Details: Crows Nest, NSW Allen & Unwin, 2012. 9781741146059 (hardback).
Click here to see the complete list of winners.
Every now and then adults get lost in a picture book for children. If that has happened to you, can you remember what drew you into that book.
In some it is the searching, in others it is the colour and shapes, and in
still others it is something happening on the page that touches a memory
or acts as a catalyst to launch you off into a creative reverie.
School libraries have terrific children's picture books in them and may
be well used by the Kinders and up to Year 2, but their use need not
stop when students progress to middle primary grades and above...yes even secondary.
Teacher-librarians and teachers can rediscover the wondrous ways picture books can be used and gain new teaching ideas at Keith Schoch's blog Teach with Picture Books.
Take an idea or topic and select from the labels on Keith's site that generally equates with something you plan to do with your class. You
can read the relevant past posts for ideas, but also to cross-check with picture books held by your school. Mem Fox's book, Wilfrid Gordon MacDonald Partridge, is probably held in all systemic Catholic schools in this diocese. It is an evergreen resource. Schoch has a whole set of
ideas for this one at
http://teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com.au/2009/02/wilfrid-gordon-macdonald-partridge.html
It is affirming to see that your library already has useful resources. The titles mentioned on his site that your school doesn't have may be worth considering. It is not an Australian site so our Australian books are not
overly featured as they are on Australian sites. That's why the short list of this and previous years of the CBCA are great guides to selecting for school and public libraries or to guide a birthday present purchase for those favourite children in our lives.