was not quite what I was expecting.  Rather than a novel with a narrative arc, this is more like a collection of short stories – tales of Pippi’s adventures rather than one neat story. This is not a bad thing and I think it actually makes this a perfect choice for a read-aloud bedtime story for children who are beginning to move onto longer narratives (7+ year olds perhaps). The edition I read, beautifully illustrated by Lauren Child, was a delight to hold and to read and I think children would love to snuggle up and take in the illustrations while being read to. Pippi’s stories are lovely, she is silly and wild and bold. It is no wonder that so many adults still think of her with such fondness.

Encourage and validate ALL forms of reading.

So often I hear adults say ‘but they ONLY read graphic novels’ or that their kids will read blogs or play games online but won’t read a book. The good news is that all reading is good reading. Just because they are reading online does not mean that this reading is not valuable.  Sure, it is different and requires different skills, but all reading adds up. If they are interested in graphic novels, fantastic!  Graphic novels can be complex and challenging, do not make the mistake of thinking that they are not “reading”. They can also be used as a wonderful bridge to reading novels as many popular novels now have graphic versions available. So, whether it’s graphic novels, blogs, the sports section of newspapers or street mags, all reading is good reading and should be encouraged.

Use their interests

People often say that the reason they don’t read is because they can’t find a book that interests them.  I find this astounding, considering the sheer enormity of books being published.  So find out what your child is interested in, there is sure to be a book along the same lines.  Autobiographies/biographies of their favourite singers/celebrities/sports stars, books about cars/cooking/art/animals, book to film adaptations, there are even books around LEGO and Minecraft – there is truly something for everyone.  But how do you find them? This brings me to…

Make use of your local librarian/specialist bookseller

This is so important. If you are not sure where to start, ask someone who knows.  Hopefully your child’s school has a trained librarian but if not, try the local library. They are experts in choosing the right books for the right readers and their knowledge is invaluable. The same goes for specialist children’s booksellers (like us!). We see hundreds of new books every month so it is rare that we cannot find a book to suit your needs.

Read with them

There has been a boom recently in adults reading young adult/children’s literature, and for good reason. If your kids are reading something, why not read it as well so you can discuss the book? How fabulous to get caught up in a series together or even have a heated discussion about a book you disagree on. Not only does this show your child that you are interested in them and their thoughts, but it encourages them to think critically about what they are reading.

Set a good example

Leading by example is so important when it comes to reading.  Show kids that you enjoy reading, take time to sit down with a book occasionally. Leave books lying around and show them that it is important and enjoyable for you.

Don’t force them to read

This is probably the worst thing you can do.  As with most things, if you try to force a child to do it, they will resist you. Give them opportunities to read.  Read aloud with them, even older kids still love to be read to. Again, leave books you think they might like lying around, you never know when they might pick them up and start reading.

Extend their experience of books

Watch film adaptations of books, visit libraries and bookshops and browse the shelves, look out for events where kids can listen to or meet authors, take part in opportunities for kids to have their say about the books they read.  You don’t have to be in a big city to be able to do these things, there are heaps of online opportunities for author chats and book discussions.  For example, the Centre for Youth Literature in Melbourne have lots of programs for young people to be involved in activities like The Inky Awards, a teen choice award.

Encourage kids to read books that are “unsuitable”

Don’t worry, I’m not suggesting that you give your 13-year-old 50 Shades of Grey but some of the best reading I ever did as a teen was of “adult” books that were probably not appropriate for my age.  At about 13 (I just missed out on the explosion of Australian YA – Looking for Alibrandi, Obernewtyn, Tomorrow When the War Began) I was looking for something more challenging.  I ended up looking at my parent’s bookshelves and read two books that made a huge impact on me – The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay and The Shining by Stephen King. Honestly, most of The Power of One was lost on me, and I was simply terrified by The Shining, but I loved every minute of both.  This was a whole new world of “grown-up” books and cemented me as a reader.  Kids are wonderful at self-censoring and if they don’t understand or feel uncomfortable, they usually won’t keep reading. The good thing is that they will often go back when they are older and try again. I have read both these books numerous times and took away something different on each read.  Author Patrick Ness, in his Guardian article ‘Patrick Ness’s Top 10 Unsuitable Books for Teens’, says “All bookish young readers over-reach occasionally, and if they discover they like it, they keep on doing it. What a great way to establish reading as exciting and maybe even dangerous, eh?” and I could not agree more! So, if you think your teen might like to ‘over-reach’ why not recommend something like The Catcher in the Rye, IT or Beloved? Authors like John Green are constantly mentioning books like Slaughterhouse Five or Brighton Rock in their novels and this a great way to pique your teen’s interest.  So don’t worry if you think they are reading something a bit beyond them, it may be exactly what they need.

Lastly…

It’s important to note that not all kids love reading.  Sadly, some kids are just not into it.  And that’s fine, though it may be hard to accept.  You never know, some people do not become readers until they are in their 20s and beyond.  The best you can do is give your child all the help and encouragement that you can. Set them up well and hopefully they will take the opportunity to explore and enjoy the world of books.

I’m not quite sure how I got through my childhood without ever reading Matilda. I remember fondly my year 5 teacher reading a number of Roald Dahl books aloud (The Twits, The BFG) but curiously, for a class of all girls, never Matilda. This story of a young, highly intelligent girl, neglected by her parents and bullied by her principal is considered a modern classic for so many reasons.  Dahl was a champion of children. His child characters are always the heroes and he was a master of zeroing in on how children can be misunderstood, underestimated and treated badly by adults. Matilda overcomes her adversaries with the help of books and a little magic.

Mr and Mrs Wormwood are vain and ignorant. Consumed by television (was Dahl making a statement on the dumbing down of society due to watching too much TV?), TV dinners and the making of money. While Mrs Wormwood is simply lazy, Mr Wormwood is a classic dodgy car salesman. He has a particular dislike of Matilda, mainly because she is a girl and therefore not worth his time or attention. This is therefore not only a story of how literacy empowers, but how it empowers girls. Matilda uses her considerable brain power to not only educate herself, but create enjoyment for herself in a house where life is relatively bleak. Books bring her adventure, teach her empathy, open up a world of history and challenge her. However, despite her cruel parents, Matilda is not unaware of the privileged life she leads. This is brought into stark contrast when she visits the home of Miss Honey and discovers that her teacher is living in extreme poverty. Matilda is not only intelligent, but a kind, curious and sympathetic child.

We cannot, of course, go past Miss Trunchbull. Dahl writes such wonderful villains. From doing a hammer throw with a child by her pigtails, to lifting another by his ears, Trunchbull is the ultimate bully. As a note in the back of the book says, “Roald Dahl hated bullies” and Trunchbull of course gets her comeuppance in the end.

Which brings me to the fantastical element of the story – Matilda’s magical powers. On becoming particularly enraged by Trunchbull, Matilda discovers that she has the ability to move objects with her will alone. Matilda decides to use her powers to help Miss Honey but in doing so loses her powers all together.  While I love the sense of magic and imagination that comes with Matilda’s powers, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that this was the only way she could overcome the bully. Matilda is highly intelligent, with a wealth of ideas and information at her fingertips and while the magic was the outlet for all of her brainpower, perhaps it could have been better placed in a devious plan of action.  She is courageous and thoughtful and a little bit naughty so using magic as her means of revenge seemed a little lazy to me. There was no explanation and the powers were simply taken away in the end, requiring no need for further exploration. On the other hand, perhaps the magic is a metaphor for the power in all of us, for the ability to rise up and face your fears and overcome persecution. Either way, it is the magic that captures the hearts and minds of children and this is never a bad thing. Matilda is highly enjoyable, deliciously funny and a joy to read.

As a side note, a lovely, and unexpected, outcome of reading Matilda was that my three-year-old enjoyed much of it too.  On seeing me reading on the couch one afternoon, he asked me to read aloud.  And although I was sure he would not understand most of it (which is probably the case), he laughed in all the right places and loved looking at the Quentin Blake’s wonderful illustrations. I may have missed out on Matilda as a child but I’m sure my son won’t. I look forward to sharing it again with him when he is a little older.

It is hard to protect them from the news, the headlines and, our own conversations and discussion around social and political issues and while I think it is not necessarily helpful to have them watching the news or listening to adult conversations around these issues, I do believe we shouldn’t protect them entirely from certain topics because, just like us, they need to be armed and emotionally equipped to make sense of issues without hyperbole or political agenda. Providing an opportunity for discussion in simple and meaningful language is both sensible and important.

Using books to help explain and to complement verbal conversation is an ideal way to illustrate a topic at hand and provide a springboard for discussion.  Books on refugees and asylum seekers, mental health issues including grief and anxiety, family, cultural and Indigenous issues are all here to assist us as ‘grown-ups’ to help our young readers make sense of the world we live in.

In this instance, I believe that it doesn’t really matter if the child is an older reader or not, picture books are one of the most powerful means of communicating a message and encouraging greater understanding.

This is particularly pertinent if you have children of varying age ranges and level of maturity who you are working with. A shared reading experience will lead to questions and everyone will benefit from the discussion that ensues.

Older readers can then be encouraged to read books independently, come to you with additional questions and instigate further discussion.

In terms of cultural diversity and family, it is also important that children see themselves in the books that they are given and they read.

For the purposes of this blog, I  have recommended a list of books below for readers of any age but that are particularly pertinent to children in the 3-8 age range…

 If you are interested in books and stories related to Refugees/Asylum Seekers, we recommend:

Suri’s Wall

Ziba Came on a Boat

Home and Away

My Two Blankets

Seeking Refuge series

The Little Refugee

Tea Cup

The Arrival 

If you are interested in books related to Health and Wellbeing we recommend:

What if

Mr Huff

Lifetimes – beginnings and endings

The Balloon Cloud

Parachute

Underwater Fancy Dress parade

Blue (Michael Rosen)

 If you are interested in books related to Indigenous issues, we recommend:

From Little Things, Big Things Grow

Going Bush with Grandad

Our Island

In Your Dreams

They Took the Children Away

They Took the Children

Same, but Little Bit Different

 If you are interested in books related to Cultural Diversity, we recommend:

Happy in our Skin

Splash! Anna Hibiscus

Our Village in the Sky

We are All Born Free

Africa is My Home

One World Together

Off to Market

Old Mikamba Had a Farm

 If you are interested in books related to Family, we recommend:

Stella Brings the Family

The Great Big Book of Families

My Two Super Dads

Our Baby

Heather Has Two Mummies

Fly-in Fly Out Dad

Daddy’s Going Away

To find more books on these themes please visit the bookshop and filter your search by age and then theme for a broader selection.  Or, ask us for help: hello@thekidsbookshop.com.au

Pieces of Sky

The lightbulb moment, the thing that sparked plot, was when I was putting Lucy through a character profile—where you fill in things like age, eye colour, what’s in your character’s bag—one of the questions was what does your character like to do I answered reading, because reading is awesome, and continued on. But then I found myself coming back to that answer wondering if maybe that was too easy so I tried again. I wrote a list of ten things she could possibly enjoy doing—this was from another bit of writing advice I’d read, write a list as long as you can in order to get past the obvious answers—and one of the things was swimming. My mind began to spin with what ifs. What if swimming’s more than just a hobby what if it’s her whole world, and what if Cam died, and not just died what if he drowned, and what if now Lucy can’t swim anymore. It was that interest in who you are when you can’t do the thing that defined you that kept a hold of me in the years and many drafts that followed. Never mind that I’m a terrible swimmer.

Classroom Discussion

There are numerous themes explored in Pieces of Sky that would lend themselves well to further classroom discussion. Family dynamics, the Taylors, who they are and how they operate, are forever changed. Small town culture verses urban culture, explored through Lucy’s relationship with Evan. The nature of love/infatuation/curiosity, explored again through new comer Evan and through Ryan who Lucy’s known all her life. The ocean as a motif in Australian literature, used as a symbol for grief and fear but also longing. Social groups and stereotypes, rites of passage, loyalty, sacrifice, courage, confession, forgiveness and redemption. The structure and literary devices used in Pieces of Sky also invite discussion. Though told primarily through one point of view with first person narration Pieces of Sky incorporates two other subtle points of view told through art and poetry.

Complimentary texts: Chasing Brooklyn (novel in verse) by Lisa Schroeder, Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta and Imaginary Heroes (film) dir. Dan Harris.

Within a curriculum context:

• Analyse texts from familiar and unfamiliar contexts, and discuss and evaluate their content and the appeal of an individual author’s literary style (ACELT1636)
• Compare and evaluate a range of representations of individuals and groups in different historical, social and cultural contexts (ACELT1639)
• Analyse text structures and language features of literary texts, and make relevant comparisons with other texts (ACELT1772)
• Compare and evaluate how ‘voice’ as a literary device can be used in a range of different types of texts such as poetry to evoke particular emotional responses (ACELT1643)
• Analyse and evaluate text structures and language features of literary texts and make relevant thematic and intertextual connections with other texts (ACELT1774)
• how text structures, language features and stylistic elements shape meaning and create particular effects and nuances, for example, through allusions, paradoxes and ambiguities (ACELR005)
• different points of view represented in texts, for example, those of characters, narrators and the implied author (ACELR006)

(Source: http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au)

Coco Banjo is an awesome character. Is she based on any children you know?

She’s based on lots of strong, sparky kids with big hearts that I know – who don’t necessarily fit into the mould. I’d love to say that she’s my daughter – but my Thea would never go near a skirt! Coco is strong and kind and resilient and a bit batty, and the main thing is, she’s a great  friend even though her own life is full of ups and downs (let’s just say she’s a mix of Pipi Longstocking, Eloise and Juju from Seven Little Australians.) I wanted to write about life in a typical Aussie primary, so that kids would instantly recognise that world and get a chuckle out of it. I’m sure they all know a Coco in their lives, and a Jay Page, who’s the cool skater dude, and a Belle, who seems very good at winning stuff, and an N, whose ambition in life is to be a library monitor. I wanted mums and dads to get a giggle of recognition, too, over the school gate world.  There are bush tucker gardens, stinky toilets, boring assemblies, tiger mums and school camps, all wrapped in what I hope is an hilarious and fun read. The school reading books that my Thea was bringing home were so stodgy and PC – she was desperate for something more sparky and zippy. The aim is to cultivate a deep love of reading, and a sense of achievement; with fun texts that can give those wretched screens in our lives a run for their money. 

We love the creative mix of text and illustrations that you’ve used in the Coco Banjo books. Where did this idea come from?

I tried to get my own primary school-aged daughter to read the texts I’d loved myself as a kid – like the Little House and Anne of Green Gables series, but she wouldn’t go near them. She took one look at the small, cramped print and ran a mile. It made me realise that kids read differently now. They want a more visual, less cramped way of reading, which is where I got the idea to intersperse drawings and cool fonts into the text, in a way that would grab the reader’s attention. Every kid I know has gulped the Coco style, from ages 6 to 13. It’s been so much fun to create – I’ve giggled all the way through the books. 

Can you describe your ultimate yay day?

It would absolutely involve best mates and sunshine and lots of giggles and great music and helping someone out – because that’s what mums do. But it’s also what Coco does, on a regular basis. The Coco Banjo series takes in a lot of lessons about Emotional Intelligence that primary schools are big on now. Qualities like resilience and bouncing back, embracing difference as well as tolerance and kindness. They’re all woven through the Coco Banjo series. 

Will Coco Banjo be having lots more adventures?

