Reading children’s literature
No Comments »28th September, 2012; Category: Books, Fiction, Novels, Picture Books, Reading, Writing for Children
One of the units of study I have lectured in at university this year has been Children’s Literature, with a particular focus on using children’s literature in the classroom. All of my students for this unit are teachers in training, all of them eager to gather ideas for incorporating literature in their future classrooms.
It has been a rewarding time for me as it has renewed my enthusiasm for reading children’s literature. When I was a classroom teacher, and earlier in my career when I was a teacher/librarian, I would regard the reading of children’s books as a professional requirement. I am a voracious reader, so this was no hardship. After one little forgettable incident, I resolved never to read a book to a class without having read it privately first. I still believe this to be a wise policy for any classroom teacher or children’s librarian.
In recent months I have read a wide variety of picture books, chapter books for emerging readers, novels for older readers and non-fiction for various year levels. Sadly, I haven’t had time to review any of them here. In time I hope to regularly get back to reviewing the books I read. In the meantime, if it has been some time since reading a children’s book, why not borrow a few from your local library? Many of the titles published in the last decade are fine examples of excellent writing; some are just as challenging to read as adult books. And often far more interesting and captivating.
If you read a good book that you’d like to recommend – children’s or other – write about it in the comments section. I’d like to know, and so would my readers, I’m sure.
Good reading – and writing.
Writing prompt: What is the cockatoo saying?
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
I recently been looking through my library of photos trying to find suitable images to share on my birding site. I’d forgotten about the photo shown above. I took it some years ago when driving through suburban Adelaide in South Australia. A small flock of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos was investigating some hollows in a street tree. I stopped, whipped out the camera and they posed very obligingly for me, including the curious bird in the photo.
Writing prompt: What is the bird thinking? What might it say if it could talk? Many parrots, including this species, can be taught to say quite a few words. Imagine a conversation between you and the bird.
Good writing.
Writing prompt: Travel
Mt Lofty Ranges from Adelaide Airport, South Australia
This photo was taken at the Adelaide International Airport last December. My wife and I were waiting to board our flight to Melbourne on our way to Dubai and then Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Our daughter taught at an international school in Addis last year and we went to visit her for a few weeks. Later, the three of us travelled to Casablanca before touring Morocco. In the new year we spent some time holidaying in Spain. You can read more about our travels on my other site, Trevor’s Travels.
Writing prompt: Write about the holidays you’ve been on, whether they were to exotic places overseas, or close by your home. As an alternative, write about the most exotic place you’d love to visit some day. Try turning your writing into a short story. Next time you go on a holiday, start a journal recording your travels. If you are into writing poetry, write poems about the places you visit. I wrote over 50 poems about the places I visited on my most recent overseas trip.
Good writing.
I have just read my 4000th book
Asterix & Obelix's Birthday
I have just read my 4000th book.
It was Asterix & Obelix’s Birthday: The Golden Book.
Yes, I know there are derogatory names for people like me. I don’t care. I’ve kept a complete list of books and magazines that I have read since 1st September, 1966 when I was still in high school. For the first few years I only recorded the names and authors of books I had finished reading. In more recent years I have also recorded the issue number of magazines that I have read cover to cover. I read most of the magazines I buy in their entirety. I figure that I’ve paid good money for those magazines, so I’m going to get good value for my expenditure. Quirky, yes. Odd, maybe. That’s just me; no apologies will be forthcoming.
Significantly the 4000th book was the latest in one of my favourite series of books – the Asterix comics. I started buying this series in the early 1970s and my children grew up knowing them thoroughly. Every time a new title was published there was severe competition in our family to read it first. They claim that their general knowledge of the history and times of the Roman Empire was largely formed by reading the Asterix books. It is quite a possibility that they also learned to read using these books. I was a teacher librarian at the time so I made sure the school had a good supply of the titles, my family often reading them first.
One of the saddest days of my teaching career was when my entire collection of Asterix books was damaged due to fire in an adjacent classroom. It brought me to tears. The books were rescued, cleaned of soot and are in reasonable condition despite the fire. But even today I still get slightly sooty hands reading them. It was a delight to recently find a title I didn’t have in my library.
Good reading, good writing.