How to use this Page

On 6th October I went to the beautiful West Yorkshire town of Ilkley to attend a presentation by picture book author and illustrator Jessica Souhami as part of The Children’s Bookshow, which … Continue reading ... →

The Children’s Bookshow is an organisation that arranges an annual tour across England of children’s authors, poets and illustrators. It’s a fantastic opportunity to take entire classes to see an author, poet or illustrator live, with the added bonus that if you buy tickets to one of the Children’s Bookshow events, you will have the opportunity to book a free school workshop with an author/poet/illustrator. If you are successful in bidding for a free school workshop the Children’s Bookshow will gift the attending children a book to keep.

This year Bernardo Atxaga, Patrick Benson, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Benji Davies, Daniel Morden, Marie-Aude Murail, Catherine Rayner, Rachel Rooney, Michael Rosen, Jessica Souhami and Kit Wright are taking to the stage, everywhere from London to Leicester and Stafford to Snape Maltings. Events take place from September to November, but if you want to be sure of places for the kids you teach and in with a chance of winning a free author/poet/illustrator workshop, early booking is strongly advised.

Booking is now open and you can find full details at The Children’s Bookshow website: http://www.thechildrensbookshow.com/arts-award.html

One of this year’s participants in the The Children’s Bookshow is Rachel Rooney, shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award. In conjunction with The Children’s Bookshow Rachel is running a super poetry competition for kids (9 and under, and 9-11). You can find out full details here:
http://www.thechildrensbookshow.com/competition.html

This year the Hindu festival of Diwali is from Nov. 5-9.   Today marks its beginning.  I first heard about the festival from watching a National Film Board film called Lights for Gita in their Talespinners Collection (a series of short films for 5-9 year olds.)  In this story, eight year old Gita, who lives in Montreal is excited about celebrating Diwali in her new country, but something unexpected happens — an ice storm knocks out power in the city.  What will Gita do?  Will this holiday celebrated with lights now be ruined for  her?  Check out the DVD by ordering it, or finding it at your local library!

PaperTigers with its focus on India this issue has a number of book suggestions about Diwali given in a revisited Personal Views article by Chad Stephenson.  Pooja Makhijani also refers to Diwali in her Personal Views article entitled “A String of Bright Lights.”  She mentions her Diwali book picks in a post she did for the children’s lit blog Chicken Spaghetti awhile back.  In her post, she mentions how in northern India, Diwali is a celebration of the homecoming of Ram whose story can be found in her suggested picture book title Rama and the Demon King: An Ancient Tale from India by Jessica Souhami.  I found Souhami’s book at my local library; it was a bilingual one in Somali and English!   The story of Rama is found in the Hindu text The Ramayana which is a 24, 000 couplet poem written in Sanskrit by Valmiki around 300 B.C.   My daughter’s view of this ancient story of Rama was rather quaint; she said she liked stories where the good guy (Rama) and a bad guy (Ravanna) fight it out over a woman (Sita)  — although in this case, the bad guy is terrifying ten-headed demon!

Hope you have a happy Diwali this year!  Poetry Friday is hosted by JoAnn at Teaching Authors.

It’s an understood fact that toddlers, when placed in large groups, respond to only a few things the poor librarian schmuck sitting in front of them might care to do during a storytime.  The poor librarian schmuck (or PLS) is then faced with several options.  I cannot vouch for everyone, but usually this means just one thing: singing.  Toddlers like it for some reason.  Even if you cannot hold much in the way of a tune they are inclined to perk up their ears and coo if they detect that you are engaging in some kind of a rhythm.

So it is that I premier for you today my first Storytime Suggestion with . . . singing.  Erg.  It’s not that I think I have a particularly bad voice or anything.  It’s just that singing for a large group of people who drool is much easier than in a room adjacent to where my husband is working on a screenplay.  In my mind, singing for one is always harder than singing for many.  So you will find me a chastened librarian in this week’s video.  A quieter Bird.

Fortunately, this week’s book is the best of its kind.  Behold the power and glory that is . . . Old MacDonald.

I noticed that in my last video I resembled nothing so much as a wet duck.  I have done my utmost to alleviate that problem.

Name: Old MacDonald
Author/Illustrator: Jessica Souhami
In Print?: Not unless you live in England.  You can buy plenty of used copies, though.
ISBN: 978-0531094938
Best For: Toddler Storytime

Storytime Suggestions:

The trick to this book is that it’s a surefire winner.  So if you have storytimes where there’s a danger that things might get a bit wild and you need something to win back their attention, consider this your secret weapon.

Now there are plenty of Old MacDonald books out there, but this is by far my favorite.  Why?  Several reasons.  I suspect that Ms. Souhami may have tested this book out on the wee ones, just to see how long she could prolong the song.  A lot of Old MacDonald books do too many animals.  The kids are willing to humor you for about four, but if you get to six or seven their attentions wane.  This book has the four animals plus the unexpected alien.

But really, it’s the lift-the-flap aspect that sets this apart.  When I lift each one of those flaps it gives the kids the chance to say what the animal is in an instant before I sing it.  Mind you, toddlers are sort of out of it.  They don’t always quite understand what I’m doing.  Preschoolers are way more on the ball, but I like using this one in toddler storytime because even if they don’t participate their nannies and parents will, and that gives them a clue as to how to act.  It makes for good prompting.

Best of all, this book has the unexpected gag that gets a surprise laugh out of parents.  You’ll note that I just sorta open that last flap without a pause in the singing.  That way they’re doubly surprised by both the content and the fact that I just plunged right into the unexpected.  The kids sometimes eye the alien with that look that says, “Is that scary?  Should I cry or something?” but since the subsequent lines involve me singing “Beep Beep” over and over, they’d have to be pr