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The Library Book by Gabby Dawnay ill. Ian Morris

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Zach isn’t convinced that books are for him – they’re too long, they’re boring and he would rather watch TV. But thanks to his friend Ro’s stubborn efforts, Zach falls for books hook, line and sinker, and loses himself in a world of dinosaurs, princesses, pirates, football and rocketships – anything and everything the library has to offer.

Through lively rhymes and dynamic illustrations, The Library Book helps early readers understand the plethora of books available to them through their local library and encourages parents, guardians and teachers to help children find books that appeal to their personal interests.  Written in a catchy rhyming style by bestselling author Gabby Dawnay, The Library Book will trigger a love of words in readers of all abilities, while Ian Morris’ inventive watercolour illustrations – which are reminiscent of two British illustration greats, Quentin Blake and Chris Riddell – make Zach’s emotional journey come alive. The combination is a picture book that will inspire a love of libraries, reading, books and words in even the most reluctant reader.

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School Librarian Of The Year

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Kristabelle Williams of Addey & Stanhope School, a voluntary aided state secondary in inner South East London, has been awarded the honour of School Librarian of the Year 2020/21 by the School Library Association (SLA).

Kristabelle is the school’s Learning Resource Centre Manager and received the award at the SLA’s online course on Leading School Libraries yesterday (11th June) after being announced as one of five librarians on the SLA’s 2020/21 Honour List last year. The final stage of the judging, in which a panel of experienced school librarians visit all the candidates in their workplaces, was delayed until earlier this year due to the pandemic.

Kristabelle runs her library single-handed and ensured its services continued during the pandemic by including books in lockdown care packages for families. She used BookTrust’s Bookbuzz programme and the Free Books Campaign to encourage book ownership.

She said in a recent article for Books for Keeps magazine: “Whether young people read or not is often due to cost, access and content… in a pandemic where the public faces further unemployment and child poverty crises, book gifting has, is and will continue to be an important part of what our school does.”

The award citation noted how Kristabelle used her experience of the pandemic to implement positive changes when school reopened—for example, by retaining a click-and-collect loan system and continuing remote community building.

ACHUKA sends Kristabelle warm congratulations.
You can follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/libthroughthis

The Story Thief by Graham Carter

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Olive is a shy girl who prefers reading about adventures to having them herself. But when a mysterious figure steals all of the books in town, Olive decides to set out straight into an adventure of her own. The thief, meanwhile, doesn’t quite know what to do with the stories he’s stolen. Olive must track down the thief and teach him the joys of reading – and sharing – stories.

Major Fundraising Campaign to Build CLPE Literacy Library

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Earlier this week the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) launched an ambitious and timely campaign to raise funds aimed at refurbishing their central London headquarters with the creation of a permanent collection of children’s books to be used to support their work.

The announcement of the campaign (made on Monday 15th January) ran in key trade magazines The Bookseller and BookBrunch, which helped get things off to a great start. Louise Johns-Shepherd, CLPE’s CEO, has been interviewed on London Live.

As key champions of children’s literacy, the CLPE hopes that creating a Literacy Library will significantly help it continue to provide top-class training and resources for teachers, as well as providing a creative, engaging and accessible hub to be used across the children’s books industry.

As a charity, CLPE has long been instrumental in providing key support to educationalists through training and materials, and is responsible for the widely recognised Power of Reading and Power of Pictures projects, as well as the acclaimed CLiPPA (Centre for Literacy in Primary Poetry Award). Their literacy centre, rather fittingly a former school near Waterloo station, is used widely for events and meetings by other charities that often don’t have their own in-house facilities.

Everything I’ve learnt today has been something I could use in the classroom to improve the enjoyment that children get from books. Thank you so much. Each time I come to CLPE I leave with a revived interest in teaching. CLPE User

The refurbishment is designed to allow a dedicated and permanent space for a collection of 23,000 children’s books, chosen by the CLPE’s in-house experts, creating a comprehensive collection of titles for all primary ages that can be browsed and read with a view to their use in the classroom. Funds raised will also allow for the space in the centre to be enhanced for events, and as a fully resourced venue for large or smaller meetings.

