ALIA Children's and Youth Services (NSW)

Pre-Bookweek Extravaganza 2002

Book Week: Book Feast
17-23 August

The 2002 Pre-Bookweek Extravaganza was another successful 'brainstorming' event, with lots of great ideas for using the shortlisted books for this year's Children's Book of the Year awards. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of everyone who attended on the night and shared their inspiration. We owe a particular vote of thanks to Cameron Morley for taking notes at great speed all night so that we could compile this list.

Best wishes for Children's Book Week 2002!
The CYS(NSW) committee

Early childhood | Picture book of the year | Younger readers | Older readers | Eve Pownall Award for non-fiction | Displays, song and competition ideas | Links | Copyright permission

Early childhood

Where does Thursday go? Brian, Janeen; Stephen Michael King (Margaret Hamilton Books, Scholastic Australia)

Themes: birthdays, time, quests, night.

Activities:

• Pass the parcel
• Use black paper + paint and glitter to make a night sky
• Memory game: what was on the page?

Passing On Dumbleton, Mike; Terry Denton (Random House Australia)

Themes: Grandmas; passing on kindnesses; memories especially of the seaside and fishing

Activities:

• Cutting out and colouring fish
• Write a memory on a paper fish cut-out
• Fishing line with magnets and fish with paperclips: Cut out fish shapes and add a paperclip to each fish, Make a fishing line from a piece of dowling or skewer (not the sharp ended ones), attaching a piece of fishing line with a horseshoe magnet tied on the end.
• Pair with other books about grandparents eg. Shoes from Grandpa Mem Fox
• Just Grandpa and me by Sally Grindley and Jason Cockcroft
• Develop the passing on theme asking kids to draw what grandmas has passed on to them. Discussing or acting out stories about kids and grandmas (and grandpas).
• Remembering grandparents sayings.

Let's Get a Pup! Graham, Bob (Walker Books Australia)

Themes: puppies, dogs, pet death, loneliness, friendship.

Activities:

• Readers theatre with different readers taking each "role". (Warringah Library)
• Paper dog puppets: (template).
• 3D display: portray the rescue centre by piling boxes on one another and putting a stuffed toy dog in each box (photograph: Lee Castledine, Bankstown Library).
• Make dog headbands: (templates: Judy Drayton, Auburn Library and Lee Castledine, Bankstown Library)
• Get each child to draw a dog in a cage and put them together to make a wall display of the rescue centre.
• Start storytime sessions with a toy dog hidden in a bag and ask the children to guess what you have inside.
• Pair the story with other preschool books about dogs eg. Josh and Josh and the ducks by Andrew and Janet McLean.
• Song: "How much is that doggie in the window?"
• The Pocket dogs (dress up and props) Margaret Wild
  
  
• Polly Molly Woof Woof (audience participation book) By David Lloyd

Baby Bilby, Where Do You Sleep? Oliver, Narelle (Lothian Books)

Themes: night and day, sleep, baby animals, camouflage.

Activities:

• Storytime themed: bed and sleep stories.
• Prop/activity: make beds out of shoe boxes. Decorate with colour, cloth etc
• Use Australian animal glove puppets at storytime. (Ready made puppets available for purchase at The Gardens Shop, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney (02 9231 8125)

Picture Book of the Year

An Ordinary Day Greder, Armin; Libby Gleeson (Scholastic Press, Scholastic Australia)

Themes: Boredom, Imagination, Silence, Being ignored or invisible, Fish

Activities:

• Hunt for the patterns/themes hidden in the pictures:
  • motifs: plate, picture, handle on the walking stick, calendar, on truck
  • real: goldfish
  • surreal: buses, bus driver
  • Star earring, moon hair clip and sun motif on t-shirt
  • Ladder in stocking, ladder, snake on bag, snakes and ladders tie
• Make large collage pictures out of newsprint (grey) and add a coloured item (eg. the red balloon).
• Make a list of reasons why you haven't done your homework.