Absolutely! I don’t want this series to stop. I’ve written three already and have more bubbling away. Next up, Coco goes on a school camp to Canberra, meets the Prime Minister and is - horrors - Unfriended. The school playground can be very cruel and I wanted to explore that; give kids tips on how to cope. The third Coco dives into the world of the Aussie summer holiday. I plan to be giggling over Coco for a long, long time…  

What do you like about writing books for children?

The joy of the responses – kids are so deliciously open with their enthusiasm, and they’re loving Coco. It’s such a thrill.  Creating for kids is also a great discipline as an adult writer, because you know that children are exacting readers. If they’re not interested, they’ll just put the book down. So you have to keep things really fast-paced and fun so they’ll keep turning the page. Writing and illustrating the Coco Banjo series has been a blast, and a great learning experience too.

‘What about the mountains?’ my wife suggested.

Why not?

We ended up in genteel Leura in the Blue Mountains, an hour  and a half by car from Sydney. Of course, I wasn’t the first writer to travel that route. The Blue Mountains was teeming with authors – every café seemed to have at least one -  and creative types in general. A great community. But, oh dear, the weather.  I don’t mind the cold but my wife is not built for temperate climes. After a couple of years, a bout of double pneumonia, we were getting itchy feet again.

I’d spent a lot of time outside of Australia in my twenties and early thirties and often had thoughts of an ex-pat life. On a trip to Wordstorm, the Darwin writer’s festival,  I met a few people who divided their time between Bali and Australia.

Why not the Island Of Gods? I thought, the first place I’d ever visited overseas, that had always occupied a privileged place in my memory.

But how to persuade my Sydney-centric wife? In fact, it didn’t take much persuading at all. Something along the lines of ‘Hey, let’s go live in Bali for a while. It’s really really warm there.’

Her reply ‘Okay, let’s do it.’

Six weeks later the four of us arrived at Denpasar Airport with six suitcases. I’d spent a lot of time in Bali in the 80s but hadn’t been back for a long time and my wife had visited twice only, both times staying at Club Med. We rented a villa in Seminyak for a week, and set about constructing a life. Schools, house: it all happened very quickly. Bit, in a way it had to, because I’d just signed a deal with Allen & Unwin to write The Debt, a six book high-octane thriller series for kids, and if I was going to hit the deadlines I had to quickly find a work routine.

I have never really liked working at home – the fridge is too available, and in Bali there always seems to be people coming and going . The very colonial sounding Canggu Club became my de facto office. Its advantages were pretty obvious: my kids were enrolled at the adjoining school, the library is air-conditioned (I am firmly of the opinion that the brain needs to be reasonably cool in order to work optimally) and reasonably quiet, the coffee in the cafe is okay, and there’s a gym for  a midday workout: pretty much all I need to be write.

So let’s cut to the chase: has the move to Bali worked, have I been productive?

The answer: yes, indeed!

By September 2013 I met my strenuous deadline: 6 books, over 400,000 words, in two years.  And by the end of June this year I will have written 14 one hour episodes of The Sun, The Moon and The Truth, an edu-entertainment series made for Myanmar television, an initiative of Ang San Suu Kyi. Not only that, I have  also knocked out nine picture books. The most recent,  The Shy Zebra (Scholastic) and Brothers From A Different Mother (Penguin), will be published in 2016.

Which begs the question: why so productive? Now here’s where I try not to sound too neo-colonial! Basically, we have staff. Some ex-pats I know have 17 people working for them, so that they can spend their days lunching and playing golf; we have three. But those hours I used to spend doing housework and cooking – and yes, I am one of those men who do both - I now spend writing. But not only is Bali working for me – my wife also has started writing, she is working on a novel and has three different jobs writing articles for various publications.

And in general I think that there is an entrepreneurial spirit that pervades Bali, that perhaps is stifled in Australia by its many laws and regulations. So when my wife and I had the idea of creating an activity journal especially for kids visiting  Bali, a journal that perhaps made kids look a bit deeper into the local culture, we didn’t blanch at the idea of publishing this journal ourselves -  hey it’s Bali, isn’t it!

Of course, the journey between conception and production isn’t always straightforward, and ours was no exception. But I am incredibly proud of My Awesome Bali Adventure, as proud as I am of any of my other books.

The other day I was in my favourite Bali café (Bungalow Living in Berawa) , having a coffee, when I noticed that the kid at the next table – she was maybe eight or nine – was writing in our book. I noticed the look of concentration on he face, I could hear the  scratch of pencil on paper, and when she looked up at her mother and said ‘Mum, do you know how you say ‘banana’ in Bahasa Indonesia?’ my heart played a little gamelan - It was like I’d just shared some of our Awesome Bali Adventure with her.

When I was a teen, I thought that great love would change everything. If only I could meet and fall in love with Rob Lowe (or, if he was otherwise occupied, then my high school crush, Jonathan, might suffice), then all the sorrows I felt so deeply—grief over my mother, who had died very suddenly, and then over my father, who died seven years later—would disappear. I’d finally be truly happy. 

In many ways, Kissing in America is a love letter to who I was as a teen—that scared and grief-filled girl who desperately wanted to find love, and even more than that, to understand it. Writing the novel was a long process—I started the first draft in 2008—and a labor of love. Eva, the narrator, finds solace in many of the things that comforted and helped me when I was her age: poetry, which I loved to write and read; travel (I spent half of my teen years on buses and trains); and feminism, which I first learned about as a teen, and which changed the way I thought of myself and what I dreamed my life could be.

Toward the end of the novel, Eva asks, “How do you walk through the world, how do you continue, when you know what a dark place it is?” I hope that Kissing in America will help readers find their own answers to that question. I’m thrilled to share Eva’s journey with you.

As a kid, although I was graceful, I was never athletic. I couldn’t catch or hit a ball to save my life. Despite a brief stint as a gymnast in my childhood, I never viewed myself as an athlete, never played team sports, and was always picked last for the team in gym. I carried that view of myself - the nonathletic - into adulthood: that I was not physically capable or strong. Sure, I did stuff to stay in shape: yoga, Pilates, swimming in my backyard pool. But those activities didn’t change my view of who I was. In 2009, on a whim, I joined a group of open-water swimmers who venture out daily into Long Island Sound. I had no idea what I was doing. My first day, I remember heading toward the water in my wet suit and goggles, cold and terrified, wondering what I, a middle-aged non athlete, was doing amid these marathoners and triathletes. It was late May and the water was Cold (yes, with a capital C, especially considering I was used to swimming in an 86-degree pool). In addition, there were currents and waves to deal with, not to mention jellyfish and bunker boils to watch out for, the latter signalling the presence of swarms of feeding (biting) bluefish. Every cell in my body screamed out that it wasn’t for me, but I was determined to reinvent myself and be brave.

We waded in and the rest of the group rocketed ahead, leaving me alone in the rough, swirling waters. I probably made it half a mile before another swimmer came back for me, told me I had likely done enough for my first day, and I headed back to shore. I slept for two hours when I got home. I went back the next day and the day after that, and by the end of July 2009, I’d swum in my first 5K. By the end of last summer, I’d completed a five-mile swim. The churning water had reshaped my view of myself, polishing who I could become.

The open water has become synonymous with bliss for me, freedom, a place - the only place - where I always feel ageless and weightless and carefree. The water heals and restores me, even though I am also acutely aware and reverent of its power. Last Fourth of July, a storm hit and a boat capsized in the waters where we swim. Several of the people on board drowned, including three beautiful children.

When I set out to write The Summer of Letting Go, I knew I wanted to explore a few themes: friendship, first love, spiritual questioning, issues of loss and forgiveness (especially the ability to forgive oneself), and, yes, the fury and healing power of water. In my head, the book became my “swimming book,” the book where water would both take away and restore.

So, I set Francesca’s story primarily at the Hamlet Dunes Country Club pool, where she first meets toddler Frankie Sky when he dives into the water thinking he can swim. Francesca, who has spent the past several years afraid of the water, and afraid to really live her life, as a result of past tragedy, is instantly drawn to Frankie and his fearlessness, and soon enough she starts to think he may be the reincarnation of her brother. But if she’s going to be Frankie’s mother’s helper for the summer, then she must brave the water again - and literally and metaphorically relearn how to swim.

I guess in some ways I wrote this book as my ode to water. I really wanted the reader to feel the water like I do, the way it slips open around us to let us in. The cool, silky, buoying sensation of a pool swim on those days Francesca wades in and lets the water envelop her. And the merciless force of it as she recalls how it swept her brother away. Through Francesca’s friendship with Lisette, her intense crush on Bradley Stephenson, and her memories of her brother, Simon, I wanted to lay bare some of the spiritual and ethical questions I’ve mulled over in my own life about love, friendship, death, and what might come after.

This article is reproduced with the author’s permission and first appeared on algonquinyoungreaders.com

I love diverse stories. I believe wholeheartedly that all kids deserve to see themselves in books. And in the last year or two, there’s this palpable enthusiasm among publishing professionals and readers for diverse books. The We Need Diverse Books campaign exploded onto the scene in 2014, and hasn’t lost steam since. I’ve been blown away by the discussions about diversity I’ve encountered on social media, on blogs, in classrooms, and at live events.

Perhaps even more importantly, more diverse stories are being turned into books. And these books are getting more and more mainstream recognition and publicity. The 2014 U.S. National Book Award went to a memoir in verse about an African American girl growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The 2015 Printz Award winner featured a gay main character. Books featuring POC and LGBTQIA+ main characters have recently hit the bestseller lists, have been optioned for film, and have been featured in major industry and entertainment publications. This is a huge deal.

And yet, the majority of YA books are still about white, cisgender, non-disabled, thin, Christian or non-religious straight kids from affluent communities. And, often without meaning to, we tend to reinforce these identities as the default. When an author writes about a character from a marginalized identity, it’s viewed as a choice, while the inclusion of non-marginalized identities isn’t typically questioned. As the author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, I’ve been asked many times why I chose to write a book about a gay character. I’ve never once been asked why I chose to write about a white character, or a cisgender character, or a non-Jewish character (even though I’m a Jewish author). These defaults are pervasive and often unconscious. We assume white, straight, and cisgender until proven otherwise.

In Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, Simon and his pen pal Blue explore and challenge the idea of defaults. Why don’t straight people have to come out? Why do we only challenge marginalized identities to declare themselves? As readers, we revert to defaults when thinking about characters. As human beings, we do this in daily life. Without thinking about it, we ask girls if they have boyfriends. We use the phrase “flesh-colored” to refer to a particular shade of white flesh. We exclude people and create discomfort, often without realizing it.

This is why diverse books are so critically important. Thoughtful representation of diverse characters challenges our tendency to default to non-marginalized identities. It’s the perfect time for this conversation, and I’m so excited to be a part of it.

There are many bright, confident and boisterous kids in children’s literature who take mistakes and setbacks in their stride. But in reality, many kids don’t fit this mould. We all know a child who feels immense pressure to succeed. The anxious child who sets her bar so high, she can barely see it let alone jump over it. In writing my new series Penelope Perfect I hope to celebrate the divine (if slightly difficult) girls who aim to be ‘excellent at most things’.

A true Gemini, Penelope vacillates between the ‘good, sensible, calm’ part of her character and the ‘frustrated, bossy, angry’ part. Occasionally (well, at least once every book) these mixed feelings culminate in an outburst. After all, who can’t relate to an outburst or two?

Penelope Perfect invites young readers to come to their own conclusions in reading Penelope’s behaviour. These are books about real life, and there are difficulties Penelope has to face. But Penelope is (sometimes without her awareness) a very funny character who is intrinsically kind. Teachers and parents will perhaps recognize a second layer of humour.

So far, the responses from children at my school and bookstore visits have been amazing. The connection kids feel with Penelope is palpable. If they are not the over-achiever themselves, the kids definitely know someone who is.                      

Chrissie Perry is the author of over thirty books for children and young adults, including thirteen books in the popular Go Girl series.

I was even more surprised to hold the printed book in my hands,  to see how beautifully Lucia Masciullo’s illustrations brought the idea life.

Picture books aren’t normally my thing. For a living I write ads for building societies and road safety – sometimes the occasional ranty post for a womens’ website. 

But somehow, and for some reason, I did it. It’s a simple little story but the more I think about it, the happier I am I wrote it.

A Curry For Murray is about a girl called Molly who whips up a Rogan Josh for her elderly neighbour, Murray, whose wife Maureen, is in hospital.

Word spreads about Molly’s success at the stove and soon she’s cooking up all sorts of dishes for people in need. Spinach Maloney for Sam Maloney (he has a sore tooth and can’t eat anything crunchy), a soft-boiled egg for Mrs Gregg (poor woman has a cold), then hordes of people who are either poorly, lazy or greedy - including the Faraway Prince who demanded savoury mince - are queuing for Molly’s cooking.

Being the laziest of writers, I didn’t have to dig too deeply to unearth this story –it found me.

My younger daughter Sally said the words, ‘Let’s make a curry for Murray when we heard our next door neighbour (Murray’s) wife (you guessed it - Maureen) was ill, so we wasted no time in cracking open the Patak’s.

The curry took about thirty minutes but the idea for the story came straight away. In our family we love a rhyme, so the rest of the book was a collaborative effort. What food rhymes with Ben? What about cities – what can rhyme with Sydney? How about a taco for cousin Marco?

Of course little Molly is really my Sally, and Sal is a little miffed I changed her name, but there’s simply no food that rhymes with Sally, except trevally, and that was never going to work in the narrative. Also, I dislike fish. There’s tuna spaghetti for Mum’s best friend Betty and that’s enough.

It was a joy to write this story, and it wasn’t hard to do, mainly because it’s true - and not just the event that inspired it.

Cooking for family, neighbours, friends and even acquaintances that are having a tough time is what people do. They always have and I hope they always will

It’s heartening, don’t you think? While the world seethes with violence, most people we know don’t hesitate to help out their friends and neighbours.  Often it’s nothing big, it needn’t be home-made, but the fact that someone’s kind enough to drop over some muffins for kids’ school lunches, or some spag bol to stick in the freezer makes a bad world seem better.

Who was it that told their child, ‘When something terrible happens, a plane crash, a fire, a terrorist attack, look for the helpers, they’re always there.’ I don’t remember who said the words (or something similar) but it’s true.  People are keener to help than they are to hurt.

Last year, when our family lost a friend suddenly, another friend (who didn’t even know the fella who’d died), brought us a still-hot roast chicken because she guessed we might not be up for cooking. ‘Eat it now,’ she said, ‘Or shove it in the fridge, or chuck it in the bin once I’m gone - I don’t care, I just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you.’

We read so much about how people are becoming disconnected and alienated, but I sense something different. People are grateful, almost relieved when they can DO something. I know at my kids’ school, the ‘Care And Concern’ co-ordinator is inundated when the call goes out for casseroles or packed lunches for kids when parents are ill or absent, for whatever reason. We don’t even know who needs it, but if there’s a callout for a casserole, six will come back.

Meals aren’t the only way people help – loads of laundry, lifts to school or appointments, mowing a lawn or walking a dog are all ways we can help the people in our orbit doing it a little tough.

But food is our default offering. It’s the most basic of ways to help someone, and the fact that it’s the first thing that comes to mind (even by a small child) makes me believe we’re hardwired for kindness. It’s cruelty that’s the aberration.

Nick Earls chats with The Kids' Bookshop

‘So, would you like to write books for girls one day?’

This was a question I was asked by a well-meaning friend some time ago at a barbecue. ‘Huh?’ I muttered.

She continued, ‘Y’know, stories about stuff that your daughters would like to read when they’re older.’

