Read: Myriad Possibilities 2016

Thank you everyone for a thoroughly enjoyable conference last weekend (Menzies Hotel, Sydney). Gail Erskine, Felicity Jagavkar-Baker, Margaret Hamilton, and all the volunteers, did a spectacular job. As a veteran of many science fiction media conventions (as an attendee or committee member), and a number of TL-focused PD seminar/conferences (sometimes as presenter, or attendee/volunteer/committee member) over the decades, “Read: Myriad Possibilities 2016” compared very well.

This was my first CBCA Conference. The two full days had wonderful variety and no dead spots at all (that I noticed), and it appeared to be very seamless. I loved that the early release of the "Notables" enabled publishers to have every shortlisted title available for sale on the day of the Shortlist announcement on the Friday. (I know there was some trepidation about this when first announced.) I ordered my school’s books from Paul Macdonald (Children's Bookshop, Beecroft) on the Friday, and they arrived at school today, a day earlier than promised.

The authors and illustrators at the conference made themselves very available to all, and autograph sessions were well timed and well promoted.The Committee appeared unflustered most of the time, and glitches were quickly addressed. (And in the timeslots where I volunteered, everything seemed to be set up for success. Much appreciated!)

I also attended the Leigh Hobbs’ Masterclass (see pic above) arranged by the Australian Society of Authors in Ultimo, on the Sunday after the conference! It, too, was excellent. Worth every cent.

And then, on the Monday, it was back to Week 2 of my school's Book Fair. Stop the world, I wanna get off! #CBCA2016

The spirit of Schumann the shoeman?

When I spotted these shoes this foggy winter morning, I was originally convinced I was seeing two birds on the rail. Trying to work out why one bird was seemingly hanging upside down, I approached slowly. Was it a bat? As I took out my iPhone to snap a quick shot, I was also bewildered as to why the other bird hadn't yet flown away.

What remains unexplained is that these beautiful shoes aren't even a matched pair! If you've read and enjoyed the poignant CBCA shortlisted picture book, "Schumann the shoeman" by John & Stella Danalis, you'll understand why this local example of urban art gave me a few chills.

You must be joking!

A selection of work by cartoonist, children's book illustrator
and director, Greg Holfeld, whose graphic novel, "Captain Congo"
has been nominated for the Children's Book Council Awards this
year!

I was thrilled to meet the talented and friendly illustrator, Greg Holfeld, this weekend, at Supanova Convention (Olympic Park, Sydney, Australia). I was able to tell him how popular "Captain Congo and the crocodile king" is proving with the students at my school, and he autographed some copies of his previous picture book, "You Must Be Joking!" (It was only later that I realised that the boy hero's pet in that book is a super-powered Jack Russell terrier!)

We enjoyed a laugh together about the bizarre prevalence of purple gorillas in classic comic books (and at least of his own works.)

Greg also threw into my package of purchases a copy of "Monkey, Bug, Rabbit & Goose have lunch and save the planet", issue #1 of a unique comic book reader he created for for fledgling "comicophiles" at his children's school.

Thanks so much Greg.

Beijing, books and bungee-jumping

This term, I'm working with at least seven very enthusiastic groups of Stage 2 students on the New South Wales Department of Education & Training's Beijing Olympic Games & Book Week 2008 rap.

Firstly, as with the other raps which ran this year, I’m promoting the rap blog URL in the school newsletter so that students can show off their group’s rap responses with their families each week.

In case the URL doesn’t make it home, I’m also explicitly modelling a search strategy (ie. how to use Google to find the rap pages) each time the students come for their blogging session. I show them what happens when we type in raps and book raps as search terms (almost 1.5 million hits!) and how the abundance of riches can be reduced by using inverted commas. (ie. “raps and book raps” gives only 5000 possible sites - and, in any case, the NSW DET Raps webpage appears as choice #1).

Also I demonstrate the pathway to get to the blog itself. For the last two raps, many students tried out visiting the rap blog from home, and we received great parental feedback.

Secondly, I brought in a collection of stuffed animal toy mascots (plus others that were already decorating the library). The Bruce Whatley drawing of Tammy the Tortoise (in the Children's Book Council of Australia shortlisted book, The Shaggy Gully Times) is uncannily like a toy tortoise I had at home, especially with the addition of a battery-operated pocket fan strapped to her back.