Bibliography:
There are a number of other picture books that you could use to compare unusual/surreal artwork:

Agee, John The incredible painting of Felix Clousseau (Faber and Faber, 1988)

Legge, David Bamboozled (Scholastic, 1994)

Wheatley, Nadia Luke's way of looking (Hodder Headline, 1999)

Horrible Harriet Hobbs, Leigh (Allen and Unwin)

Themes: Friendship, Starting at a new school, Manners/behaviour

Activities:

• Make a "Pin the smile on Harriet" game
• Harriet masks with tongues that poke out (party blowers)
• Use Babette Cole's "The bad book of good manners" to start off a discussion about what good and bad manners are.
• Make a ridiculous guide to good/bad manners for the library.
• Have a staff member act out the story as it is being read.
• Horrible Harriet's cooking lesson: get audience to hold props eg plastic bugs, frogs, socks etc, read up until HH attends to her chores, stop and act out a cookery lesson: HH's horrible cookery lesson, before resuming story. Wear a chef's hat and get the kids to add stuff into the bowl (bugs, frog, red cordial as bat's blood), mix together and pretend to feed it to a parent or teacher.
• Horrible Harriet board game (see questions)

My Dog by John Heffernan; Andrew McLean (Margaret Hamilton)

Themes: Ethnic cleansing, War, Family, Loneliness, child soldiers, kids touched by war

Activities:

• Display a map of Bosnia
• Discuss children at war around the world (issues: health, education, child soldiers, losing family members, etc.)
• Display a map showing places around the world where there is currently war.
• Use pictures from the UNICEF website to explore children at war. http://www.unicef.org/voy/meeting/war/

Bibliography and websites:

• Stories related to wartime (compiled by Neutral Bay Public School NSW)
  http://www.neutralbay-p.schools.nsw.edu.au/library/bibwar.htm
• Children and war
  http://www.oneworld.org/child_rights/ch_war.html
• Looking at war and conflict in the classroom
  http://www.oneworld.org/ibt/ibt_war_classroom.html
• UNICEF Voices of Youth: Children and War
  http://www.unicef.org/voy/meeting/war/warhome.html

Papunya School Book of Country and History Papunya School Publishing Committee (Allen and Unwin)

Themes: Indigenous Australian history, settlement, exploration, maps, Indigenous culture.

Activities:

• Collect maps that tell Australia's history: indigenous, explorers, topographical, from space.
• Draw maps of the school/library/home.
• Dot painting as an activity.
• Send postcards to the classes at Papunya School.
  Papunya School
  Via Alice Springs (PMB77), Via PMB 125
  Northern Territory, Australia

In My Backyard by Spudvilas, Anne; Nette Hilton (Lothian Books)

Themes: difference between living in the city/country, noisiness of city, city as a natural environment, tribes, Cityscape, Traffic

Activities:

• Play a sound effects game using Bingo rules. Use sound effects tape or CDs, or tape city/country sounds for yourself (use sound effects eg. Sirens, jackhammer, jungle birds, tigers, planes overhead etc)
• Contrast the cityscape with the jungle words (eg. River, rainforest)
• Compare city life with life in a rainforest (use a video or books)
• Investigate the lifestyle of a tribe (eg. New Guinea, Africa, Amazon basin)
• Make skyscrapers out of cardboard.
• Make a construction site display: get props from council depot eg orange mesh and wooden flourescent barriers.

The Red Tree Tan, Shaun (Lothian Books)

Themes: feelings, depression, sadness, hope.

Activities:

• Make a worries box (with a mouth on top): each child writes or draws something that they're worried about and the worries box munches them up.
• Make a red tree to decorate your library, each child cuts out a leaf and writes something that makes them happy on it. The leaves are then added to the tree.

Younger readers

Joseph Anna Fienberg and Kim Gamble (Allen and Unwin)

Themes: The Bible story of Joseph, who believed in his dreams and trusted his destiny.

Activities:

• Keep a dream journal.
• Illustrate your dreams.
• Write a plan for your "destiny" over the next five years.

Sarindi and the Lucky Bird Janine M. Fraser and Kim Gamble (Angus and Robertson, HarperCollinsPublishers)

Themes:

Activities:
Make a shadow puppet theatre

• white cloth on a frame (bordered with batik if available makes it look very authentic).
• cut puppet characters from cardboard. Mount on sticks.
• use overhead projector behind the sheet, aimed at the sheet for the light source.
• coloured cellophane on the shadow puppets will show in colour on the cloth
• read the story or scene and use the puppets to act it out

A different sort of real: the diary of Charlotte McKenzie, Melbourne 1918-1919 Kerry Greenwood (Scholastic Press, Scholastic Australia)

Themes: First world war, influenza, nursing, family.

