Every year the CBCA announce a list of books that are notable from the previous year and every year we sit and wonder who will win.
Many schools hold their own voting competitions but I thought it would be much better for the students to learn how to judge a book themselves.
Attached are three documents that you can use in the lead up to the CBCA announcements and any other book competition for that matter!
Enjoy
Older readers
Lenny’s book of everything by Karen Foxlee
Tales from Inner City by Shaun Tan https://educateempower.blog/2019/03/06/tales-from-the-inner-city-by-shaun-tan/
Younger readers
Black Cockatoo by Carl Merrison
His Name was walter by Emily Rodda
Early Childhood
Collecting Sunshine by Rachel Flynn
Beware the deep Dark forest by Sue Whiting
Picture book of the year
Room on our rock by Kate and Joe Temple
The incredible freedom machines by Kirli Saunders
The all new must have orange 430 by Michael Speechley
When you’re going to the moon by Sasha Beekman
Eve Pownell Award
Digby and Claude by Emma Allen and Hannah Somerville
The flying optometrist by Joanne Anderton and Karen Erasmus
The great lizard trek by Felicity Bradshaw and Norma MacDonald
Bouncing Back by Coral Tulloch and Rohan Cleave
Under the Southern Cross by Frane Lessac
Waves by Rawlins, Donna, Potter, Heather , Jackson, Mark
Our Birds: Ŋilimurruŋgu Wäyin Malanynha by Stubbs, Siena
Sorry Day by Vass, Coralillus. Leffler, Dub
Where can you find treasure in storybooks? With dragons of course!
This week we found as many dragon books as we could and created a display.
Dragons can be treasures
And
Dragons can be the guardians of treasure
Dragons can be mysterious and dragons can be dangerous.
Dragons can be kind and dragons can be helpful.
There are so many wonderful journeys you can go on with dragons in mind. Check out some ideas we are using in the library!
Treasure is the word in our library and this week we have created some book marks that will ignite thinking about the wondrous treasures books can bring.
These book marks have been created by children of all ages and through this I can see the different ways students think about treasured books, the different books they love and how they want other students to love the books they have enjoyed.
Each bookmark will be hidden inside a book that is on a shelf in the library and whoever finds it, gets to keep it!
I wonder who will find these treasures?
What type of treasure will you find in your library today?
What will it look like?
Will it be what you expected?
Will it surprise you? horror you? confuse you? love you? worry you? engage you?
Will it make you talk about it for weeks and week?
Will you share it with others or keep it for yourself?
There are so many treasures in the library and they are all there to share.
Today might be the day to visit the library and find a treasure that is just right for you!
This year the theme for book week is Find your treasure, so each week in our library we will be taking part in a small activity where the theme will be promoted.
I have some much loved covers from my Who gives a crap toilet paper and instead of putting them straight into the bin they are being converted into book covers (see below)
Each book that has been covered has three clues on the front. The idea behind this is for children to see what sort of books could be ones that they treasure.
We have books about adventure, women’s rights, battles and laughter. Not only will children get to guess which books are hidden behind the paper, they will also discover these covered books hidden on our shelves throughout the year.
Finding treasure is exciting and I hope that by covering some much loved books other children will also discover that exploring in the library can be fun!
This year’s CBCA book week theme is Find your treasure. In our library the students will be participating in a variety of competitions with great book prizes!
Perhaps you would like to participate in some of these at your school?
Visit my Tpt store and for a term one special of $3.99 you can download and use these ideas too!
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Find-your-Treasure-CBCA-Book-theme-2018-3653620
There are two competitions each term for all terms of the year – Finding your treasure doesn’t end in book week!
Just some of the ideas…..
Term 1, Competition 2.
Choose a book that you have read recently and using your mathematical skills, be creative and explain e.g.
The cost of keeping a dragon as a pet,
The tuition fees of a magic school,
The money you would give to one of the characters and why,
Draw a map to scale,
Create graphs about the characters in the story. Choose at least 3 aspects of the book to use your mathematical skills.
Term 3, Competition One.
Find some facts about a treasure that has never been found but many stories have been told about it.
Present these facts in an engaging way for display in the library.
I’ve always loved adventure stories and magic stories so A most magical girl by Karen Foxlee was a great find!
Shortlisted in the 2017 CBCA, this story takes the reader on a magical journey through a part of London I am sure you never thought existed.
Fairy walls, troll holes and shadows that chase are all part of a journey that Annabel must undertake if she is to save London from being taken over by …..and his machine which will turn the world we know it into darkness and evil times.
This story will be devoured by young readers and I think girls will love the fact that the three heroes of the story are all females who show intelligence, bravery and friendship.
This would be a great way to get your students or children thinking about the possibilities of the magical world and what might lie beneath our city streets!
Educateempower11 is on Facebook
It has painted on lights and a bark numberplate that keeps falling off and we have to remake it.
The Patchwork Bike by Maxine Beneba Clarke and Van T Rudd is a fun book filled with onomatopoeia, vibrant adjectives and outside active play.