Oh right. Because Kick it to Nick isn’t about fairies or princesses or ponies*. I probably should’ve challenged this sort of thinking head on, but I chose the equally fearless endeavour of tucking into yet another charcoaled sausage instead of trying to fumble my way through an explanation of the Let Books Be Books campaign.

This innocent comment confirmed an assumption Crawf and I have experienced a number of times since our Kick it to Nick journey began: apparently girls don’t like books about football or monsters or… farts. But clearly that can’t be right; everyone loves fart jokes don’t they?

I’m a proud father of two girls, one is 7 months and the other is 3 years old, and eventually I’d love to introduce my daughters to the books that I’ve co-written. I mean, surely as an exercise in ego boosting, opportunities don’t come much better than that? I can almost hear their reactions; ‘Daddy, you’re a genius!’ ‘Now I understand how you paid for our mansion!’

But until that glorious day, my daughters will have to fill time with Hairy Maclary, We’re Going On A Bear Hunt and an old copy of Richard Scarry’s Busytown that’s long since lost its ability to pop-up.

I must admit, Crawf and I were fairly ignorant to the whole book gender divide when we came up with Kick it to Nick. You might say that’s because we’re privileged males… Perhaps you’d be right. But all we were really focussed on was telling exciting kids’ stories. The gender issue first properly confronted us when we had to give a talk to introduce the series. We were encouraged to explain our thinking behind including a female character, Ella, in a sporty book. Hang on - does such a thing really need justifying? Luckily Crawf could attest to the healthy figures of girls attending Auskick and along with the increasing numbers of women playing AFL, we had some compelling arguments in our favour. Phew.

But the real reason we included Ella was simply because we loved her as a character. She is so pivotal to the story that the series could easily have been called ‘Kick it to Ella’… If only it had rhymed. And perhaps this might have been our very small way of helping to address the issue highlighted in recent years by the Florida State University that there are roughly twice as many kids’ books featuring male lead characters than female.

Would boys have read ‘Kick it to Ella’? Maybe. But we are living in a world where the author of the bestselling series of all time had to call herself J.K rather than Joanne.

So as we got further into the publishing process, I began to feel foolish that I’d been hoping girls would embrace the series along with boys. Particularly considering many people see footy as a purely male domain.

Clearly those people haven’t met my wife. (Hawthorn die-hard.)

Then the first two Kick it to Nick books came out, this time last year. And soon enough, Crawf and I began meeting not only boys, but plenty of girls who enjoyed our stories as well. Plus, we have some hard data – the competitions we’ve run have largely been entered by an even numbers of girls and boys. Had we broken through?

Perhaps. Just a little bit.

But the realist in me suspects that our readers are mainly boys. And obviously, we’re simply thrilled that so many youngsters have enjoyed our stories, regardless of their gender. Plus, we’ve learnt that creating a truly gender neutral book is no mean feat. Authors have been aiming to achieve this long before Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog formed a fivesome.

But regardless of who’s reading, our mission statement has never changed: write exciting stories for kids. We want each Kick it to Nick instalment to be a thrilling adventure that draws even the most reluctant readers in, and keeps them hanging on till the very end. And maybe such a formula might be simple enough to cut through the divide?

So, in short, here’s what I should’ve said to my barbecue friend all those months ago: ‘No, I don’t want to write a series for my daughters one day. I’m writing it now.’

 Find Crawf's Kick it to Nick books here.

* NB: I have nothing against fairies or princesses or ponies. In fact, some of my best friends are fairies, princesses and ponies.

You probably know someone like Ethan, the main character of my latest book for the Stuff Happens series. He’s a bookworm, reading anything and everything under the library roof. And under the bookshop too, if you give him the chance.

Ethan was inspired by myself (of course haha), when I was a kid. I used to borrow 2 books every day at lunchtime and sometimes after school too. I wanted to win the best borrower award. The winner got a bookshop voucher. But I didn’t need awards or prizes, I just loved reading. But how did I catch the reading bug? Well, it wasn’t a bug that got me. It was a massive dinosaur.

I loved dinosaurs and I read every book that had a dinosaur on the cover. I moved onto novels that had dinosaurs in them. Then I went through a class clown phase, where I gobbled up joke and riddles books. I jumped from series to series; Tin Tin, Asterix, Choose your own adventures, Goosebumps and so on. I discovered authors like Roald Dahl, Morris Gleitzman and Paul Jennings, and read all of their back catalogue. It sounds like my reading diet had variety, but teachers and my parents didn’t think so. ‘All you read is Goosebumps, can’t you read something else?’ ‘How about you try this author, instead of another Jennings book?’ They were trying to push something onto me, something that I didn’t want to read…not yet anyway.

Now I’m not saying that you don’t try to recommend other books to kids who seem to be stuck in one series or theme. I see libraries and bookshops that have displays that say stuff like ‘If you love Potter, you’d love…’ and that’s cool. My librarian suggested plenty of books that I did eventually read. But I chose to read them, in my own time. I will walk up to those book displays and pick up a book. I will check out book review sites and blogs, and see what my peers are reading. But it’ll be my choice to do so.

Think about how you discovered your favourite author or series. I bet it wasn’t shoved in your face. Choice is such a powerful thing for kids. Nothing reeks of desperation and lameness when someone tries to push a book onto a kid. It can turn kids off reading, and it’s hard as it is to get them to read for enjoyment. Nobody would ever think to force a game onto a kid, so why books? Yes, they might be reading it because the movie’s out, or all their friends are. But it’s still their choice to give in to it.

So if a kid is re-reading Potter for the millionth time, let them. Don’t be worried about their Minecraft phase, or Alice-Miranda, Lego, even dinosaurs. They will move onto something else. Just give it time. Let them wander around the library and bookshop, and who knows, they may choose something different. And if they do, just smile on the inside and pat them on the back for their excellent choice. 

By Johnny Danger author, Peter Millett.

Two of my most favourite childhood memories are the legendary 007 movies and schoolyard practical jokes. 

Twenty five odd years later I have combined these two elements into my latest action comedy book called Johnny Danger.

A lot of the spy books and movies we see in the 21st century feature brooding, intense and deeply serious characters. I find this all very exhausting. Most of the coolest kids I went to school with were not cool and sophisticated all of the time. I actually remember seeing the school sports champ walking to the dentist with his mum because he was clearly nervous. 

So in response to this I have created a lead character who couldn't care less about being cool and sophisticated, he just wants to prank people, and prank them badly. In fact I'd even go a step further and say that Johnny Danger is actually a book about practical jokes featuring the occasional spy drama or two. 

I am a self-confessed practical joke player. As proof of this, when adults read through my new book they will see me poking fun at all of the James Bond film characters we remember from back in the day. 

The most fun scene in the book to write was a scene involving a ginger topped, wiry, spoiled brat bad guy's attempts at creating his evil laugh. I won't spoil the surprise, but that scene took me about two weeks to write (and twenty different attempts) and it is well worth reading through the book to get to. Just make sure you recite that scene really loud in front of all of your friends; and better still get your teacher to read that scene out really loud front of the class.

If you don't know who Johnny Danger is yet check out his very uncool and very unsophisticated trailer... and prepare to be pranked!

Johnny Danger DIY Spy will be instore from 25 February, 2015!

 Here are a few tips for introducing first chapter books into your child’s literary life:

1         Ease your reader into a more independent reading strategy. There are a plethora of beautifully written picture books that have more text, more complex themes and are generally more challenging intellectually. These books are the perfect way to transition your reader; to ease them into the idea of reading being a more sophisticated experience. Examples of these picture books include Running with Horses, A Cautionary Tail, A Soldier's Gift.

2        Continue to share reading experiences and read aloud to your reader using a range of both picture books and first chapter books. As usual, make the shared reading experience a fun and interactive time for you both.

3         First chapter books come in all shapes and sizes. In other words, they have varying page extents and levels of illustrative content. For example the Jake series has just over 30 pages of text and illustration and is divided into ten chapters and the Maxx Rumble series is a similar page extent and has 6 chapters. This is perfect for the reader who is just moving on from 32 page picture books. The black and white line illustrations assist in the comprehension of the story and make for a much more interesting read than a book with just text. Other recommended books (usually in a series) at this level include: Billie B Brown, Hey Jack, EJ Spy Race, Ella and Olivia and Tashi.

4         The next level of First Chapter Book would be those books that are 60 – 80 pages with fewer illustrations and therefore   slightly denser text.The storylines should be topical (sport, friendship, school, anxious situations etc) so that they tap into the interests of these readers.

5         Look out for books in a series so that you can maintain the momentum of interest: Aussie Nibbles, Go Girl, Mission Fox, Andy Roid, Crawf’s Kick it to Nick, Rainbow   Fairy, etc.These First Chapter Books fall into the 60-80 page category.

6         And then – move onto the books that are 100+ pages such as those in the EJ 12 series, Aussie Bites, Aussie Chomps,   Dinosaur Rescue, Judy Moody, Juliet Nearly a Vet series. By this stage, the illustrations may only appear intermittently – for example to mark the beginning of the chapter.

7         Don’t feel hurried about any of this – All of the books included in this category are suitable for readers aged 6-10 so concentrate on finding books of interest rather than books of a certain length that you believe your child should be reading. Nothing will put them off reading more than a book that is too hard – it will just be a boring and tedious experience.

8         Ask for help to find the right book for your reader – librarians, teachers, booksellers all have access to a wonderful range of books that have proved popular with children and they are there to help.

9         Encourage your children to talk about the books they’re reading with their friends – nothing beats a recommendation by a peer.

10     Encourage your reader to select their own books if possible – either at the library or in a bookshop. 

If you'd like help finding the right First Chapter Book for your reader, visit the category on the site and please ask us for assistance by emailing us at hello@thekidsbookshop.com.au

Pirate Pete: I’m a New Big Brother

This is a great series that covers lots of the big events toddlers encounter: a big bed, toilet training, starting pre-school, etc, etc.  The text is simple and the illustrations bright and fun. Pirate Pete introduces the idea of a new sibling arriving home, why the baby cries (which many toddlers will find alarming), how they can help and the reassurance that they will still have special time with their parents. It also has a button to push that plays the sound of a giggling baby, very cute. Also available Princess Polly: I’m a New Big Sister.

I Love My Baby Brother by Anna Walker

Part of the Ollie series, this beautiful little hardback features the adorable zebra and his baby brother.  With simple illustrations it shows Ollie helping with nappy changes, eating and playing on the Ollie train. Walker’s illustrations are very sweet and this would make a lovely gift for an older sibling to give to the new baby.  Also available I Love My Baby Sister.

The Brothers Quibble by Aaron Blabey

This was a HUGE hit with Angus, even before Ted came along.  Blabey creates such wonderful stories and it is difficult not to get swept away in his humour and quirkiness.  Spalding Quibble is quite happily an only child, he has the run of the house and his parents.  And then Bunny arrives. A new little brother was not on the cards for Spalding and he tries everything he can to get rid of him and take revenge on his parents. Gradually, however, as Bunny grows and learns to walk and talk, Spalding realises that having a brother is not all bad.  This book is an absolute joy to read and acknowledges the fact that while babies may not be much fun at first, they do grow and become little people who can be very fun indeed.

The Swap by Jan Omerod and Andrew Joyner

Caroline Crocodile is sick of her little brother.  He dribbles, he smells and he always takes up all the room on her mama’s lap.  While out shopping one day Caroline comes across the Baby Shop and decides that she will swap him for a better baby.  However, Caroline soon realises that no other baby is better than hers and perhaps he is worth keeping after all. This is a lovely story about appreciating your younger sibling and realising that they are just right for your family. Andrew Joyner’s illustrations are always fabulous and add lots of humour. A definite winner.

The New Small Person by Lauren Child

From the creator of Charlie and Lola, this is a relatively new addition to our collection at home. However, it has come along at just the right time, when Teddy is really starting to encroach on Angus’ space. Elmore Green, much like Spalding, is a very happy only child with his own room, lots of fabulous things and a very extensive jellybean collection. Then a new small person arrives.  It squawks a lot and wants to play with all of Elmore’s things. People keep telling Elmore that the small person can’t help it as it is only small (something toddlers hear a lot). One horrifying day the small person moves into Elmore’s room, really upsetting the order of things.  But then one night everything changes.  Elmore has a bad dream and the small person crawls into bed with him to keep the scaries away. Perhaps it is good to have a little brother around after all.  This story is adorable and I just love Lauren Child’s illustrations. This one is on high rotation in our house at the moment.

Tim and Ed by Ursula Dubosarsky and Andrew Joyner

This is not technically a book about new siblings, rather about sibling relationships.  This author-illustrator combination is one of my absolute favourites so I knew we had to have this book as part of our collection. Tim and Ed are identical twins, everything about them is the same and they are never apart.  After a particularly trying day, Dad announces that Ed will be spending the night with Aunty Pim.  What will they do without each other? This is really about independence and although we don’t have twins, I think there is a lot for all siblings to take away from the story. As usual, the rhyming text is huge fun to read and the illustrations are fabulous.

Others that are worth mentioning are:

Maple and Willow Together by Lori Nichols

A follow up to the beautiful Maple, this book looks at how even sisters who are the best of friends sometimes need a break from each other.  The illustrations are absolutely adorable.

Charlie and Lola series by Lauren Child

Most parents of toddlers will be familiar with Charlie and Lola.  The relationship between the brother and sister is lovely.  Lola can be cheeky and frustrating at times but her long suffering brother is always there to help and protect. Charlie is a great role model for older siblings.

Lill-Pilli’s Sister by Anna Brandford and Linda Catchlove

Lilli-Pilli’s mother is having a baby and Lilli-Pilli is sure it is going to be a little sister. But perhaps the new baby is not quite what Lilli-Pilli is expecting.  This is a story about preparing for a new baby.  The highlight is the stunning illustrations featuring native Australian flora. This would make a lovely gift for a new big sister.

TThis is no surprise to me – I would in all likelihood nominate The Secret Seven series which got me thinking about what it was about her books that had us reading one after the other throughout our childhood?

We do of course, equate the books we read as children with happy and relaxed times; a time when we didn’t have mortgages, careers and families. Finding time to read was not difficult – it was part of our day – we could pretty much read whenever we felt like it and we remember these times nostalgically and with great fondness.

Like any bestselling book, we saw ourselves in the characters, we aspired to be as adventurous and curious; we wanted to experience the magic and the fantasy. It was everything we wanted in a book and more.

We escaped our world and entered another and even though we had happy and easy-going childhoods ourselves, we embraced the sense of freedom these stories gave us and the opportunity to spend time with characters that we truly believed were our friends.

According to Wikipedia, ‘Blyton's range of plots and settings has been described as limited and continually recycled’* and perhaps this is a critically accurate statement but the fact that she has sold more than 600 million books indicates that her formula for adventure and fantasy suited us all. There was some comfort I recall, in having a pretty good notion of the adventure we were about to embark on when we turned to page one of the next book in a series.

So why does Enid Blyton still continue to sell well?

Just like I have assumed my children will enjoy the music of my past, I have also assumed they will enjoy the books of my past… It is natural to want to give your child a part of your own childhood that represents such happy times.

Many parents will seek them out because in looking for books for their children, it is hard to navigate the plethora of what is on offer so they fall back on books that they know and enjoyed themselves.

Fortunately, many of the books have been edited to ensure that the racist and sexist language used by Blyton is no longer an issue and so they are a ‘safe’ choice of book for children.