Activities:

• Collect old newspaper articles about the influenza epidemic.
• Research diseases that are now rare in western countries: are they still active in some places around the world?

Jamil's shadow Christine Harris (Puffin Books, Penguin Books Australia)

Themes: Hope, friendship, loss, family.

Activities:

• Draw silhouettes of each student using an overhead projector. Fill the outline with words and pictures of things that are important to each student.

My Dog by John Heffernan; Andrew McLean (Margaret Hamilton)

Themes: Ethnic cleansing, War, Family, Loneliness, child soldiers, kids touched by war

Activities:

• Display a map of Bosnia
• Discuss "children at war" around the world (issues: health, education, child soldiers, losing family members, etc.)
• Display a map showing places around the world where there is currently war.
• Use pictures from the UNICEF website to explore children at war. http://www.unicef.org/voy/meeting/war/

Bibliography and websites:

• Stories related to wartime (compiled by Neutral Bay Public School NSW)
  http://www.neutralbay-p.schools.nsw.edu.au/library/bibwar.htm
• Children and war
  http://www.oneworld.org/child_rights/ch_war.html
• Looking at war and conflict in the classroom
  http://www.oneworld.org/ibt/ibt_war_classroom.html
• UNICEF Voices of Youth: Children and War
  http://www.unicef.org/voy/meeting/war/warhome.html

Have Courage, Hazel Green! Odo Hirsch (Allen and Unwin)

Themes: rules, prejudice, friendship, bullying, exclusion, truth, fairness, community

Activities:

• Explore the 'communities' that students participate in: school, cultural, religious, sporting.
• Brainstorm words that equate with 'tolerance'. Ask each student to choose a word and write their own definition of it.
• Write acrostic poems about FAIRNESS or COMMUNITY.
• Create a comparison poem. For example: 'If fairness were food, it would look/taste/feel/sound/smell like...' 'If fairness were a plant, it would look/taste/feel/sound/smell like...'

Older readers

Useful review sites:

• Sue Lacey's library page
  http://members.ozemail.com.au/~slacey/library.htm
• Focus on Fiction:: WA dept of Ed.
  http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~l.orman/teenage.htm
• Reviews by Australian Students:
  http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/ozreading/yara/main_pages/cbcshortlist.htm

Finding Grace by Alyssa Brugman (Allen and Unwin)
Sixteen-year-old Rachel takes a live-in position as a caregiver for a brain-damaged woman called Grace. Grace has a lovely house, two greedy sisters, and a box of mementos that Rachel looks through, trying to get to know Grace as she was before her accident. This sounds rather morbid but it's actually a very funny book, mainly due to Rachel's wry self-depreciating narration. It's a real gem of a book. (April)

Internet sites:
http://www.allen-unwin.com.au/authors/apHornim.asp
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~l.orman/teenage.htm

Magazine reviews:

• ABR August 2001 issue 233 page 62 by Margot Hillel
• Reading Time Vol 45 No 4 page 24
• Magpies Vol 16 No 4 page 37

Forest by Sonya Hartnett (Viking)
In Sonya Hartnett's Forest (Viking), three dumped cats make their way through the bush. Against other forest creatures, they become masters of scorn and abuse, remaining cat-like, independent and courageous. (Stella Lees)

Magazine reviews:

• Reading Time Vol 45 No 4 page 27
• Magpies Vol 16 No 4 page 39
• Viewpoint Spring 2001 page 33

Yoss by Odo Hirsch ( Allen and Unwin)
Odo Hirsch's first novel for adults of all ages, tells the dramatic, haunting tale of an innocent village boy's encounter with the corrupt life of a mediaeval town.