Now each group is selecting (and often naming) one of the animal “reporters”, who’ll represent them in the upcoming newspaper article rap point. Each one has his or her own “Press card” to get them into Olympic venues. The animal characters (a flying fox, the aforementioned tortoise, a Puffin Books puffin, a Chinese New Year dragon, a large green frog, Selby the taking dog, and my trusty big, black, furry, bungee spider - it's a long story) might prove useful for some f(p)unny photojournalism in the playground. We'll be able to upload the pictures to the Gallery of the rap blog - and they should provide inspiration for some typically Jackie French-esque animal puns.

Punctuation is a killer!

Book Week is fast approaching!

Yesterday, in the school library, I was discussing some of the CBCA shortlisted books with Stage 2 classes, and we turned our attention to Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter (Black Dog Books), which is edited by Carole Wilkinson.

Now, the Stage 3 students became very aware of the Kelly Gang last term, thanks to their "Gold!" unit in HSIE (Human Society & Its Environment), and our library focus on bushrangers. I wasn't expecting Stage 2 students to have much of an awareness about Ned.

A student in one class was asked what he knew about Ned Kelly the bushranger. I was fully expecting something to do with metal helmets, or robbing people, or maybe a connection to the late Heath Ledger (whose Ned Kelly movie was mentioned in recent obituaries for the Australian actor.)

"Ned Kelly had a lot of headaches. I saw him on the Nurofen ads on TV." (Sure enough, I saw the commercial myself last night! Nurofen's a prominent pain medication.)

I read Carole Wilkinson's introduction to Ned Kelly’s Jerilderie letter to another class and we discussed her mention of Ned's rambling style as he narrated the long letter to gang member, Joe Byrne, and how Wilkinson had to correct Byrne's spelling errors and missing punctuation.

"What is wrong with having no punctuation?" I asked.

"Full stops tell you when to take a breath," someone suggested.

"Is that how Ned Kelly killed people?" another student piped up.

Huh?

"Is that how he killed people? By making people read all those sentences without taking a breath?"

Locked in. D'oh!

Last night was my regular trip into the city, to collect my weekly comics stash, but it was also a gathering of the Sydney Webloggers' Meetup Group. I was only able to stay briefly as, making a progressive dinner, it was off to Pancakes at the Rocks by 8pm to farewell our new Danish friend, Jonas, who joined our Star Trek Meetup Group while he was on a study scholarship to Sydney. He's heading off to the USA on the next leg of his study tour. Lucky guy.

I came home on a late-night country train, desperately trying not to fall asleep, lest I end up in Katoomba or Lithgow. I was pretty tired by the time I reached my front door (my housemate went off on vacation that morning) and I had a sudden realisation that losing my keys would be a Really Bad Idea. I was holding the school library keys in one hand while I unlocked the front screen door and then the main door. As I entered my house, I could feel the keys in my hand as I turned the locking clip of the wire door from the inside... and shut the main door. But the deadlock was still locked, meaning that my only copy of the house keys were now locked on the other side, and between the two doors.

Turning to face Jack, my dog, who was wearing his I-need-to-do-wee-wee, real bad face, I had to console him that we were now both trapped inside the house - and it was 11.30 pm. I realised it was too late to ring a neighbour, and even if I could escape through a window, how could I retrieve my door keys from behind the security grill of the screen door? I mean, security grills are made to be secure, unless you are holding the key.

It's probably not sensible to describe in exacting detail just how I managed to retrieve the keys - all by myself, and with no injuries - at 11.45pm, but at least I can now hire myself out as a successful cat burglar. It was a good feeling, I can assure you. I even fooled Jack, who went ballistic when he heard someone rattling the front door in desperation.

With only 15 minutes left to blog by midnight, I decided letting the dog out into the back yard, and having a strong drink, were higher priorities than blogging my latest goof-up. I should confess, it's not the first time I've locked my keys out of reach in this exact way. (This was time #2.) But at least that other time, my housemate was only about an hour away from arriving home from work with his keys.

I have lots of new books, comics and magazines to review, and I haven't really even gotten around to doing a report on my recent vacation. (I'm also having fun browsing all the bookshops I find, cherrypicking titles from the 2007 Shortlist, of the Children's Book Council of Australia Awards, which will be announced next Book Week. Thanks to the previous teacher-librarian, we already had most of the picture book titles.) So much to blog about and so little time.