For me the thing to take away from what we know and love about our time with Enid Blyton is this:

• Good storytelling is just that. It doesn’t have to win literary awards, it simply needs to keep us turning pages and wanting more.
• Characters who stay with us long after a story finishes will inevitably lead us to the next book by that author or in that series.
• Escaping the world we live in for a little while is a magical thing.

But perhaps most importantly I hope that picnics, tree-houses, clubs and friendship never go out of style and that there will always be a mystery to solve!

If your children enjoy Enid Blyton stories, they might also enjoy:

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=mosquito+advertising

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=ghost+detectives

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=nancy+drew

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=hardy+boys

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=arkie+sparkle

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=ej12

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=lost+world+circus

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=a+series+of+unfortunate

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=gemmel

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=alice+miranda

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=truly+tan

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton

Lovable thing No. 1

Footy gives many kids their only opportunity to shine. Some kids aren’t exactly thrilled by maths, or art, or music, or maths, or science, or (heaven forbid) writing. But they do love footy. In fact, it’s about the only thing that really focuses their mind. Put a football in some kids hands and they become incredibly interested and engaged. Footy gives them their time to shine and that’s great for their self-esteem.

Lovable thing No. 2

Footy is just like life, but better! There’s something very reassuring about having a set rules and boundary lines and goals, and an umpire to make sure everyone’s playing nice. If only life were like that - immediate rewards and consequences and heaps of clarity about the rules. I wish there were more umpires in the world – as long as they know when to blow the whistle and when to let the play go on.

Lovable thing No. 3

When it’s well administered by sensible coaches and parents, footy teaches kids how to win with grace and lose with dignity. But also, how to be a valuable contributor to a team, to think of the consequences of your actions on others and the outcome, and to take-part in something bigger than yourself.

Lovable thing No. 4

I think the most wonderful thing about footy is that we participate in together. It’s a kind of social glue. We talk about it together, watch it together and play it together. It creates nice little bonds between supporters (even opposition supporters), the community, and, best of all, families.

There are lots more things to love about footy, but that’s a good starting point I reckon. Maybe you can think of more.

 Michael Wagner is the author of the Maxx Rumble Footy series. 

That’s why my two brothers think it’s hilarious that these days footy is my life. Not only do I write Kick it to Nick with Shane Crawford, I’m also a producer on The Footy Show and – though you might not know it to look at her - I have a 100% footy-obsessed wife!

As a kid the only thing that redeemed footy for me were the hot pies. They helped me defrost after Dad dragged the family to North Hobart Oval each and every Saturday afternoon during the depths of Tassie winter. My brothers took after him: both naturals on the field. But I didn’t. I had a condition commonly referred to at the time as being ‘unco.’ Sadly, there’s no cure.

Banking on a miracle, I attempted to play footy in high school. And in our Grade 9 Grand Final my love affair with the game truly began. Our coach played to my strengths, allocating me the role of assisting my teammate to film the game on video. My entire job was to make sure the camera’s extension cord wasn’t kicked out of the socket. It was a fairly hollow victory for me that day, but I realised that there’s more to footy than simply what happens on the field.

Anyway, what’s not to love?

Footy is typically Australian. It’s one of the few sports in the world where you earn points for almost scoring a goal. Where when you receive a free kick, the umpire signals the way your opponent’s team is kicking. Where clubs are rewarded for reaching the dizzying heights of 8th. And we have players with fearsome nicknames like Buddy, Pav and Daisy.

Footy forges heroes. Plus, it’s inspiring to witness some of footy’s on-field heroes evolve into off-field heroes as well. You have to admire the likes of the late great Jim Stynes, Bali bombing victim Jason McCartney, and even my mate Crawf with his incredible efforts for charity.

But most of all, I love the way footy cuts through society’s divides. Players and fans are from all walks of life. Everyone’s united by that same rush of adrenalin that courses through your body as you cheer on your team in the dying moments of a nail biter. Try telling anyone who watched the Hawks v Power prelim that AFL isn’t the most exciting sport there is.

Anyway, that’s just a start on why I love footy. Things have changed a lot since I was a kid. But I’ll always be a sucker for a piping hot pie.

Adrian Beck co-authors the Kick it to Nick series with Shane Crawford.

 “That’s kind of you,” my Dad said. “But you really don’t have to give him anything.”

 “Yes you can!” I piped in cheekily.

 “That’s okay,” said the woman. “It was a gift for my grandson, but it’s two sizes too small for him. It would fit… Felicky, Felipe, um Fe…”

 “Felice!” my Dad and I said in unison.

 “Yes, it would fit Felice perfectly!”

 Out of a plastic bag the woman pulled a t-shirt with an ironed-on image of a cat wearing a blue-and-white football jumper and underneath it in bold cursive letters were the words, “The Mighty Cats!”

 I loved it! This cat looked as if it meant business - flashing fangs in its best super-hero stance. I excitedly put the t-shirt over what I was wearing - my Happy Days Fonzie t-shirt.

 “So you’re a Geelong supporter now!” said the woman smiling. “Like me!”

 “Um, I don’t think so,” my dad interjected. “I barrack for Collingwood. So does Felice’s brother, his uncle, and his grandfather - we all barrack for the Magpies!”

[Side note: My father was an Italian immigrant to this country and he, along with many Italians who had emigrated to Australia, either barracked for Carlton (where many first set up businesses) or Collingwood because the team’s black-and-white stripes reminded the new settlers of their favourite soccer team back in Italy, Juventus.]

 “Not me!” I said defiantly. “I don’t like the Magpies! I like the Cats!”

 I recall Dad’s face dropping and his pouting for the rest of the day but for me it was like the Harry-Potter-Sorting-Hat scene. It just felt right wearing that t-shirt. This was now my tribe. My own club. My Gryffindor.

 Later that night my Dad tried to get me to reconsider my choice.

 “You know you’ll have more fun barracking for Collingwood,” he said tucking me into bed. “They always win. And they win lots of Grand Finals. They’re the best team in the VFL!”

 “I don’t care!” I proudly declared.  “Geelong will win a Grand Final. Lots of ‘em! Just you wait and see!”

 Fast forward thirty years. While I was in the middle of writing a book series about an AFL legend-in-the-making who went by the name of Specky Magee, my beloved Cats finally proved that good things really do come to those who wait.

 Now if only I could still get into that t-shirt…

Felice Arena is the co-author of the bestselling Specky Magee books

Last year, after writing about him for nearly 7 years, I met Sam Fox for the first time. It felt slightly surreal. In all 12 Extreme Adventures books (and one short story) Sam is 14 years old. Remy Brand, the actor playing him, was 22. Still, I was pleased finally to shake hands with him. He thanked me for creating his character. I felt a bit like God.

When SLR Productions bought the TV rights for the Extreme Adventures, I assumed the series would be animated. If you’ve read any of the books, you’ll understand why. Where would they get all those wild/scary/venomous/carnivorous/just-plain-dangerous animals? Who would train them? And how many child actors, or child stunt doubles, would lose their lives or body parts, not only to those terrifying creatures but in the avalanches, cyclones, floods, volcanoes, rapids, waterfalls, bushfires, rips, quicksand, cave-ins, plane crashes, brake-failures, runaway balloons, out-of-control trucks, explosions, hijacks, robberies, broken bones, kidnappings, hostage situations and New Delhi traffic that keep the book pages turning?

So I was surprised, and a bit nervous, when they told me there would be 26 live action episodes.

In my many years as an author I never expected to see any of my stories on TV. I work hard to make my books come alive, not so much on the page, but in the imaginations of my young readers. They often email and say I must be really creative. What they don’t realise is they’re doing half the work. I write the words, my readers’ imaginations supply the pictures. Reading is a creative activity, that’s why it’s so satisfying.

Watching TV or movies is passive. Everything is there on the screen. You just sit on the couch and it’s all delivered to you, words, pictures, sound. Where’s the satisfaction in that? Where’s the creativity? That’s why I prefer reading stories to watching them. And that’s why I write for the page, not the screen.

And that’s why I wanted no part in adapting the Extreme Adventures for TV, even though I was given the opportunity. We gathered in a boardroom, all these women and men in suits and I, and they asked would I like to be involved in writing the scripts. It was nice of them – the pay would have been good - but I said no. A collective sigh of relief swept around the table.

I’m sure writing for the screen is just as creatively satisfying as writing for the page. But it’s a different skill, it’s not something I do. I’ve seen movie adaptions of wonderful novels where the authors have written the screenplays and failed dismally. It’s difficult for an author to dismantle a story they might have taken years to get exactly right and turn it into something else. So I was happy to step away and let the experts do it.

So far I’ve seen 13 Sam Fox Extreme Adventures. They’re a lot different from the books (and much safer) and no actors seem to die. They’re exciting, funny and very entertaining. I’m sure the series will do well.

It might do well for me, too. All over the world (here’s hoping!) millions of children and their parents will get to know ‘danger magnet’ Sam Fox. And when they switch off the TV, perhaps some of them might get up from their couches and go looking for the even-more-exciting books.

Tony, you are a designer by day and have written YA books as a published author. What drew you to the idea of writing a picture book?
One of the biggest challenges with writing historical fiction is finding the right sentiment and emotion of the time you are writing about. Often writers can get this from all kinds of records, including photographs. But I had always been so frustrated by the period around the First World War because photographers, both at the war front and at home in Australia, tended to stand back and make images of big scenes: landscapes, bridges, and family groups. It was so rare for them to get in close-up so to allow us to see faces. I think it was this frustration that got me thinking about how a good illustration could fill in this gap, how a sensitive illustrator might infer the emotion and bring us right up close to the people of that time and tell us so much more.

You have written historically themed YA books in the past, so it is no surprise to see a picture book with an historical theme but was it more difficult to write with fewer words?
Usually my editors criticise me for underwriting rather than overwriting. I really want to strike quickly and directly to the heart of a narrative. So, in that sense, writing fewer words is not so difficult. But of course, sparse narratives can run into real problems, especially when the story takes place over an extended period of time like, The Soldier's Gift. Ultimately, the text took me nearly a year to write, and the rewrites were huge. I guess no writing is easy.

You have written about big themes for young readers – family, war, love and loss; how mindful of your readers were you in writing the text that deals with those themes?
Writing about war for young readers is something I do very carefully. I knew that in the run-up to all the centennial commemorations of the First World War young people were going to hear so much about it, so I really wanted to make a contribution that was both truthful and meaningful to them. So within that broader thinking I decided on a few key things. Firstly, the story had to be told from a child's point of view. Secondly, the story had to focus on the impact of the war on children and families, rather than the soldiers. And finally, the story had to be hopeful. It had to point towards the remarkable resilience of children.

It feels like every page has been incredibly thought out from the text to the illustrations, the layout, the mood and even the ‘endpapers’. Tell us a little bit about the process of getting the look, the feel and the flow of a picture book ‘right’.
As far as I know this might be the first picture book in Australia that has been constructed by an author/designer and an illustrator. It was a unique experience because it allowed me to visualise the completed book before I even began writing it. But there were many conventional things about its construction as well. The first task was to write a narrative that could stand on its own without design and without illustrations. Fortunately I'm on very good terms with my publisher and editor, which allows them to be pretty candid about my writing and it stops me from writing myself into dead-ends. Once the words were in place then the illustrator, Jane Tanner and I both sat down as designer and illustrator to work out the fall of pages: its pacing and flow in both words and pictures. Of course this is a continual process, with a lot of back and forth, that runs right through to the final stages of printing.

You have included quite a bit of historically factual information at the end of the book. How much research is involved in writing a book like this?
I feel like I’ve been reading Australian history continuously for the past thirty years. So, in a sense it’s not so much research to me now, but more of a passion. However there were a few specific titles that I checked my facts against, notably Les Carlyon’s The Great War and Peter Pedersen’s The Anzacs. I was also very fortunate to have cousins who ran a sheep property in the western district that was established just before the First World War. This gave both Jane and myself a wealth of visual reference to draw upon for all the details that appear in the book, things like fences, haysheds and even the house itself.

Tell us about working with the wonderful Jane Tanner.
I always had Jane in mind from the beginning. I’ve designed so many of her books over the years and I was very familiar with the emotive quality of her work. Initially Jane was fairly lukewarm about the idea of illustrating The Soldier's Gift. In fact I think I remember begging her to do it at one stage. It's not that commonly known, but for an illustrator working in a highly realistic style, like Jane’s work, completing a picture book takes about nine months (yes, just like having a baby). So it is a huge commitment to take on a job like this. I'm pretty sure Jane warmed up to the task as we went along, and I know she is really happy about the end result, even though she must have cringed every time I rang her in my role as the designer with the usual inquiry, 'well Jane, The Soldier's Gift, how's progress . . .?'

Is it highly collaborative or do you simply send the text to Jane and she does the illustrations accordingly?
The process was highly collaborative. Once Jane and I had decided on the content of the layouts, the editor, publisher, Jane and I would then talk about the illustrative possibilities. Sometimes these discussions would go on for hours. But once the talk was done Jane would then bury herself in her studio drawing and drawing. The volume of working hours for an illustrator are daunting on a task like this. Thirty years ago, whilst a student, I contemplated becoming an illustrator myself. I glad I didn’t. It’s just way too hard! Anyway, eventually Jane comes back to the team to show us roughs and then we all start talking again. At this point there may be further revisions, but hopefully it’s also the point where Jane can start some of the final artwork.

The cover has a beautiful nostalgic feel, how do you decide what is the right cover for your story?
Jane Tanner’s pencil line drawings are a hidden treasure. Over the years I’ve seen many of them. I love them, but she is pretty shy about them. However they are so beautiful and so full of character that I was determined to get them on the cover. This gave rise to the idea of the cover of The Soldier’s Gift starting out as a kind of monochromatic period piece that then merges into the limited colour endpapers until finally emerging as full-colour spreads in the pages. It’s a kind of cinematic approach and I think it was this thinking that drove the whole design of the cover.

What’s the next writing project for Tony Palmer?
Currently I’m buried in a whole lot of recorded interviews I made recently with a good friend of mine who was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War. But what makes this story so interesting is that he refused the call-up and ran away. Eventually he was arrested and put in prison for six months without trial and without ever being charged. It’s such a great story, full of all kinds of twists and turns and conflict. I can’t wait to get it all down on paper.

Find Teaching Notes from Penguin Australia here.

Schools, libraries, regional towns and cities all over the country recognise the importance of nurturing a love of literature in children by providing them with an opportunity to meet their favourite authors and illustrators and to discover new ones too; to find new books and the secrets behind how stories are created and delivered.

Writers’ Festivals are very much a part of an author or illustrator’s schedule throughout the year – they see it as an ideal arena for meeting their readers and of course, promoting their books.

Festivals are just one way you can help nurture a love of literature in your reader – and I refer to all readers, enthusiastic, intermittent and reluctant when I say ‘reader’.

Here are some other ideas:

Join your local library for story-time sessions and for author-based events

Your local bookshop (and even online bookshops like ours) will have author based events – keep an eye out for book launches, readings, talks etc

Follow authors and illustrators on social media and blogs – your child might not be old enough to be on SM but you will find interesting bits and pieces to share with your reader – preliminary illustrations, first chapters, blog entry alerts

Follow publishers on social media – they will alert you to author/illustrator events and also share information that will pique your readers’ interest in a book.

Subscribe to a literary based service such as Story Box Library for a behind-the-scenes look at how authors and illustrators work. They will also provide fun book-related activities for your children to get involved in.