Internet sites:
http://www.allen-unwin.com.au/authors/apHirsch.asp
http://www.nla.gov.au/servlet/ozlife/search
Matthews, Stephen Adult aims, child-like quality, Canberra Times, Panorama p.18, 23/06/2001
Dempsey, Dianne Oversold, but 'Yoss' sticks, Sunday Age, Agenda p.11, 01/07/2001
Pierce, Peter Ways and meanings, Bulletin with newsweek, p. 62-63, 28/8/2001

Magazine reviews:

• Reading time Vol 45 No 4 page 27

Mahalia by Joanne Horniman (Allen and Unwin)
A lyrical, gentle and insightful novel about a single teenage father caring for his baby, while still searching for direction in his own life

Internet sites:
http://www.allen-unwin.com.au/authors/apHornim.asp
http://www.nla.gov.au/servlet/ozlife/search
Matthews, Stephen Countering stereotypes, Canberra Times, Panorama p.17, 19/05/2001

Magazine reviews:

• Reading time Vol 45 No 3 page 44

Jinx by Margaret Wild (Allen and Unwin)
Jen is desperate for life to begin, but her first love relationships are so devastating that she believes she is jinxed.

Internet sites:
http://www.allen-unwin.com.au/authors/apWild.asp
http://www.bendigo.latrobe.edu.au/conf/chlitc/Reviews/Jinx.htm

Magazine reviews:

• Reading time Vol 46 No 1 page 44
• Magpies Vol 17 No 1 page 40
• Viewpoint Summer 2001 page 43

When Dogs Cry by Markus Zusak (Pan Macmillan)

Internet sites:
http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/pandemonium/markus.htm

Magazine reviews:

• ABR March 2002 issue 239 by Matt Sullivan
• Magpies Vol16 No 5 page 42

Eve Pownall Award for non-fiction

Jirrbal, Rainforest Dreamtime Stories by Maisie Barlow (Yarrcali) and Michael Anning (Boiyool) illus.

Activities:

• Makes cards with picture of an Australian animal on one side, and its aboriginal name on the other. Read the story and then show the cards. Have the audience guess the animal using the aboriginal name.
• Get kids to find out a bit of their family stories to tell the rest of the group.
• Draw a picture of your life: what your world is like: eg draw your house, your friends, your suburb, local shops, playground on a map.
• As I was (action story) Original story from "Down Amongst the Gum Leaves by Ruth Atkinson. (Cassy Carmody: Bankstown Library)

Eyes in the Dark Dale, Kim (Lothian Books)

Themes: Australian animals especially nocturnal, their habits and behaviours, animal eyes.

Activities:

• Who am I competitions: display part of the Australian animal: see if the kids can guess: all the right answers can be drawn for a prize
• Display the eyes like in the book and again see if the kids can guess
• Young kids: colour and decorate a particular animal from the story
• Limerick competition describing one of the animals in the story
• Create animal masks: then have a masquerade party to judge the best entry
• Who am I: competition but about each of the Book Week titles
• School classes: give each child or group of children a character/animal from the book and like charades they have to perform the animal and get their class mates to guess who they are
• Draw animal footprints

(Templates for animals and their footprints)

Displays:

• Year of the outback: tie in theme: all the habitats deserts, rainforests etc
• Animals can be displayed as silhouettes as used in the first part of the book

Bibiliography:

• When it is night, when it is day: Jenny Tyers
• Animals awake: Felicity Nottingham
• Velvet the flying gecko: Jill Morris
• Baby Bilby where do you sleep: Narelle Oliver
• One woolly wombat: Kerry Argent and Rod Trinca
• What am I: Kim Dale
• The wombat's party: Michael Dugan
• Possum magic: Mem Fox
• Wombat divine: Mem Fox
• Bush baby: Tricia Oktober
• Bush tails: Tricia Oktober
• Koala's Halloween (stick puppet props) From Down Amongst the Gum Leaves by Ruth Atkinson
• Hist! (readers theatre) By C J Dennis

Soldier Boy: The True Story of Jim Martin, the Youngest Anzac Anthony Hill (Penguin Books Australia)

Performance idea: Interview with a book (Fairfield Library)

Props; two chairs facing each other, side on to the audience

Interviewer: Today we have the pleasure of having a different interview. At this special time we see interviews of authors, but tonight we are going directly to the reason why we are here tonight we are interviewing the book.