As you read through this story the energy seeps out of the pages as the children tumble through the streets, run up and down hills and zoom along on their homemade bike.
Set in a small village on the edge of the No -Go Desert, the children need to make their own fun. The children get inventive and create their own bike made from old bits and pieces (and perhaps some things that mum might need…). They create wheels out of wood, a number plate out of bark and handlebars out of branches. These children use their imagination and problem solving skills to create a bike that can shicketty shake them over sandhills and winketty wonk them through fields.
This book is lots of fun to read and really makes you think – that if you didn’t have access to toys, televisions and screen then perhaps more of this would take place in our backyards and parks. Perhaps more children would be outside playing, thinking creatively and using up their extra energy.
The Patchwork Bike is a celebration of children and play and the joy of owning a bike. The artwork in this story is superb and more can be seen here. Each page exudes energy, we can see the children playing at all times of the day and all over the village. We can feel the joy and smell the freedom these children have despite the fact they do not have much more.
The Patchwork bike is Shortlisted for the 2017 CBCA and I’m thinking it has a good chance of winning!
So what can you do to link this to Sustainability?
Have you ever read a book and wished that you could escape to that magical land? Perhaps you wished that your cupboard opened up to a secret land where you could meet animals that could talk, eat sweet biscuits with new friends and watch magic spells come to life with the flick on a wrist.
Have you ever met a character in a book that you wanted to spend more time with so you could find out more about them, hang out with them and go on some of their adventures or perhaps learn some new skills from them?
Maybe your way of escaping is to learn new knowledge, perhaps you escape by becoming engrossed in new facts, pondering about hypothesis and exploring a new scientific or mathematical concept?
Reading allows us to escape. Reading slows our bodies down and gives us time to absorb what is going on inside us. Studies show that when we sit down and read we breath more deeply, our heart rate slows and our body has time to heal and absorb more nutrients from our day (must be why that hot cup of tea and healthy treat is a must when reading)
If we have the skills to escape through a story or through knowledge we can move away from the fast pace life of social media, fast paced computer games and action packed news.
So not only during book week should we take the time to escape, we should take the time to escape everyday. We should be teaching our children the art of escaping through books.
Which book will you be reading tonight so you can escape?
It’s morning in the bush.
Python stirs and slithers out from her shelter.
She warms her head and smells the air
with her forked tongue.
Python is a beautiful snake,
but also dangerous
– and she is looking for a meal
Python by Christopher Cheng and Mark Jackson is a captivating picture book that takes you along for a ride as snake looks for her next meal.
Illustrator Mark Jackson brings the danger of the snake to life through his descriptive illustrations of snake sneaking up on her next meal, camouflaging amongst rocks and basking in the warm sun with her brood.
Christopher Cheng not only writes an enchanting story of the snake and her meal seeking adventure, he also adds in some great facts along the way that even the youngest reader can engage with.
Python teaches the reader about Pythons, their habitat and behaviour. Many of us are petrified of snakes and perhaps would rather throw a rock at it than let it run away. When we read stories like this to our children we are building their awareness of creatures like snakes, who are dangerous, and allowing them to know more about them to realise that the snakes are probably a lot more scared of us!
Did you know that pythons might only eat once every four weeks? And that they can unhinge their jaws?
The world of pythons is dangerous yet intriguing and this CBCA shortlisted picture book is a book for all to enjoy.
You may not think of yourself as a creative writer or an avid reader but we need to encourage our children to be just that.
Deep inside the library there are many books that have not been discovered and perhaps there is one hidden away on the bookshelf that will waken up your thirst for reading and ignite your imagination and creativity.
So rather than judging a book by it’s cover or the latest book review, read the first few pages for yourself. Allow yourself to sit for five minutes and meet the characters and explore the new land. If it doesn’t hook you in then try another – there will always be one waiting for you somewhere!
Every day libraries have many new books that arrive – a story about the battle between scissors, paper and rock, a tale of the germs who live on your teeth and your shirt, a story about women who have made a difference in the world and a story about a boy who has a friendly robot. There is non-fiction, fiction and picture books. There are comics, wordless stories and books that open up to three metres in length.
Don’t forget about the library. Borrowing books allows you to share your stories with the whole community.
Have you ever heard of an Amur Tiger, an Umbrella bird or even a Zebra Duiker?
BUY HERE
Perhaps that is all you will ever do – hear of them – as without immediate action, many of the animals in this picture book will disappear out of the wild and possibly out of conservation programs.
A-Z of endangered animals by Jennifer Cossins is a intricately detailed non-fiction book for children (but adults will love it too!)
The endangered species are explored alphabetically with each page telling us where the animal is from, some interesting and fun facts but also the number of these animals left – disturbingly, some only have 50 left in the whole world.
As I read this book to my children, (they are 5 and 3 so I didn’t read it word for word but pulled out interesting facts) I could tell they were distressed about the demise of these animals. So rather than dwell on the low numbers we did this:
What can we do?
Teach your children how they can educate others and they will learn so much more themselves.