Organisations and individuals are invited to pledge any amount between £100 and £10,000 in return for  having a bookshelf, bookcase, alcove or collection at the centre dedicated to them. High profile names, including BookTrust, Beanstalk and key authors have already lent their support to the campaign.

The Crowdfunding campaign can be found here, where it is also possible to donate smaller amounts.

Having seen the inspiring work CLPE do to help schools to use drama, poetry and stories in creative ways I fully support their bid for improving the building. It’s so exciting to think of their library being able to display all their 23,000 books, and that it could become a nationally renowned training centre for teachers, librarians and literacy charities.
Julia Donaldson, Children’s author, former Children’s Laureate and CLPE Supporter

Brian Alderson donates rare children’s book collection to Seven Stories & Newcastle University

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Brian Alderson – author, editor, critic, and scholar who has curated many exhibitions and is a former children’s books editor of The Times (1967 – 1996) –  is to donate his extensive collection of children’s books to Newcastle University and Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books.

Believed to be the largest privately-owned children’s literature collection in the UK, it is made up of more than 20,000 books, dating from the 17th century to the present day. Works come from the United States, France, Germany and Britain, and the collection includes original illustrations and papers related to Brian’s diverse career.

He has collected books for more than 60 years, beginning as an undergraduate with cheap editions of work by the poets Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot. His interest in children’s books came later but soon became a passion. 

The donation of the Collection jointly to the two organisations is a key outcome of Seven Stories’ and Newcastle University’s Vital North Partnership, funded by Arts Council England. The two organisations are marking Brian’s generous donation with a free exhibition of some of the highlights from the Collection at Newcastle University’s Philip Robinson Library, opening in June 2017 and running throughout the summer.

Brian Alderson will also be giving a free talk at the library about his collection, Every book has its own history: Reflections of a collector of children’s books, at 5.30pm on Wednesday 14th June.

To find out more about Brian Alderson’s talk on 14th June, visit: www.sevenstories.org.uk/whats-on. For more information on Brian Alderson’s work and collection, visit: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/alderson/

Q&A: Betsy Bird – The Grossness Of Board Books

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You wanted to be a librarian, but not a children’s librarian.
Initially, no. After finally realizing that I had to be a librarian, because I was ill-equipped to be anything else, I was going to be a conservator. The moment of truth came when my husband—who should be an archivist, because of the way he takes the covers off books, and is always like “don’t break the spine!”—he pointed out, “You put your coffee cup down on your book about how to preserve books.” I was like, “It’s a sign!”

It turns out, with my propensity for destroying books, I was perfect for children’s librarianship, where the books die instantaneously in the hands of very small people who tear them apart.

I’ve been grateful to children’s librarians when I’ve come in and admitted, “She kind of colored on this, I’m happy to pay for it,” and they’re like, “It’s cool.”
That’s why the the budget for children’s books is bigger than other budgets in the library. We understand the turnover rate is very high. If I had an unlimited supply of money I’d replace all the board books. Because they almost instantly go blehhhh with grossness.

Full interview recommended via Q&A: Betsy Bird, Kid Lit Star and New Evanston Librarian | Chicago magazine | Politics & City Life October 2015.

National Libraries Day Celebrations

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NationalLibrariesDay

Back to where it all began: a storytime special at Witterings Library | National Libraries Day…

On Saturday 7 February Witterings Library will welcome back a familiar face, as former Saturday Assistant Simon Edwards returns to take part in a children’s storytime special for West Sussex Libraries, where he first embarked on his 25 year career in the library world aged just 16.