And tonight's book is 'The Soldier boy', by Anthony Hill

The book (enthusiastic): Oh hello, this is such a delight, actually being interviewed Usually it's that up-jump author who gets all the attention, at last I'm getting the spotlight, and I just want to state that I'm willing to share this spotlight with ALL books everywhere throughout the history of mankind or should I say book kind if it wasn't for books where would man's so called history be, down the gurgler with every other story told at the pub or burnt up with all the other stories told around the fire (raving!!!!!!)

Interviewer (Jumping in to stop the raving!): Well thank you for coming in tonight so let's start: how would you describe yourself?

Book: Well for all you cataloguers out there, and we know your there, so you want to know my imprint heh! Ha ha . .. well I think to limit myself to those mere measurements are a trifle boring, just think of me as a handy purse sized paperback, handy for those moments you are caught waiting for something to happen.

Interviewer: How did you start in this business?

Book: I started off as wood pulp, and then turned into paper. Some books are from recycled material but that would be confusing as you would not really know who you were with all those remnant memories in your very fibres. I mean humans talk about previous lives, well just think about the poor recycled paper!

Interviewer: No I want you to go a little bit further on in your life

Book: Oh well as paper I was sent to McPhersons Printing Group in Victoria

Interviewer: No a little bit further on

Book: Umm... Oh you mean when the almighty printed word got onto my pages and I became a book.

Interviewer: Yes (with a sigh)

Book: Well that's the interesting bit ain't it...well this Anthony Hill chap lives in Canberra and I guess like all folk he was drawn to the War Memorial with all its wonderful untold stories, and it was there he came across the letters from James Martin, who at fourteen years and nine months had served at Gallipoli...actually it would be closer to the truth to say he died at Gallipoli and became the youngest Anzac.

Interviewer: So the story is just based on Jim's letters

Book: Oh no! this author did a lot of research. He traced down the letter from the nurse who was with James when he died, and the letters from his mate Cec, and even talked to family members to get some more insight into who this bloke was.

Interviewer: How could the author talk to the family when James died in 1915 and it is now 2001, surely the family members have all died?

Book: Good observation. The author talked to cousins and the extended family and learnt about the family stories passed down through the family.

Interviewer: Did the author only use the letters and family stories?

Book: Oh no, he also looked into the history of the time, and he states that he made some assumptions about Jim like him joining the army cadets as so many boys his age normally joined.

Interviewer: So you are just a story about a boy who died

Book: No I'm a lot more than that.

Interviewer: What more are you?

Book: I have photos and maps too!

Interviewer: So that's your more?

Book: No this story my story is about giving the reader insight about why the Australian boys went off to war in countries that took weeks to get to. This story is about the grief families experienced when they lost a son so far away. This story is one that should be read by all, to understand the horror and the glory and the reality of what war is about.

Interviewer: Thank you book for sharing with us tonight your story and I too agree that with the death of our last Anzac this year it will be the book that will keep the story alive.

Lest we forget!

Guide Dogs: From Puppies to Partners by Lawrenson, Diana (Allen and Unwin)

Activities:

• The Guide Dog Society of NSW has 8 volunteers who give talks to groups (with real dogs): invite them to library to speak.
• Activity: borrow some glasses from the Royal Blind Society that demonstrate vision loss, or staff could make some using old sunglasses.

Guide dogs quiz

• What breeds of dog makes the best guide dog? (page 5)
• How many days from conception to birth for a dog? (page 6)
• How much does a puppy weigh at birth? (page 8)
• How old is a puppy when it can start to walk? (page 8)
• How do the staff get the puppies used to people? (page 8)
• What are the diseases that guide dog must be protected from? (page 11)
• What must a puppy raiser do? (page 12)
• How old is the puppy when it leaves the puppy raiser? (page 12)
• What is the trainer testing and noting with the dogs? (page 16)
• When does the dog start getting fitted with the harness? (page 18)
• How long does it take to train the dog to be a qualified guide dog? (page 22)
• How long does it take for people to learn how to handle a guide dog? (page 23)
• What does the guide dog provide it's handler? (page 23)
• What is the length of a dog's working life? (page 28)
• What are the different types of jobs for trained guide dogs? (p29)
• When you see a guide dog, what are one of the things you should not do?(p31)
• What does the Guide Dog Centre do? (Whole book)
• How much does it cost to train a guide dog? (page 30)

Baby Bilby, Where Do You Sleep? Oliver, Narelle (Lothian Books)

Themes: night and day, sleep, baby animals, camouflage.