Most schools actively participate in Children’s Book Week activities. Be an enthusiastic participant both at home and at school – use the week as a springboard for discussing favourite characters, stories, series etc.

Encourage bookshop browsing  -  this doesn’t necessarily have to  be an expensive activity! It may lead to discovering books you would like to borrow from the library.

Even though my children have always had access to beautiful books through my work, I have always given them book vouchers as gifts so that they can visit a bookshop and enjoy their own book buying experience. 

When you see children’s films during the school holidays, investigate the book product that is available as part of the franchise and think about extending the experience so that it is a literature based one too.  This is especially exciting for reluctant readers.

Continue to share reading experiences once your children get older. Either read books together or as they become teen/YA readers, talk about the books they are reading, the books that you are reading, reviews that you’ve read. Attend festivals together as ‘adult’ readers.

Visit places of interest such as your State Library, Books Illustrated in Melbourne, Pinerolo in NSW; places that showcase and exhibit illustrative works, hold author/illustrator events and workshops for children.

Let me explain.

I have not been an educator for many years now so I’m writing this without any educative authority – it is simply the rant of an ex-educator, a parent and someone who is passionate about the language and literacy development of all young children.

So, with all that in mind, let me preface my rant with ‘In my view’.

In my view, there are a range of very valid reasons we send our children to kindergarten:

• It prepares them for the routine of going to school each day
• It prepares them emotionally and socially for the routine and the rigours of school
• It enhances their ability for imaginative play, creativity, development of fine motor skills and problem solving.
• It builds on the work that parents have done at home in teaching their children to reason, to be thinkers and to understand that all behaviour has consequences.
• It builds on their language and literacy skills through shared reading activities, music, role- play and organically through all aspects of communication.

I’m sure there are many more reasons but they are the biggies for me.

I see absolutely no point in accelerating kindergarten-aged children unless it is done organically through play-based activities and the idea that children will ‘learn’ to write ‘using a pen’ at this age just feeds parental anxiety; anxiety that makes them believe they must move heaven and earth to ensure their child is a genius by the time they get to school.

I believe (in my view!) children should be allowed to be children for as long as is possible – they deserve that; they need that. Thirteen years at school is quite enough for them to learn the essentials and if for whatever reason, it isn’t then forcing the issue at kindergarten will only make the child’s situation so much worse.

Choosing the right kindergarten and schools for your child/children is no easy feat. But there are some basic rules for me and acceleration is not one of them – particularly for children in their pre-school years.

So, how can you help develop your pre-schooler’s language and literacy skills?

• Shared reading at home every day
• Book related activities – story-time at the library or local bookshop
• Visiting the library or bookshop just to browse.
• Building a library of their own for their bedroom – note: books can be bought at op shops too!
• Allow your child to connect with authors and illustrators - attend children’s book festivals if possible for performance based sessions – they are part of the big writers’ festivals in every state and there are often smaller ones.
• Talk to your children about the books you’re reading or have read without getting too bogged down or intense about it. Talk about new words, the illustrative style, how the story made them feel and why they did or didn’t enjoy it.
• Storytelling is very important. Ask your pre-schooler to tell you a story of their own and you be the scribe. Make your own book and, with your pre-schooler, read it to as many people as you can.
• Make sure your pre-schooler sees the grown-ups in his/her life reading.
• Ensure a variety of books make up their library and ‘book diet’ – fiction, non-fiction, activity, song lyrics and poetry for example
• Use books to explore higher-level feelings and emotions around grief, separation, family, and bullying for example.

So I recently decided that this would have to stop. I have always found time to read, no matter what. After all, my job is reading! Well, other stuff too, but the reading is the best bit. So I started stealing those extra few minutes here and there, reduced the amount of time I spent scrolling through ‘stuff’ on my phone, and put the time to good rather than evil. And the plan is working well so far. I have read a couple of wonderful books in the past week, and I feel better for it. Good books can be like fuel for a tired soul sometimes. They renew your faith in humankind, make you open your eyes and look around you more, and stay with you for a while afterward.

So my message is, you don’t have to wait until the conditions are right. If you are busy like me, you might never find a couple of hours when the house is quiet, the jobs are done, the fire is going and a good book sits waiting to be read. Don’t wait for the reading to come to you, because it won’t. Seek it out and the time will reveal itself to you in little chunks of reading pleasure.

My memories of primary school are fairly vague now, but the one thing I do recall with clarity is the time I spent in the library, and the sense of wonder I had that all those books were there just for me. Well, not really all for me, but you know how egocentric we are at that age. I remember sitting in a beanbag with my best friend over many lunchtimes and devouring whole series of books one after another. We were the kids the library existed for, and certainly having the library open at lunchtimes was a blessing for us.

And so I wonder… where do those kids go now? What happens to that sense of awe row upon row of dog-eared paperbacks can give to a little kid? Is it redirected into some other amazing direction? Or does that fire just go out?

The idea of a primary school without a library makes me feel truly sad, but I can see that it is a battle that many schools are facing. What can we do to arrest this erosion?

I know what we can do. Take a look at your schedule for next week, and if you can, squeeze in a visit to the library with your class. I know the book lovers will thank you. And you may just create a lifelong relationship with books in those kids looking for their own sense of wonder.

Makes the library sound pretty worthwhile, doesn’t it?

When I was first sent ANZAC Biscuits I had already been wondering what it might be like to illustrate a war story for children, trying to imagine the challenges. I'd just finished reading a profoundly sad story set at the Western Front in 1914 by author/ illustrator Michael Foreman called War Game and found it really moving.

One of the first things that grabbed me about Phil's story was its visual links - the flowers, snow, smoke etc. They were a magic way to connect the girl and soldier and their concurrent worlds, and felt like they had a theatrical quality.

Researching the props and costume of the era was interesting. One of the bigger challenges was getting the soldier's details accurate. They weren't something that could just be guessed at so I sought the advice of military historians who pointed out any incongruities in my drawings and helped with things such as regimental badges or the correct placement of equipment like kitbags and water bottles. I also spent heaps of time in libraries reading and photocopying, and watched a lot of movies set in the era.  

The close companionship of Rachel and her mother is something strong in the text which I responded to and find really appealing. Although its a story about war, instead of focussing on the soldier's war experience it has at its heart home and family and what he's left behind. The lighthouse design on their stove at the beginning of the book is symbolic of this and ties in with the image of a ship at the end (which is the RMS Osterley, used as a troopship in WW1 and the same vessel my great grandfather Walter went to France aboard.)

Coming up with the right colours is often a tricky kind of balancing act but I was happy with the palette I ended up using. I gave Rachel colours like wattle, soft yellow and blue-grey, and the mother’s hair a warm fiery glow to contrast with the colder monochromatic war scenes. I used lavenders and greys to lend them a slightly unreal, dreamlike quality. The soldier is isolated in nearly every image to make him appear more lost and alone - the single illustration I am most happy with is the soldier alone in his bed watching a flare in the starry sky.

Along the way I baked some ANZAC biscuits and placed a handful in a box, and these are the ones you see on the final page. I'd never made biscuits before but I bought all the ingredients, and it’s really easy in fact - the trick is to let them cool and harden a bit as at first they may seem too soft and gooey and you might think that they’re undercooked. But I'm pleased to report that my grandad tried mine for quality assessment, and gave them his nod of approval.

Good picture books should support multiple readings, as children quickly develop favourites and look for the pleasure of the familiar. The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr was one that was read and reread many times, in our household. It is fascinating to analyse why: clearly the idea is wonderfully bizarre and strange, and clearly, the hungry - not to say greedy - tiger is allowed to do what a child is not with only happy consequences. Never referred to in the words, and only revealed in the illustrations is how Sophie feels about having the tiger in her house. Look for the stripy cat in the picture near the end of the story. Like all good picture books there is much to talk about after the book is closed. Storybooks are meant to invite questions from the child. Enjoy that you and your child will read the books very differently.

The donkey in My Uncle’s Donkey by Tohby Riddle lives with the uncle rather than merely being a visitor like the tiger, but equally he is able to get up to all sorts of mischievous acts about which the uncle seems blissfully oblivious. The clear black and white illustrations with a splash of red allow the reader to focus on the all-revealing facial expressions and body language of the charming, naughty donkey.

Olivia, the little pig in the books by Ian Falconer, such as Olivia, Olivia Saves the Circus, Olivia and the Fairy Princesses could be a relative of Riddle’s donkey, and Falconer uses a similar palette and witty illustrations. But unlike the donkey, Olivia can and does speak her mind: ‘only five books tonight, Mummy’ is my favourite line. Falconer knows how to leave gaps between what the words say and the illustrations reveal, so that the young listener, or reader can fill them and be active in the meaning making. His sense of comic timing is brilliant, and is enjoyed by adults as much children.

Learning to love books and reading is about having favourites – even preverbal children can pick a loved illustrator. My daughter went straight for the Shirley Hughes books on the local library shelves (probably the messy houses were familiar!).  Look for the Alfie books and Dogger. Shirley Hughes presents the child’s view of the world with insight and love, and lots of lovely detail to pore over. It doesn’t matter that these books are set in a different time and place. The universality of the child’s experience captured in them transcends both. 

As well as providing the comfort of the familiar, good picture books will simultaneously offer the delight of the new. Anthony Browne’s books such as Changes, Gorilla and My Dad provide for new details to be noticed on each reading, and Browne’s words are chosen carefully to make reading aloud a pleasure. He draws on the surrealist tradition in his illustrations so there are lots of surprising things to puzzle over and enjoy.

Another marker of a book begging to be shared, is that it reads aloud well, has rhythm, and sometimes an appealing refrain that children will spontaneously join in with. The Elephant and the Bad Baby is an example with its ‘rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta down the road’, and it has cheeky illustrations of the irascible, red haired baby by a master, Raymond Briggs. Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet & Allan Ahlberg has a rich, rhyming text and the fun of playing I-spy to find nursery rhyme characters nearly hidden in the illustrations, and for younger ones  Peepo. ‘Here’s a little baby, one, two three, stands in his cot, What does he see?’ Peer through peep holes in the pages to guess what the baby sees. This prepares the child for one of the important skills of reading – prediction. Also look for their The Baby’s Catalogue.

As these classics -  and some recent publications - reveal, good books for children present a child-centred view of the world, stimulate imaginations, celebrate language, and initiate children into the varied pleasures of responding to the world of literary richness.

Dr Pam Macintyre teaches language and literacy and children's and young adult literature at The University of Melbourne. She is the editor of the quarterly review journal Viewpoint. She has been a judge for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Aurealis Awards and CBCA Book of the Year Awards, and is co-author of Knowing Readers: Unlocking the Pleasures of Reading.

He would find the truth.’

- From Two Wolves

 Two Wolves is a fast-paced mystery-adventure for 10+ year-olds. It has taken me five years to write from first draft to final release and I have loved almost every minute of it (not the case on every book.)

The story is about Ben and Olive Silver, two kids who are kidnapped by their own parents. They are told that they’re going on a holiday but their parents are acting weird and pretty soon they realise that their folks have done something wrong. But what? And when they find out, what should they do? Tell someone, or live life on the run?

Two Wolves is inspired by several cases I read about kids being taken on the run by their parents. I started to wonder what that would feel like for a child. Children seem to have an innate sense of what is right, perhaps more finely attuned than an adult’s which is full of conditions and compromises.

The story feels like my own experience in some mysterious way, despite my not having been abducted by my parents. It is a tale of an ordinary kid in an extraordinary situation, forced to be brave, positive and resilient. As the story unfolded, I realised that, in a sense, all children are kidnapped by their own parents. Up to a certain age, kids have little choice but to live the life that they were born into and the life that their parents are leading them through. I hope that young readers will relate to Ben and Olive Silver and Ben’s optimistic attitude in the face of adversity.

With Two Wolves I have tried to create a story at the crossroads of genre and ideas – a story that explores the challenges of being a child, while also weaving a page-turning mystery. Touchstones for the project include Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Jack London’s White Fang and Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain. I love the honesty in voice, vulnerability and genuine questing for answers found in these works.

The book’s key themes include the powerlessness that children often feel at the hands of adults, the slipperiness of Truth, the redemptive and healing power of Nature, whether we as individuals can transcend or overcome the genes that we have inherited, and the ability of children to change things. I hope that teachers and students will enjoy unravelling Two Wolves and exploring their own ideas around these themes.

Two Wolves is released on 3 March. There is an extensive teaching resources kit at:

http://www.randomhouse.com.au/content/teachers/tr_twowolves.pdf

Tristan Bancks

Diary of a Wimpy Kid, DOAWK Rodrick Rules, DOAWK The Last Straw, DOAWK Dog Days, DOAWK Cabin Fever, DOAWK The Ugly Truth, DOAWK The Third Wheel, and to round it all off, DOAWK Hard Luck.

Do you notice a pattern here?

And I am not talking about single readings, or even first-time readings for that matter. She has read them all, many times, and still they are the books she chooses to pick up time and time again. What is it that makes this such a successful series? What is the secret formula authors the world over are keen to learn? When asked, this was the list of reasons she gave me for loving Diary of a Wimpy Kid:

 1. Top of the list is the humour, she still finds them laugh-out-loud funny after many readings

2. The cartoon illustrations are snappy, simple and clever. Even her six-year-old sister enjoys hearing them read out loud to her.

3. 'Speech bubbles’ was how she described it, but I would add to that with the term ‘graphic novel’. She just really appreciates the mixture of text and illustration used to convey a situation.

4. The first-person perspective (her term) of a diary makes her feel like Greg is talking straight to her.

 Sounds like a recipe for success doesn’t it? If we as adults think about the things that make a book really work, you can guess that at least some of these points will be high on our lists. And kids are discerning readers. They want what we want from a book. To be entertained, stimulated, to connect with the text on a personal level, to be transported to another time or world, and to truly enjoy the experience of reading. Wanting it to never end. So much so that you will go back for a second read, or even a third…

And when a book can do all that, it will appeal to all kinds of readers. So often we hear that this series – and many others like it – are only for reluctant readers. Yes, it is true that for all those points listed above the Wimpy Kid books are perfect for children who find weighty novels a bit intimidating, and who love the fact that you can just dive in anywhere and start reading. There is no pressure to have read the whole series, and you don’t need to be a ‘serious’ reader to enjoy them. But the proof really is in the reading. Look at who is buying and reading Wimpy Kid, and you will find a very, very wide readership. Girls, boys, book lovers and those kids unfortunately labelled ‘non-readers’ are all loving them. My nine-year-old, the one who can’t put them down, is a very strong reader, and she reads widely and critically. She has access to all kinds of books, and doesn’t waste her time on books that aren’t working for her. Probably not the demographic – female and an avid reader. And yet she has dog-eared her copies with so many readings!

A friend yesterday told us that her daughter, a grade six, was loving them too, for all the same reasons. She was a bit sheepish about it, and I think it was because she thought they were ‘boys’ books. What a shame that a book should get pigeon-holed like that. It pleases me when readers and books come together, and I think it is irrelevant what your gender happens to be. When you like something, you like it. End of story.

So I wanted to put it out there, loud and proud, that Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a wonderful series, perfect for boys AND girls, readers and ‘non’ readers, and we are waiting keenly to see what comes next from author Jeff Kinney. Don’t let anyone tell your children that books are for one type of reader or another, let them immerse themselves in books of all kinds. The wider they read, the wider their vision of themselves and the world, and that can never be a bad thing.

Thanks Greg Heffley. Come back and visit any time.