Simon Edwards, Director of Professional Services at CILIP

Simon abandons his desk as Director of Professional Services at CILIP, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, to join in the fun and share stories with local children as part of West Sussex Libraries’ celebrations for National Libraries Day. The annual celebration of libraries and library staff sees hundreds of special events and festivities taking place all over the country.

http://www.nationallibrariesday.org.uk/2015/01/back-to-where-it-all-began-a-storytime-special-at-wittering-library-on-national-libraries-day/

School Librarian of the Year 2014

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Liz Millett, who runs the library at Weatherfield Academy in Dunstable Bedforshire (a special school for students aged 7-19), was yesterday named School Librarian of the Year, at a presentation ceremony held in London.

Chris Riddell, guest speaker and presenter of the awards, found himself in action early on in proceedings when certificates for schools shortlisted for the Inspiration Award (previously the library design award) were slow to arrive because of problems on the rail network – no matter, Chris quickly manufactured some temporary certificates on hotel notepads and these were much prized by those who received them, albeit not framed (though I did notice one school chose to replace the official certificate in its frame (when they eventually arrived) with the original Chris Riddell sketch – and why not?

Riddell’s keynote after-lunch speech was an entertaining look back at librarians he had loved, and the books that had opened up the world of reading for him.

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He talked of the importance of allowing children to pick up books that might appear at face value too ‘difficult’ for them, calling this, in a memorable phrase “the liberation of incomprehension”.

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In this regard he paid nostalgic tribute to “Agaton Sax’, the first book to have given him true reading pleasure, in contrast to the repetitive nonsense of Peter and Jane reading scheme books.

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One school librarian he remembered for her no-nonsense, authoritarian, thou-shalt-remain-silent rule – one which suited his nature, as he welcomed the chapel-like atmosphere she maintained.

Another he remembered for her looks and her dress-sense. At which point the talk drifted off into fascinating recollections of various girlfriends and individuals he remembered from a time living in the grounds of a psychiatric hospital where his father was chaplain.

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The other two shortlisted librarians were Tracey Needham from Sacred Heart RC Primary School in Barrow-inFurness and Helen Cleaves of Kingston Grammar School.

The presentations for the Inspiration Award (mainly delivered in video format) were definitely inspiring. I was particularly impressed with the library at Ashington First School in Northumberland, which has been zoned off into many differently themed areas – a castle area for information books, a jungle area, a space-age section etc. What was most impressive about this presentation was that the children clearly loved their library, and loved reading in it, and that the head teacher as well as Rachel, the ‘Reading Champion’, is fully committed to it – and rather proud of one design touch that he personally added to the space section.

A second presentation that impressed me was that of Budmouth College in the secondary school category.  This school has created a ‘Hub Library’ in the atrium of the main building. Using the sort of wheeled, hinged shelving deployed by visiting school book fairs (but made to a higher design standard) the library is able to reshape itself throughout the day for different purposes. This was very professionally demonstrated by overhead shots in the course of the video presentation.

In the end though the awards were given to:

  • Oak Tree Primary School, Nottinghamshire
  • Dixons Allerton Academy, West Yorkshire

The SLA School Librarian of the Year Award is the School Library Association’s prestigious honour to recognize the excellent work that is carried out in school libraries every day and highlights the best practice of those whose work is outstanding.

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Ginette Doyle, Chair of the SLA School Librarian of the Year Selection Committee said: “What we found so inspiring about our winner was that the students she deals with were confident and efficient library users. Liz Millett uses whatever means she can to ensure that they have books that they can access, at their level, and the response that the students gave us, their enthusiasm for the Library and for Liz herself, showed that she is doing an outstanding job for Weatherfield Academy.”

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Sarah McIntyre – summer reading challenge + a royal reading adventure

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Some fabulous photos in this Summer Reading Challenge post on her blog by Sarah McIntyre, including this one of Sara herself capturing a selfie with Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall no less, accompanied by Philip Reeve.

The event took place at Exeter Library and most of the photos in the blog post, including the two copied here, were taken by Sarah Reeve.

http://jabberworks.livejournal.com/652456.html