Activities:

• Storytime themed: bed and sleep stories.
• Prop/activity: make beds out of shoe boxes. Decorate with colour, cloth etc
• Use Australian animal glove puppets at storytime. (Ready made puppets available for purchase at The Gardens Shop, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney (02 9231 8125)

Papunya School Book of Country and History Papunya School Publishing Committee (Allen and Unwin)

Themes: Indigenous Australian history, settlement, exploration, maps, Indigenous culture.

Activities:

• Collect maps that tell Australia's history: indigenous, explorers, topographical, from space.
• Draw maps of the school/library/home.
• Dot painting as an activity.
• Send postcards to the classes at Papunya School.
  Papunya School
  Via Alice Springs (PMB77), Via PMB 125
  Northern Territory, Australia.

Display, Song and competition ideas

Display ideas:

• cut a wedge out of old CDs to make a pacman shape: use in displays to evoke the Bookfeast theme
• picnic setting (rug and picnic basket) with books on the plates
• dinner table setting with books listed on the "menu"
• fruit and vegetables (giant papier mache ones)
• medieval banquet setting around the library: grapes can be painted ping pong balls
• feast centrepiece: a horn of plenty with books coming out the top
• make the library into an outdoor 'BBQ area': trees in pots, BBQ etc.

Song:
Book Week Book Feast Song (on CD)
Shane Veitch
61 Parkside Drive, Dapto 2530
ph 02 4261 8683, mb 0414 225 501

Competition ideas:

• The librarian at your school is very worried, someone is eating all the books in the library! Draw a wanted poster for the "book muncher".
• Your favourite fairytale/story character is coming to dinner... What is on the menu?
• A writer has lost his recipe book ... what ingredients will he need to write a funny story?
• The Prime Minister has asked you to invite the ten most important people in the world to a dinner party at Parliament House. Who would you invite, and why?
• You have been stranded on an island, with just one suitcase. Inside the suitcase is a book. What is the book and how will it help you to be a SURVIVOR?

Book Feast craft activity ideas

• make necklaces out of pasta
• make foam puppets (books or sandwiches)

Participation story ideas

• The Farmers Wife Makes The Jam (action story) (Cassy Carmody: Bankstown Library)

Copyright permission

Each year the CYS committee seeks permission from the publishers to use the text and illustrations in the shortlisted books. The letter follows:

12 June 2002

The Editor
<<Company>>
<<Address1>>
<<Address2>>
<<City>> <<State>> <<Postcode>>

Dear Sir/Madam

Each year, in anticipation of Children's Book Week, the Children's and Youth Services (NSW) Group of the Australian Library and Information Association presents a 'Pre-bookweek extravaganza.' This year's event is on Friday 21 June at 4:30pm, at Burwood Council Chambers.

This event attracts teachers and children's librarians and includes ideas for activities and programs to promote the books which have been shortlisted for the Children's Book of the Year Award, in public libraries and school libraries.

These activities include:

• Displays in the library
• Readers Theatre: dramatising scenes from a book
• Storytelling
• Cross words and find-a-words
• Competitions (colouring in etc.)

We are seeking your permission to use the short listed titles published by your company in these ways during the Extravaganza and Children's Book Week.

Please respond to:

Mylee Joseph
fx 02 9413 2038
ph 02 9777 7900
mylee.joseph@willoughby.nsw.gov.au

Yours faithfully

Mylee Joseph
Convenor, CYS (NSW) Group ALIA

The publishers have asked libraries to credit each book used in the following style:

From My Dog written by John Heffernan, illustrated by Andrew McLean
Text copyright © John Heffernan, 2001
Illustrations copyright © Andrew McLean, 2001
First published by Margaret Hamilton Books, a division of Scholastic Australia Pty Ltd, 2001

Reproduced by permission of Scholastic Australia Pty Ltd

For more information on permission/conditions for specific titles please contact Mylee Joseph or the publisher's directly.