Mem Fox, Reading Magic

2   Keep  books in easy reach of your baby (and toddler).

http://www.letsread.com.au

3  Take your cues from the language and punctuation. I’ll always remember hearing Mem Fox say that she thinks about the punctuation almost as much as the words. The rhythm of the text is very important so make sure you pause for the full stops and commas, raise your voice for the capitalisations, etc. For example: from Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy by Lynley Dodd:

'They sniffed at the smells and they snooped at each door, when suddenly, out of the shadows they saw…(pause) SCARFACE CLAW the toughest Tom in town.'

Bring out the drama, little kids love to be surprised.

Erin (The Kids’ Bookshop) on top tips for reading to toddlers for Babyspace –

http://www.babyspace.net.au/2013/06/wee-books-6-tips-for-reading-with-your.html

4  Don’t feel like you have to read picture books with complicated text to be making a difference.

'Hothousing toddlers with complicated story books does not give them an advantage over other children, researchers have found… Reading a picture book with one or two words per page is just as beneficial for a pre-school child as one with long sentences.

The key to success is as much talking about what happens in the book as reading any text.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2385698/Picture-books-DO-boost-literacy-It-doesnt-matter-read-children-long-interested-story.html

 5  'Sharing stories with your child doesn’t mean you have to read. Just by looking at books with your child, you can be a great storyteller and a good model for using language and books. Your child will learn by watching you hold a book the right way and seeing how you move through the book by gently turning the pages.'

http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/reading.html

 6   Continue to read to your children through the primary school years.

'Parents should continue reading with their children throughout primary school....       

....These include choosing as wide a variety of books as possible, taking it in turns to read, talking about the book and making sure the child understands any new or unusual words.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24116088

This point is also reiterated by Dr Pam McIntyre (University of Melbourne):

Once your child can read, she or he still needs to be read to – to hear the language they will be able to read soon. Enjoy sharing early novels like the wonderful Sadie & Ratz by Sonya Hartnett & Ann James (including the illustrations), Ursula Dubosarsky & Mitch Vane’s The Two Gorillas, James Moloney’s suspenseful 68 Teeth for example.

 7  Find a topic that interests them.

If they love LEGO, try giving them one of the LEGO chapter books.  If they’re loving a zombie video game, try a novel about zombies.  Was there a movie they loved these holidays?  There’s a pretty safe bet that there is a book version or something similar.  Find whatever topic it is that they are interested in and let that inform the books you choose for them.  Or better still… Let them choose.

Choice is a very powerful thing.  It can also be a bit overwhelming, so perhaps present the child with 5 or 6 books you think they might like and let them choose the one that interests them the most.

http://www.thekidsbookshop.com.au/blog/ReluctantReaders/

8.  Language is useful and varied: cook together and encourage your child to read instructions to make simple recipes, to play games, to assemble something: print and digital texts.

Dr Pam McIntyre  (University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts and Education)

9.  Read to them a rich variety of stories: picture books (eg Anthony Browne, Tohby Riddle, Bob Graham, Anna Walker) and fairy tales and folk tales are winners (Virginia Havilland & Raymond Briggs’s Fairy Tale Treasury is a wonderful collection). Rich oral language is the best predictor of literacy success, so make time to talk about the stories as you read.

Dr Pam McIntyre  (University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts and Education)

10.  Leave your pride at the door and don’t be afraid to do the actions, sounds and make funny voices. Actions are fabulous and it won’t be long before you find your child acting them out themselves. For example: one of the favourites in our house is I’m a Dirty Dinosaur by Janeen Brian and illustrated by Ann James.

'I'm a dirty dinosaur with a dirty face. I never have a wash, I just shake about the place. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake about the place.'

My little one loves to do the dinosaur actions and I often find him 'reading' this to himself and tapping his tum like a drum.

Erin (The Kids’ Bookshop) on Top Tips for Reading To Your Toddler:

http://www.babyspace.net.au/2013/06/wee-books-6-tips-for-reading-with-your.html

11  Enjoy reading to find out about things: stars and planets; giant turtles; our insides; the Antarctic etc.

Dr Pam McIntyre  (University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts and Education)

12  Remember that children enjoy ‘listening to stories about themselves, families, friends and

going to school’

http://www.letsread.com.au

And it made me wonder, what about kids? Is there pressure on kids to be reading the ‘right’ kinds of books, whether they are the cool books, the TV spin-off books, the ‘grown up’ books or just the books that everyone is reading at any particular time?

Harry Potter of course was the big one, although I am sure there were many book series that became ‘required’ reading before J.K. Rowling came on the scene. More recently we have seen Zac Power, Captain Underpants, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the list goes on. But what if you are a child who doesn’t fit the mould for the ‘popular’ series? What if you are reading Deltora Quest while everyone else is talking about Princess Diaries? What if you are a closet ‘Mad’ magazine fiend? How do children make sense of the social status of books, and how can we help them navigate this world?

I remember working as an educational consultant and seeing 11-and 12-year-old boys wandering the halls of a particular school with weighty Bryce Courtenay hardbacks under their arms. I am not sure how many of them were actually reading them, but they were everywhere! According to the teachers Bryce-fever had spread like wildfire and the librarian I recall was quite thrilled with the whole thing.

As parents and teachers, we need to be open to all the kinds of reading that are available to our kids. It is important for us to see the value in the things our children read, whether they are books, magazines, the newspaper, websites or cartoon strips. Literacy is so broad now, with a range of material aimed at children that far outstrips what was available a generation ago. Imagine a teenager reading a serial publication, emailed to them and accessed via their smartphone. Try explaining that to Great-Grandma!

But even when we (sometimes) can’t understand it, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t accept it as a perfectly valid form of literature. Not everyone wants the same thing, and wouldn’t life be boring if we did?

So what can we do to support our young readers? We can let them see us reading widely and without bias. Of course we all have our favourite genres, but we should try never to be dismissive of what others enjoy. In that way our kids will feel comfortable sharing their reading with us. Try reading the same book together, either out loud or with a copy of your own. Introduce them to a blog you enjoy, or find a blog that is kid-friendly to which they can subscribe. Think how much your child will appreciate sharing something special that is just between the two of you. Read one of their favourites followed by one of your favourites and discuss what you liked or didn’t like about the others’ choice. Teaching your kids to read critically can be a powerful skill for them to have under their belt, especially when you think about all the online reading they will do in their lifetime.

 And most of all, and how could I not end with this, let reading be a pleasure, whatever it is you choose to read.

Posted by Bronwyn Chamberlain

As a passionate primary school teacher-librarian and English and Additional Languages (EAL) teacher, I was motivated to create this series having had the privilege of listening to the incredible experiences of refugee and newly-arrived children who had been displaced and traumatised by conflict. I also knew the potential of quality children’s literature to challenge and inform young readers.

Beverley Naidoo once commented that we live in a fragile world and it is in everyone’s interests to take time to imagine each other’s lives. Through the eyes of our courageous young protagonists Shahana, Amina, Naveed, Emilio, Zafir and Malini readers experience the beautiful wounded paradise that is Kashmir, the dangerous city of Mogadishu, the clash of cultures at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the drug cartel war in Mexico City, the troubled land of Sri Lanka and the besieged city of Homs, Syria. It has been a tremendous privilege as the series editor to work with the dedicated children’s publishing team at Allen & Unwin.

Amina by J. L. Powers, the second book in the series, was released in September and in 2014 -2015 Naveed by John Heffernan, Emilio by Sophie Masson Malini by Robert Hillman and Zafir by Prue Mason will be published. In addition to my editorial contribution I have written comprehensive teaching and learning guides that show how the series can be used to support the Australian Curriculum and engage students in discussions of key contemporary issues such as refugees, migration, human rights and peace and conflict. A personal challenge was to create a series that would inspire readers to go beyond the fiction stories to the real stories of children living in conflict zones.

Although compelling, confronting and sometimes tragic, the stories are ultimately about hope, courage, resilience and the strength of the human spirit. Shahana and Amina have been incredibly well received by readers and educators who recognise the need to build understanding and appreciation of experiences that are all too real for so many people who seek to make Australia their home.

Ten-year-old Natasha reflects on her experience of reading Shahana:

‘Shahana is a very captivating book and it is a great start to the Through My Eyes series. The things that occur in this book are very similar to what is actually happening in some countries and this book touches our heart and makes you want to reach out to those who have been in traumatic situations that us Australians wouldn’t even think of.’

I believe Through My Eyes is an important and timely series. Last Monday Rosanne Hawke and I attended a shared literature event for the Building Harmony Project a joint initiative of Windemere Child and Family Services, the Cardinia Shire Council and Monash University. The senior students from five culturally diverse schools had chosen to read Shahana and they gathered to share their responses to the text. One student commented:

‘Reading Shahana made me realise how lucky I am to live in a place without fighting and child slavery and forced marriage.’

The overwhelming response of the students was one of empathy and wonder. It was a moving, inspirational experience for both editor and author.

www.throughmyeyesbooks.com.au

We have a lot of fun deciding on Tan Callahan’s wardrobe. I do tons of online research, picking up images here and there, going down endless rabbit holes. I also spy on kids Tan’s age (Tan would love that!) and if I see a particularly quirky combo I scribble it down in my notebook. When I’ve gathered all my online images, I make a folder for each of the sisters, Tan, Emerald, Amber and Rose and send that along with my extra notes to Tegan Morrison, my publisher at HarperCollins, and Claire Robertson, our illustrator at Loobylu. I also collect images and make folders for the boys, Ted and Scooter. From there it’s up to Tegan and Claire to come up with the final outfits. During my research, I look at everything from fabrics to shoes to sweet little felt brooches on Etsy. We like Tan to be wearing an animal motif somewhere on each of the covers (she loves animals). In book one, Truly Tan, it was the cat hairclip. In book two, Truly Tan: Jinxed! she wears a funky owl t-shirt. In book three, Truly Tan: Spooked! she’s wearing an echidna brooch. If you look closely you can see that Claire scans real fabric into the illustrations too. This adds extra texture and movement.

Of course, when I wrote Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children I went through a similar process but this time I was researching clothes from post WWII England. The glamorous Matron Pluckrose (who is loosely based on a Nurse Educator who terrified me as a pupil nurse) was decked out in utility clothing and later, as her fortunes improved, upgraded to New Look. Tensy and her friends were dressed like the waifs I saw in black and white newsreels of war torn London. Tensy Farlow is a longer novel. It’s not illustrated. But in order to write with sincerity I needed a clear image of everyone’s clothing. Incidentally, when the cover came out I was surprised to see Tensy in puffed sleeves as they had never been part of my vision. It didn’t matter though, the cover is superb and it’s always fascinating to see how others interpret your work.

Kids are constantly telling me how they love the details in my books. Clothing is a huge part of that detail. For me, it is indeed one of the magic ingredients that helps me bring a story to life.

Extra Time is centred on the world of professional soccer – the good, the bad and the downright ugly. Is it true that you wanted to be a professional soccer player?

I did for a few years. The years between my earliest ambition – kindergarden catering manager – and my later one – writer.

What do you think would be easier – children’s writer or soccer player?

Children’s writer is easier on the legs. We don’t get kicked much except by a couple of librarians who I probably shouldn’t name. Writing can be quite hard on the fingers (typing) and the wrists (lifting Harry Potter books away from your shelf in libraries).

Bridie is a feisty and protective protagonist  - kind of old beyond her years; was she a fun character to write?

Very. I like fesity and protective characters. Plus I enjoyed looking at the very male world of elite professional soccer through the eyes of a female. One who isn’t as dazzled by the vast amounts of money and fame as some people. (i.e. me).

Did you spend time in sweaty soccer clubs researching your subject?

I did. I was sweating too because I wasn’t really meant to be there. The training academies of the big European soccer clubs are secret places, so I was smuggled in. Can’t say too much, but if you’ve ever seen Border Patrol with a nervous-looking lump of cheese, that was me.

I loved Uncle Cliff (well, not ‘loved’, loved)- was he based on a member of your own family or someone you know?

I need to protect the identity of the innocent, so I can’t be too explicit. But I can say he is based partly on someone I know fairly well, but with very different hair.

Bonus Question (or extra time…) if we may be so bold:

What was your favourite childhood read?

Readers of ‘Once’ and ‘Then’ won’t be surprised to hear it was the Just William stories by Richmal Crompton.

Morris Gleitzman – thank you so much for your time. The Kids’ Bookshop is very grateful.

Does you child exhibit most of the following characteristics when it comes to reading:

• Could be described as a ‘voracious’ or an ‘avid’ reader?
• Taught self to read before going to school?
• Has a love of word play, of discovering new vocabulary and using language in different ways?
• Is often completely absorbed by or lost in books?
• Can be reluctant to put reading aside to engage in other activities?
• Has a striking capacity to comprehend, respond to or be affected by, stories that seem quite advanced for his or her age?

If so, chances are that he/she is a highly able or gifted reader. (There are other indicators too but this is just a small selection).

Children who read well beyond what is expected for their age, can present parents and teachers with some challenges along with joys. Here are 4 aspects to consider, followed by some helpful tips and resources to help nurture and cater for a highly able reader:

1. Appropriate reading material means books (or other texts) that are at the right level both emotionally and intellectually.

This can seem particularly daunting in the early years, when a 5 or 6 year old may have the reading ability of someone twice his/her age. It is actually an ongoing issue throughout schooling, especially if the highly able reader’s skills and passion for literature are actively nurtured - at home, at school, or ideally in both learning environments.

2. Some gifted readers have very particular interests or passions so can read obsessively but not necessarily widely.

This is no doubt very satisfying for the reader and certainly helps develop expertise and knowledge, but it is good to encourage breadth in a reading repertoire as well as depth. Working with a child to fill out a ‘reading interest inventory’ can help to identify broader areas of interest or genres that may be suitable to try.

3. Readability and challenge levels can be difficult to judge just by looking at text or book length.

Suitable books will for highly able readers need to provide complexity - in the language and grammatical structure, and in the richness of ideas (*Fogarty, 2012). This means that a well-chosen picture book has as much capacity as a novel to extend and satisfy an excellent reader of any age. In fact, some novels containing sophisticated vocabulary or grammatical structures can contain very simplistic themes. A child’s ability to read all the words, whether or not the meaning is understood, may not mean the reader is able to handle mature themes in books designated for a certain ‘reading age’.

4. Many gifted children have significantly heightened sensitivities that must be considered when literature choices are made for them

For example, a child may have a deep sense of empathy and concern for the experiences and feelings of others; an extremely vivid or unusual imagination; intense fears or anxieties in relation to ‘big’ issues such as justice, loss, inequality or cruelty. It is important to understand and accept these aspects of the child’s personality and approach to the world. There are many books that can address the need for complexity and intellectual stimulation, without delving into disturbing themes, unresolved endings or ‘adult’ concepts that a child may not be ready for.

So how do parents, teachers and students make good choices about appropriate reading material?

1. Rely on excellent, knowledgeable, Children’s literature specialists – whether you access them on-line, your local library or bookshop.

2. Utilise the fantastic lists devised specifically with gifted readers and the above challenges in mind. The following websites are particularly valuable as they are thoughtfully constructed around appropriate themes and interests to meet the specific needs and abilities of advanced readers at different ages.

http://www.bertiekingore.com/gtchildreninlit.htm

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/reading_lists.htm

3. Discuss ‘Recommended age’ guidelines (provided by publishers) with your librarian/bookshop/teacher.

These age groupings are not always useful in the sense that they refer to what the average reader can manage. Seeking material for the above –average reader will obviously entail some adult assessment re appropriateness of the themes and content. Ideally, opportunities to discuss reading, ask questions and respond to literature will enable a child to acknowledge and work through confronting discoveries and gradually broaden his/her reading repertoire.

