A couple of charming books which have crossed my desk this week would be very suitable for Children’s book Week “Book Safari” activities.

The bus to the zoo from Omnibus Books, by Mary Murphy and delightfully illustrated by Josh Lee, has a bit of a Who sank the boat? feel as the bus in the story picks up more and more passengers on the way to the zoo. Younger readers will enjoy exploring the detailed illustrations to discover the myriad of quirky creatures hiding in the crowd. There are lots of mathematical concepts included and as an added bonus the end papers provide locations of origin of the animals.

The other book – also a picture book,  comes from the winners of the 1988 Kate Greenaway Medal, Mwenye Hadathi and Adrienne Kennaway, titled Laughing Giraffe.  This is one of the African Animal Tales Collection which includes other titles such as the Crafty Chameleon, Greedy Zebra and Lazy Lion. This story proves to the reader that you don’t have to have the loudest voice to be heard.

It seems laughing giraffes are a popular topic. Another title, published in 2008 by Fremantle Press  is Have you ever heard a giraffe laugh? from local author Jamie Edis. This is proving  a favourite with a couple of little people I know.

To complement junior school activities for Book Week , Issue 5 of  Classroom Focus is dedicated to Book Safari.

If you are still looking for ideas and book titles,  have  alook at the Book Week page on the CMIS website.

Don’t forget to check the page out on August 21 to discover the winners!

Geraldine Giraffe on a “Book Safari”

To help celebrate Children’s Book Week this year the team here at CMIS Evaluation- (really it was clever Jean),  decided to decorate a book trolley so we can enter a competition in the USA held through Unshelved, the Library Comic Strip website. We plan to take our trolley – “Geraldine Giraffe” on Safari through our building to promote Book Week.

Why don’t you “Dress up Your Book Trolley” and let us know about it – a great T&E exercise and book promotion at the same time. With the help of a post tube, some sponge packaging and some animal print material – Geraldine was created. We have thought about an elephant too – it may yet eventuate.

We’ve uploaded Geraldine onto the CMIS Eval Flickr page where there are other photos available to view and use.

On the CMIS Evaluation page there’s information about how you can really make an impact during Book Week.