What’s happening in the library?

Everyone welcome every Morning Break! We used to reserve MTW for Grades 4 & 5 and TTh for Grades 2 & 3 in the library during Morning Break time. But now every year band is welcome every day.

Celebrate Earth Day! Grab a book from the Earth Day display in the Younger Readers section of the library. Standard classics such as “The Lorax” and “Where the Forest Meets the Sea” are there, as well as plenty of non-fiction about environmentalism and recycling.

“All wars, just or unjust, disastrous or victorious, are waged against the child.” (Quote by Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children foundation). In light of the Grade 5 unit of inquiry into War Through the Eyes of a Child, the display bookcase next to the check-out desk is now full of books, including picture books, novels, and non-fiction, related to war and conflict.

See, in particular, the wordless picture book “Why?” by Nikolai Popov. (Backcover blurb: “A frog sits peacefully in a meadow. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he is attacked by an umbrella-wielding mouse in a confrontation that quickly turns into a full-scale war.”)

See also Mem Fox’s fable, “Feathers and Fools“, about the peacocks and swans who start to fear one another because of their differences. The preparation of weapons leads to war and total annihilation — except for one peacock egg and one swan egg. Will the baby birds recognize each other’s similarities, or differences?

<NEW> books on display until end of Thursday: Forty <NEW> books went on display last Friday and borrowing/reserving of them starts this Friday. Students are encouraged to keep track of which new books they want to read, then it’s first-come, first-serve on Friday morning for both borrowing and placing reservations.

Highlights include:

* 4 new Michael Morpurgo novels: “Cool“, “The Nine Lives of Montezuma“, “The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips“, and “Alone on a Wide Wide Sea“. (This last one features a man who is shipped from Britain to Australia as an orphan after WWII and suffers the equivalent of child slave labor on a farm before escaping and growing up to become a boat builder. His daughter later sails single-handedly back to England to try to track down his long-lost sister. Note: the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a recurring theme throughout the novel.)

* “The Greatest Power” (picture book) by Demi, a sequel to “The Empty Pot“. In this story Ping, now emperor, asks the question ‘what is the greatest power?’. Only Sing, a young girl, comes back with a lotus seed and the right answer.

* “Beastly Tales: six crazy creature capers” by Richard Tulloch, his most recent book, suitable for Grades 2 and upwards.

* “On the bike with… Lance Armstrong“, a biography for younger readers.

* Two Dr. Seuss classics we didn’t have before: “Horton Hears a Who“, one of his longer rhyming stories about caring for others (because “a person’s a person, no matter how small”), and “Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now“, one of beginner reader books. Note that the Marvin K. Mooney book is supposedly a political allegory about Richard M. Nixon (see the Wikipedia entry on the book).

* “Shrek” by William Steig — the picture book that inspired the popular movie. We also have his award-winning picture book, “The Amazing Bone” on display.

* “The Tough Guide to Fantasyland” — Diana Wynne Jones’s satiric A-Z of the elements of the fantasy genre. As the Amazon.com review says,

“The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (U.K. Edition) was a 1997 Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee. It’s a good companion to Jones’s Dark Lord of Derkholm, a fantasy about what happens when your land is turned into a theme park for questing tourist parties. Fans of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books will enjoy both.”

* “Seeker“, the first in a new fantasy trilogy (’The Noble Warriors’) for older readers by William Nicholson, author of the ‘Wind on Fire’ trilogy.

If you’re looking for picture books or non-fiction about Chinese New Year, there are still some left on the front table display. For example, we have two which tell the story of the Chinese Zodiac.

As it’s the Year of the Pig, there’s a display of various pig-related books on the tables alongside the ‘kiva’ sitting area, from “Charlotte’s Web” to fractured versions of the Three Little Pigs to three novels, all entitled “Pigs Might Fly”.

Valentine rhymes adorn the main display table in front of the checkout, while romantic novels for young teens can be found to the left of the OPAC computer monitors in the Older Readers section.

Friday the 26th is Australia Day, so there are several displays in the library, including picture books and novels by the best Australian authors and illustrators as well as information books about the country.

“Meet Some Famous People” in the library — through the biographies on display. A Venn diagram points out the range of “truth” on offer, with biography/autobiography falling in the blue Non-Fiction circle and historical fiction falling in the yellow Fiction circle — and the green intersection of the two containing fictionalized biography.

A beautiful purple LOVE quilt created by K2 PWa now hangs on the wall in the Picture Book section.

Water-Wise Campaign posters now adorn the windows in the Older Readers section, thanks to 3RMu.

Please come in and admire this work — and remember all donations of art and/or school work will always be gratefully accepted.

Book Reservation Pick-Up Notices for students are now being sent to classroom/tutor group teachers via e-mail, in the interests of efficiency and the lives of a few trees.

The Writer’s Camp with Richard Tulloch in Indonesia over Chinese New Year now has 12 students from Grade 5 and 6 signed up. If you know of any student still interested in attending, have them come see me in the library. It is possible we could take a few more, though 15 is the absolute cut-off number. Eric Baldwin, one of the owners of Island Connections International, came on Jan. 15th and spoke to parents of students who have signed up already. He showed us a video of Telunas Beach and it looks like a wonderful venue for relaxing — and writing.

The Primary School Book Week 2007 will be the week of March 12th. Activities will include lots of D.E.A.R. (drop everything and read) time, guest readers, quizzes and contests, a Bookaburra book fair, and fundraising for school libraries in less affluent areas of the world. Ian Whybrow, a British author of over 70 books for children published in 25 languages in 26 countries, will be the guest author, focusing on students in K1 through Grade 3. His most popular recurring characters are Harry and his dinosaurs, Little Wolf (who specializes in badness), and Sniff (a dog synonymous with trouble). More details will be forthcoming — and if anyone has any other ideas for Book Week activities, please let me know.

This blog will be my new means of communicating what’s happening in the library. While you could (if you are up to speed with it all) subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed in order to know when new information is posted, rest assured I will notify you teachers via standard internal e-mail whenever I post something relevant to you.

SHIFT OF SHELVES: Over the Xmas holiday we made some changes in the library, the main one being a shift of the shelves in the Older Readers (LS) section. The bulk of the tables are now against the window, creating a more private space for classes. We also moved the PYP “Books in Languages Other Than English” collection to the little alley (one side of the blue wall) between the Younger Readers (EL) and Older Readers (LS), providing us more room for expansion of the collection. In addition, the two “Oversized” collections (Younger Readers (EL) and Older Readers (LS)) have now been merged in that same alleyway.

NEW DISPLAYS:

2007 anniversaries: Upon entering the library, you will see books reminding you of historical anniversaries hit in 2007, e.g., 1400 years ago the world’s oldest wooden structure still standing was built in Japan, 780 years ago Genghis Khan died, 300 years ago Scotland and England merged into the United Kingdom, 140 years ago Russia sold Alaska for S$11m, and 60 years ago India and Pakistan became independent nations.

Experience a Time Slip: What would it be like to travel backwards or forwards in time or to peek into another time and space ? Try one of the novels on display.

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