4. Teachers and librarians have access to educational resources which are helpful too.

The best resource I have come across in my work with gifted readers is:

 “Some of My Best Friends Are Books – Guiding Gifted Readers”(Third Edition)

  by Judith Wynn Halstead

 Great Potential Press, Scottsdale AZ, 2009

* Reference: Reading for Gifted Students by Elizabeth A. Fogarty

(Prufrock Press, USA, 2012)

Books recommended for Gifted Readers

Age 6-10

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

After losing her parents, young Mary Lennox is sent from India to live in her uncle's gloomy mansion on the wild English moors. She is lonely and has no one to play with but one day she learns of a secret garden somewhere in the grounds that no one is allowed to enter. Then Mary uncovers an old key in a flowerbed - and a gust of magic leads her to the hidden door. Slowly she turns the key and enters a world she could never have imagined.

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

This is the tale of how a little girl named Fern, with the help of a friendly spider, saved her pig, Wilbur, from the usual fate of nice fat little pigs.

A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning (Book 1) by Lemony Snicket

Imagine tales so terrible that as many as fifty million innocents have been ruined by them - tales so indelibly horrid that the New York Times bestseller list has been unable to rid itself of them for seven years. Now imagine if this scourge suddenly became available in a shameful new edition so sensational, so irresistible, so riddled with lurid new pictures that even a common urchin would wish for it. Who among us would be safe?

Age 8-12

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

It is 1943 and, to Annemarie Johansen, life in Copenhagen is a complicated mix of ordinary home and school life, food shortages, and constant presence of Nazi soldiers. Bravery seems a vague virtue - one possessed by dragon-slaying knights in the bedtime stories she tells her younger sister, Kirsti. But Annemarie′s best friend Ellen is a Jew, and, all too soon, as the German troops begin their campaign to locate all the Jews of Denmark, she herself is called upon for courage.

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildren Taylor

Look out there, Cassie girl, all that belongs to you'. Cassie Logan finds it hard to understand why the family farm means so much to her dad. She finds it even harder growing up in a place like Mississippi in the 1930s. But, as she witnesses the hatred and destruction all around her, Cassie begins to see why she must find strength in the people she loves and stand up for what she believes in.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

It was Leslie who invented Terabithia – the secret country on an island in the dry creek. Here Jess could be strong, unafraid and unbeatable. So when something terrible happens, Jess finds he can face grief and disaster better than he could ever have imagined.

The Giver by Lowis Lowry

It is the future. There is no war, no hunger, no pain. No one in The Community wants for anything. Everyone is provided for. Each Family Unit is entitled to one female and male child. Each member of The Community has their profession carefully chosen for them by the Committee of Elders, and they never make a mistake. Jonas, a sensitive twelve-year-old boy, had never thought there was anything wrong with his Community, until one day. From the moment Jonas is selected as the Receiver of Memory at The Ceremony, his life is never the same. Jonas discovers that The Community is not as perfect as it seems. Although they appear to have everything, they are missing something of great importance. It is up to Jonas, with the help of the Giver, to find what long ago had been lost.

His Dark Materials: The Northern Lights (Book 1) by Philip Pulman

Lyra Belacqua and her animal daemon live half-wild and carefree among scholars of Jordan College, Oxford. The destiny that awaits her will take her to the frozen lands of the Arctic, where witch-clans reign and ice-bears fight. Her extraordinary journey will have immeasurable consequences far beyond her own world...

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

In July 1942, thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such close quarters, and her thoughts, feelings and longings as she grows up. Her diary ends abruptly when, in August 1944, they were all betrayed.

Age 12-14

The Outsiders by S.E Hinton

The Socs's idea of having a good time is beating up greasers like Ponyboy. Ponyboy knows what to expect and knows he can count on his brothers and friends – until the night someone takes things too far. A ground-breaking, timeless story from a brilliant writer.

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Every year Trinity School runs a chocolate sale. Each boy volunteers to sell a quota of boxes in a fund-raising effort that is also a display of 'school spirit'. But this year it's different, because new kid Jerry Renault has refused to take part. This small act of defiance starts a chain reaction exposing the corruption running throughout the school. There is only one solution: Jerry must be destroyed.

Lily and the Fairy House

Jane Tanner

Lily and the Fairy House is a beautifully written and illustrated story by Jane Tanner who once again has captured the sense of play and imagination of children in a sensitive and ‘magical’ way.

Lily is sure there are fairies living in her garden so she makes them a little home in the hope of luring them with ‘a rose petal bed and a gum leaf table’. On the table she lays out food for a fairy party.

Illustrated with Australian flora and fauna, Jane Tanner lures both us AND the fairies to the party and into Lily’s imaginary playground… until it is time to say goodbye.

The perfect companion to Isabella’s Secret and ideal for sharing with readers (particularly girls) aged 2-6, this is a book about friendship and imaginative play.

Tom and Tilly

Jedda Robaard

Ahhhh – bathtime! So many games to play, so many adventures to be had…

Australian (Tasmanian) author illustrator, Jedda Robaard takes our reader on a fabulous journey with Tom and Tilly in a newspaper-made boat through a big city, across high seas, through dangerous storms and home again.

Perfect for reading aloud, the minimal text will allow the reader to ‘play up’ the sense of danger and the relief of being home again. And as a bonus there are instructions on how to make a paper hat/boat!

There’s a lovely clarity about this picture book with its lovely soft colour palette and uncluttered text.  A delight to read aloud to 0-4 year olds.

A Lion in the Night

Pamela Allen

This is such an old favourite. Like all Pamela Allen books it is full of colour and movement and ideal for reading aloud. The baby in this book takes us on an adventure in the dead of the night – an adventure that involves, kings, queens, castles, feasts and a chase through the countryside.  Perfect fodder for imaginative 2-4 year olds!

With rhythmical text and plenty of opportunity for growling, speeding up the reading, slowing the reading down and finishing on a very sleepy note, there will be much fun reading this before bedtime.

Possum Magic

Mem Fox/Julie Vivas

You all know this book – it is perhaps one of the best known of all picture books in Australia and a story that is legendary for taking the reader on an imaginative adventure.

Just IMAGINE what we could do if we were invisible  - the conversations we’d hear, the things we would see, and the adventures we could have.

Mem Fox ‘s success is based on so many basic principles: Rhythmic and repetitive text, empathetic themes and characters, and in many instances such as with Possum Magic, the ability to take the reader out of their world and into another. And isn’t that what reading for all of us is all about… escaping the world we’re in…. for a minute.

Julie Vivas’ iillustrations complement the magic, the warmth and the excitement of the Possum Magic adventure.

Picture books like these are a wonderful springboard to use with children to spark their imaginations, encourage them to play imaginatively and importantly to instil a love of ‘story’ and storytelling.

Only, second books were infinitely different. The others I shared the stage with were quick to detail those differences in agonising detail: the pressure, the anxiety, the weight of expectation (from yourself, from publishers, from readers).

Basically, second novels were hard.

It wasn’t until rewriting Book 2, Chapter 1 over and over for an entire year (before scrapping the idea entirely) that I started to believe them. But there was no pressure, no anxiety, no weight of expectation – Second Novel Syndrome took a different shape for me: I didn’t know what I wanted it to be.

From release to release, five years separate my new novel, The First Third, from my debut, Loathing Lola. In that time, I went to and graduated university, learned to drive, learned to cook (sort of) and worked my first proper nine-to-five office job. Basically, I evolved from a teenager into something more resembling an adult. And I felt like my second book should reflect that, should be more mature, more ambitious, more adult.

I tried that. The more mature I tried to be, the more juvenile I sounded. The more ambitious my plot, the more predictable it turned out. The more adult my material, the more clueless I sounded.

I was completely and utterly stuck, until a routine school visit in Brisbane. During a talk with a group of Year Nine girls, I told a story about how my grandmother Yiayia Susie mistook Dick Smith for Dymocks, and went in demanding a copy of Loathing Lola, and the reaction was electric. Some students were inspired to fondly share stories about their grandparents, others demanded to hear more about my yiayia. I told them stories I had never told anyone before, ones that had nothing to do with books, and ones that weren’t all that funny, but the stories still gripped their attention. The warmth of communal experience filled the space, and I wanted to bottle it.

It was clear: my next book had to be about my grandmother. That night, I wrote the first chapter of what would become The First Third. The novel started out as anecdotes, and as I began to think about the finite nature of our relationship (unfortunately, grandparents aren’t forever), it quietly evolved into something bigger – the story of a grandmother who, on her deathbed, gives her grandson her bucket list to complete.

Without intending to, I’d written something more mature, more ambitious, more adult than my first book. About growing up, accepting responsibility, and how difficult that can be.

Now, if only it hadn’t taken five years to realise the trick to overcoming SNS was a little honesty.

Non-fiction

Very popular with reluctant readers and works beautifully with the “find a topic that interests them” idea.  You’ll find that some kids become obsessed with dinosaurs, or space, for example, so non-fiction is great for them.  It can also be great for struggling readers as books like the Eyewitness Guides or WOW! series have short chunks of text and lots of interesting photographs and illustrations so kids don’t feel like they have to tackle lots of words at once (which can be quite daunting for some).

Also try:

Danger!

Information Everywhere

Space: The Whole Whizz Bang Story by Glenn Murphy

How to Do Everything

Humour

A sure-fire winner with kids of all ages.  Great authors like Morris Gleitzman, Andy Griffiths Jacqueline Wilson and Paul Jennings are renowned for enticing kids to read.  They  are popular with reluctant readers because they draw them in with short sentences, short chapters and in some cases, short stories but the reason they capture the attention of ALL readers is because they are masters of story telling. If it makes them laugh, you’re on a winner.  Illustrations in books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Thai-riffic are great for breaking up text and appeal to reluctant readers with visual preferences.

If your child likes the above authors, they may also like:

Oliver Phommavanh

David Walliams

Roald Dahl

Clarice Bean by Lauren Child

Nanny Piggins by R.A Spratt

Judy Moody by Megan McDonald

Tom Gates by Liz Pichon

Doug MacLeod

Holes by Louis Sachar

Series

Finding a series that they enjoy is great as once they love the first one, there are lots to go on to.  Try:

Diary of A Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey

Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

The Spiderwick Chronicles by Holly Black

TimeRiders by Alex Scarrow

Our Australian Girl

Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Horror

Don’t be afraid (no pun intended) to recommend horror stories to kids (by kids I mean 10/12+). Kids love to be scared and it’s the tension that will keep them coming back for more.  Horror is particularly good for reluctant teenage boys and one series that works every time is Charlie Higson’s The Enemy.  Is a scary, gory, edge of your seat romp and they won’t be able to put it down.  Also try:

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Gone by Michael Grant

Spooks by Joseph Delaney

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

Zomb-B by Darren Shan

Sport

This seems to work particularly well with boys, though there are of course many girls out there who enjoy sport as well.  Specky Magee is great for both boys and girls.  Also popular is:

Maxx Rumble by Michael Wagner

Diary of a…by Samini Flint

Samurai Kids by Sandy Fussell

Too Cool by Phil Kettle

Fox Swift by David Lawrence and Cyril Rioli

Action/Adventure

Get them hooked, keep the story moving, and leave them wanting more – action/adventure stories are sure to please.  Justin D’Ath’s Extreme Adventures series has been a winner with reluctant readers for years.  Try also:

Alex Rider by Anthony Horowitz

Arkie Sparkle by Petra James

EJ12 by Susannah McFarlane

Cherub by Robert Muchamore

Conspiracy 365 by Gabrielle Lord

Henderson’s Boys by Robert Muchamore

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The 39 Clues

Graphic Novels and Illustrated Novels

Graphic Novels are becoming increasingly popular in the mainstream and offer many benefits.  Kids live in a very visual world and being able to interpret visual texts is very important – so don’t dismiss them because there are lots of illustrations, they actually require lots of “reading”.  You will find these days that lots of popular books have been converted to a graphic novel version, such as

Coraline

Twilight

Vampire Academy

Percy Jackson

Alex Rider

Artemis Fowl

Cherub

Also try:

Ubby’s Underdogs by Brenton E McKenna

Captain Congo by Ruth Starke & Greg Holfield

Big Nate by Lincoln Pierce

Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell

We could go on all day, but you can also see a list of books we recommended under our Reluctant Readers category.  And don’t forget, we’re here to help so contact us for some suggestions for your child.  Good luck!

1. Don’t Stress!

One of the worst things you can do with a reluctant reader is push and push.  As with most things, the more you push, the more they will pull away.  Most kids will find their groove eventually so don’t stress too much if they are just not interested.  You may want them to sit down and read for half an hour every day but for now, they may just have other things they’d rather do.  They usually come ‘round.

2. Model good behaviour.

We all know that if kids see people they look up to modelling certain behaviours (good or bad) they will emulate.  So show them that you enjoy reading – especially if you’re a dad!  Sit down together and have a quiet read.  Take them to libraries, bookshops and festivals.  Leave books lying around and show them that reading can be enjoyable, exciting and interesting.  Read with and to them – they may not admit it but (as many teachers know) even 10 year olds still love to be read to.  So find something you will both enjoy and read a bit each night.

3. All reading is good reading!

So often I hear parents and teachers say “he only wants to read comics, how can I get him to read a ‘real’ book?” All reading is good reading so if they are interested in newspapers, comics, cook books, gaming magazines or blogs, let them read and don’t diminish its value.  We don’t read Austen and Dickens all the time, so why should we expect kids to only read high literature? Use the ipad – they may not read a hard copy book but they may read it on the screen, and there are some great interactive book apps out there.  The trick is to then use these interests to move on to novels.  Which brings me to…

4. Find a topic that interests them.

If they love LEGO, try giving them one of the LEGO chapter books.  If they’re loving a zombie video game, try a novel about zombies.  Was there a movie they loved these holidays?  There’s a pretty safe bet that there is a book version or something similar.  Find whatever topic it is that they are interested in and let that inform the books you choose for them.  Or better still…

5. Let them choose.

Choice is a very powerful thing.  It can also be a bit overwhelming, so perhaps present the child with 5 or 6 books you think they might like and let them choose the one that interests them most.

6. Look at bestsellers and ask for help.

Bestsellers are that for a reason, don’t shy away from something just because it is popular.  Diary of A Wimpy Kid has sold millions of copies around the world because kids love it, so the law of averages says that it’s pretty likely that your kid will enjoy it to.  Your friendly bookseller (*ahem*) or librarian are on the front lines and know what kids enjoy so don’t be afraid to ask for suggestions.  Ask other parents and your child’s friends.  Kids love to receive recommendations from people they know.

Next post we will give you some book selections that may just work for your kids.

Some songs come out of the ground just like a potato. Others you’ve got to make out of the things you find. Your mother’s pool cue. You dad’s army buddy. You sister’s wrist-watch. That type of thing. You’ll be surprised what you find if you’re resourceful.

Picture books, or the ones I have written, are like Waits’ potatoes. Ruby learns To Swim I pretty much wrote in my head while I was sitting poolside, watching my daughter Ruby learn to swim. 10 Green Geckos came about when I was half asleep on my couch in my home in Bali looking at the geckos cavort on the ceiling. And the inspiration for Yobbos Do Yoga was when some yobbos moved in next door when I was living in Sydney at a time when I was doing a lot of yoga.

Novels, however, are much more complex beasts. I could say that Deadly Unna? was inspired by my childhood, growing up in small country town  in South Australia, playing footy with Indigenous kids. While this is absolutely true, it does not really explain how that novel came about, the complex range of thoughts and emotions that contributed to its genesis - Waits’ pool cue, army buddy, wrist-watch.

So that brings me to The Debt. To be honest I can’t remember the exact moment when I came up with the idea that I’d quite like to write a series. I think some series start of as a single book, and from that seed grows more books. Not The Debt – it was always going to be series, and it was always going to be 6 books. I have an aversion to odd numbers – I will always buy four apples or six apples, never three or five - so six sounded like a good solid number.

I’ve been living in Bali for the last couple of years, and I work out of a place called The Canggu Club, which is right next to the Canggu School where my kids go.

Bali is a great place for a writer – it’s much cheaper than Australia to live (actually, so is most of the world now!). And because you have help, all those hours I used to spend doing housework, mowing the lawn, etc I now spend writing.

Every afternoon, after school, the kids hang out in the café, with their laptops, and the iPads, and their smartphones. I look at them and I think:  there’s my competition! And pretty daunting competition it is, too.

What’d a few words compared to all this technology?

So I was determined that The Debt  would be - excuse the clichés! – non-stop, fast-paced, action-packed. I didn’t want to give kids any excuse to stop reading and pick up an iPad.

But I also wanted The Debt to be about something. Not, of course, in the same way that Deadly Unna is about something. The Debt is thriller, a genre book, after all. But that doesn’t mean it can’t have some  smarts about it, something to say about the world.

Let’s go back to our original question: where do ideas come from? One of the great truisms of writing: write about what you know. As somebody who has been a professional novelist for more than fifteen years I am not unfamiliar with debt! So the idea of being born into debt , as is Dom the main character in this series, is an incredibly powerful one. It needed to be: it had to sustain 6 books, over 400,000 words.

Where do ideas come from?

www.ideas.com?

Coffee?

Actually, these answers are as good as any. Because it doesn’t really matter where ideas come from, what’s important is what they inspire, the final product. And if that final product gives kids no excuse to stop reading then my job, as an author, is done.

When the notion for Diary of a Wimpy Kid popped into my head in 1998, I was about as far from a children’s book author as I could get. I had a criminal justice degree and was working as a medical software developer with a dream of becoming a newspaper cartoonist. After suffering through a few years of rejection letters from various comics syndicates, I realized I needed to take a different approach. I decided I’d try to write a book and use it as a sort of Trojan Horse for delivering my comics.

What’s more, my cartoons weren’t intended for children. I’ve always seen comics as a medium for adults, with kids coming along for the ride because of the funny pictures. But my publisher had a different take on my material, and before I knew it, I was a children’s author.

Having come into the writing profession sideways, I didn’t have a basic knowledge of the industry, nor did I have a good understanding of my now-target audience. My biggest surprise came early on, when I found out that my potential readership(i.e., boys) didn’t, strictly speaking, like to read. The “reluctant reader” phenomenon was completely alien to me at the time. I say all of this to make it clear that I’m not an expert when it comes to child literacy. I’m not an educator, nor do I consider myself to be a particularly good writer. So when I answer the question “What should kids be reading?,” I do so as a regular person who just so happens to be a former kid.

Either by design or by accident, my parents turned me into an avid reader. My mother was an early childhood educator, so picture books filled our home. Before I could read on my own, I’d flip through the pages and try to imagine what must be happening to Swimmy or the terrifying beasts in Where the Wild Things Are. My father took it upon himself to teach me to read by the time I entered kindergarten, using the Dick and Jane canon as a syllabus. (In fact, I think those books motivated me to learn to read quickly, because I wanted to escape the strange universe of that brother-sister pair at the first possible opportunity.)

When the training wheels came off, I gobbled up books, leaning toward the large-format Dr. Seuss books like The Sneetches and I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today. Eventually I graduated to Shel Silverstein’s poetry compilations, A Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Seuss and Silverstein shared characteristics that spoke to me at that age; a clean line and a wicked sense of humor.

Finally, I found my literary nirvana in a bureau drawer by my father’s bedside. He had amassed a stash of comic books dating back to his own childhood and jealously protected them, safe from the peanut butter and jelly-smeared hands of his four kids. It was here that I discovered such marvels as “Two-Fisted Tales,” “Little Lulu,” and “Sad Sack.” But when I dug deeper, I found the real treasure: a pile of “Donald Duck” and “Uncle Scrooge” comics written by Carl Barks, which feature the best storytelling I’ve ever read, bar none.

I spent years ferreting my father’s comic books into my room, two or three at a time so he didn’t notice they were missing. The combination of the artwork, the writing, and the feeling that I was doing something that was forbidden left a deep and lasting mark on me. I didn’t know it then, but I know it now: I had no choice but to become a cartoonist. Eventually my shared interest with my father surfaced, and once everything was out in the open, comics created a lasting bond between us. The comics my father read as a kid were now being reprinted, and every week a freshly minted Carl Barks masterpiece arrived at the local 7-Eleven. Exciting times.

What’s more, a fresh new wave of cartoons, including “The Far Side,” “Bloom County,” and “Calvin and Hobbes,” began to appear in the newspaper, breathing new life into the comics page and providing me with a steady diet of daily content. If my fate hadn’t been sealed up to this point, now it was all but certain.

Of course, an eager reader can’t survive on comics alone. Sometimes your mind wants to paint its own picture and not have things so spelled out. So when it came to novels, I turned to Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary, who told masterful stories using ordinary materials. Eventually, my adolescent brain needed something a bit more outlandish, and I turned to fantasy. The works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Piers Anthony, and Terry Brooks rounded out my middle and high school years.

Knowing what I know now, I should consider it a miracle that as a boy, I came to reading naturally and read without prompting. There were no 15-minutes-a-night-of-reading mandates in my house. If anything, my mother had to tell me to put the book down, turn off the lights, and go to sleep.

Fast forward to the publication of Diary of a Wimpy Kid in 2007, and my first exposure to the “reluctant reader” phenomenon. At the time, my two boys were four and two, and given the flood of emails I received from parents who said their kids refused to read anything but my books, I braced myself for the worst. I thought it was a certainty that my boys would need to be prodded, cajoled, and maybe bribed into reading. And then the unexpected happened when my older son turned eight. In one remarkable summer, he read not only the entire Harry Potter series but the Percy Jackson series as well. Soon, we found that we couldn’t keep up with his reading appetite, and he can devour a book a night. My younger son is following his example, perhaps to keep up with his older sibling, but perhaps not. I don’t know how this happened and I certainly don’t take credit for it. Perhaps it was because we had plenty of books in our home. Perhaps it’s because I’m an author, and my sons have been exposed to plenty of bookstores and a culture of reading. Or maybe it has nothing to do with me at all.

As parents, my wife and I are just along for the ride. We do our best to respond to our kids’ interests and feed their appetites. My older son can’t get enough of stories about warrior animals, and my younger son can’t get enough of stories about sports. The way I see it, our goal as parents is to respond to their interests without judgment and to be ready with a new book in hand. The What Kids Are Reading report may serve as a handy resource for finding new titles to interest the reader(s) in your life.

My answer to the question “What should kids be reading?” is simple: Whatever captures their interest, in whatever format. Because kids’ interests will shape the people they’ll become.

Foreword by Jeff Kinney from the annual What Kids Are Reading  report written by Prof. Keith Topping of Dundee University and published by Renaissance Learning. 

Make shared enjoyment your priority, and leave the teaching to the teachers.

Dr Pam Macintyre teaches language and literacy and children's and young adult literature at The University of Melbourne. She is the editor of the quarterly review journal Viewpoint. She has been a judge for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Aurealis Awards and CBCA Book of the Year Awards, and is co-author of Knowing Readers: Unlocking the Pleasures of Reading.

And then I say to her, “how about we do your readers?” and she slumps in a heap on the couch. “But can’t I…”, “I just need to…”, “first can we…” all the things she can do to procrastinate her way around reading what are, let’s be honest, extremely boring little books.

So I say “let’s have a story instead”. And we do. We snuggle on the couch with Pamela Allen, Jane Godwin, Paul Jennings, Ursula Dubosarsky, Leigh Hobbs, and all our other favourite authors. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. We can easily swim through a sea of stories, picking out words we know, noticing that sometimes the same words appear on the page many times, talking about what an ‘exclamation’ is, seeing whether the picture really matches what is being said, and generally having a whale of a time. Even the big grade three can’t help but get seduced into joining us when she sees the pleasure we are having and the ‘exclamations’ of our own that we are making.

And so story time goes in homes all around the world, I imagine. Eventually the readers get read, but not before the ‘real’ reading has taken place. And the seed of a lifelong love affair with words has been planted and nurtured…

Many young adult (YA) novels deal with sophisticated and complex themes; themes that challenge us all no matter what our age or generation. Themes of love, relationships, death, family and the future of the world are commonly written about in both YA and Adult novels because, let’s face it, they’re the BIGGIES for most of us!

Perhaps there is a simplicity and frankness around the approach to these themes in a YA novel that makes them more accessible to us all.

Recently publishers and booksellers have talked about a new genre called ‘New Adult’ which sits somewhere between YA and Adult. It is what we knew as the ‘cross-over’ novel previously - the novel with grown up themes and more explicitly portrayed themes. But is that all a bit redundant now?  A review in Saturday’s Age newspaper (13/4/13) of Song in the Dark says: “In the book’s simple style and sympathetic representation of Paul, I can see why its’ been classified as ‘young adult’, but it is graphically squalid in its detail”.  I find this a little offensive and patronising (on behalf of Young Adults) as it assumes that they are unable to digest the bleakness of the story. And yet we expect them read and digest books depicting extraordinary bleakness in writers such as Dickens by the time they are in their senior years of school. 

Series like Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games made the blurred lines of readership age acceptable. Adults were happy to be seen reading these series and genuinely enjoyed the experience. This broader readership in fact, accounted for them being the bestselling books we’ve ever seen on a global scale.

And in turn, I think it is great that young adults have a stepping stone to adult books where once upon a time, there was little to extend readers beyond the age of 13/14 that wasn’t published for adults.

So, perhaps, ultimately, what matters to the reader, regardless of their age, is the quality of the writing and the possibility of a mighty good story. There are numerous examples (see below) of books that buck the age categorisation system and have been widely read by adults.

 I suggest as adults we embrace the opportunity to expand, and delight in, the repertoire of stories available to us.

The books I’d include in this category would be:

The Piper’s Son – Melina Marchetta

Beautiful Creatures – Karci Garcia and Margaret stohl

The Fault in our Stars – John Green

The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Mark Haddon

Eragon – Christopher Paolini

Mortal Instruments series – Cassandra Clare

Sea Hearts - Margo Lanagan

The Diviners - Libba Bray

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

Beautiful Malice - Rebecca James

How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff

Vampire Academy - Richelle Mead

Before I Die - Jenny Downham

The Boy In the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

If I Stay - Gayle Forman

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

Young children enjoy language for its rhyme, rhythm and playfulness, and the patterning of language is important to successful reading, so books such as The Elephant and the Bad Baby by Elfrida Vipont and Raymond Briggs with its ‘rumpeta, rumpeta, rumpeta  all down the road’ will invite spontaneous  joining in with the rhythmic, repetitive phrase.

Who can resist the magic of Where the Wild Things Are with its evocative language of ‘roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws’?

Dr Seuss’s appealing language, clever, delightful stories that never talk down to children deserve a central place in a child’s encounters with books.  If you hear your child reciting ‘I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am’ then you know they enjoy language and story. That is the greatest gift you can give them for their future schooling.

Dr Pam Macintyre teaches language and literacy and children's and young adult literature at The University of Melbourne. She is the editor of the quarterly review journal Viewpoint. She has been a judge for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Aurealis Awards and CBCA Book of the Year Awards, and is co-author of Knowing Readers: Unlocking the Pleasures of Reading.

We aren’t going to hit you over the head with why books are important to the kids in your lives. We know you are well aware that reading will extend your child’s vocabulary and literacy skills, widen their eyes to a world outside the one that they live in, enhance their imaginations, make them better writers and storytellers, allow them to be better thinkers and to escape the world they live in … even if it is just for ten minutes.

What we’re really interested in is how old were you when you first escaped with a good book?

I think I was probably eight when I first imagined myself on an Enid Blyton type adventure, and around twelve or thirteen when I completely immersed myself in the friendship and then relationship issues that Judy Blume presented me with. And unashamedly I admit to reading Danielle Steele in my early twenties in one hit – turning the light off at 3am with red eyes from the floods of tears!

What were you reading when you escaped the real world as a young person?

I believe this is the essence of what we want for our kids – of course we want them to enjoy the educative advantages but don’t we also want them to have the benefit of being ‘lost in a book’?

Teachers, librarians, publishers and parents have spent a lot of energy on finding the right books to offer boys, to pique and maintain their interest. We have observed an influx of high-interest, low level, action packed, adventure-based books on the market and many of these you will find on the site and there is no doubt that these are terrific and serve their purpose well. They are well written and packaged to appeal to boys who might otherwise be inclined to spend time on the latest gadget or kicking the football around.

But here’s what I think… for what it’s worth…

Relax!

Forcing boys to spend time reading is of course, the worst thing any of us can do. 

Yes, find books that will be of interest; yes find books that are short (short story collections are great); yes find books that appeal to their interests and yes, spend time reading those books to them and importantly, make sure that if you are reading to any child, it is at a time that suits you both!

But be careful of making it all a bit tiresome or a chore. Try sharing D Mag or K Zone with them if they show absolutely no interest in books. You will find great reviews for books in these magazines and they may be more interested in the books if they’ve read about them there than if you have made the choice on their behalf.
Choice is important and the most ideal situation is to have the child choose the book for themselves so allow them to go into a bookshop and make a selection or to go online and redeem a gift voucher.

Michael Wagner – author of the Maxx Rumble series amongst other great books for boys – says:

I reckon there are some people (and let's face it, boys are overrepresented in what I'm about to say) who are just 'hard cases' - they're just never going to be big readers, and they'll probably never read for pleasure. Pressuring those kids into loving reading is probably counterproductive. It's likely to make them, and you, feel bad about yourselves - you'll both feel vaguely like you've failed. That's exactly the opposite of what we're all after. 

So, I agree with this - supportively encourage them to try any sorts of reading material they like, try to enthuse them when it feels natural to do so, but don't force the issue. Just relax. You never know, it just mightn't be their time to discover reading quite yet. 

Having said that, I've got a little message for dads. You may not quite realise this (I know I didn't), but you are the biggest role model in the lives of your sons. They admire you and look up to you and are guided by you - whether you know it or not. So, please, read to them and read to yourself in front of them. Not all the time, but sometimes. Not for hours a day, but a few minutes here and there. Do it just enough to make it completely normal for blokes to have a book in their hands. Your sons are watching you, and they want to be like you, so, you know, show them that reading books is completely normal for us blokes. 

What books or series have you found work for reluctant boy readers?

We can help you find good books for Boys, or try searching by 'Theme' on our Homepage.

Here are some examples

Transport , Pirates,  Adventure, Dinosaurs, Myths & Legends ..

So of course I’m ecstatic that The Kids’ Bookshop has burst upon the universe. I wish Graham and Erin the very best of luck and hope that good parents fall upon their knees in gratitude, with their cheque books open. Cheque books?  Cheque Books!  What are they? Ok, you can tell I’m old but I hope once again, that you get my drift!

Mem Fox