Squirm’s Book Reviews: Grandmother Edition

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Each week I review books we’ve read with Squirm. Find other reviews here

Dancing with Grandma by Rosemary Mastnak

dancingwithgrandma

(AWW 2013 Squirm Challenge: Book 17)

This is a gorgeous book about a young girl (Anya) who is staying at her grandmother’s place when she has an idea. She gets all dressed up, then has a wonderful, enthusiastic dance with her grandmother. So enthusiastic, that even the dog and the cat join in. There aren’t a huge amount of words in this book, instead the story is really carried by the beautiful, vibrant illustrations. What we do get in the words, though, is some fabulous use of verbs (whisk and whirl, twist and twirl) and almost the feeling of an off page dance teacher calling out the actions for the dancers to follow. I’m a sucker for dance books, and this one did a great job of it, invoking a number of dance homages throughout. I also love that the grandmother is portrayed as an active person.

This book would be the perfect introduction to a dance session. You could read it and then try to copy the dancing that Anya and her grandmother do. Or you could use the words to create your own dances. When you get exhausted and fall to the ground (like Anya and her grandmother) you could use You Tube to watch dancing – maybe even find some of the dances that are here in the book (look at highland and Irish dancing, to start with, as well as The Nutcracker and contemporary dance.) You could also use this book to talk about things that Grandmothers and grandchildren do together.

 

Button Boy by Rebecca Young and Sue deGennaro

buttonboy

(AWW 2013 Squirm Challenge: Book 16)

Banjo loves collecting buttons. He looks for them and finds them everywhere, even when the other kids are all busy playing with each other. Grandma Woolly helps him out with his button collection by sewing the buttons onto his favourite jumper. However, each day as Banjo heads out, he finds people looking for buttons that they’ve lost – and he’s able to find them on his jumper. What will happen when all the buttons are gone?

I love the way the book gives us a repeating selection of words telling us Banjo’s route on the way to school, especially the gorgeous use of verbs. (This really is a verb-y couple of books!) The language in the book is fabulous, with a number of rare words used particularly well. I also love Grandma Woolly saying ‘Unbutton my eyes’ – a nice example of figurative speech and punning at the same time!

Sue deGennaro’s illustrations deserve special mention. She really has become a favourite illustrator of mine, and I think I’m going to have to spend some time tracking down all her different books! Once again, her illustrations are delightful here, and I love the way that she gives little hints and clues to other parts of the story. She also brings so much more to the story on top of the words – like all good picture books should! Her illustrations would make reading the book again a real joy – and sharped eyed readers should be able to enjoy the book even more.

You would have a perfect starter book for talking about collections here – it would be fascinating to ask different people some of the things they collect – especially if you’re able to find some particularly avid collectors and see some of their collections. (I’m a collector – I collect books and I used to collect Barbie Dolls. My mother collects bears and dolls. My grandmother collects dolls, bears and other toys . . . I had no hope, did I?) A trip to the museum would also go perfectly with this book, especially if you can see some of their social history collection, where you get to look at some of those everyday objects which are so important to people at the time. (I worked in the Social History section of the Queensland Museum for my week of Work Experience. I worked with everything from guns to toys to farm equipment – an amazing week!) There’s also room for some great conversations about friendship and how to make friends and how to help other people.

Six Months Old: A Letter to Squirm

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6 months

Dear Squirm,

You’re half a year old today. I feel like this deserves special celebrations and possibly cake, but we’re being restrained and just having a nice dinner – as much to celebrate your Daddy and myself as we are celebrating you.

You’ve started noticing other babies this month! It started at a rhyme time when you reached out to others and continued at our ABA meeting today. I think it’s probably time to make sure we have a weekly activity to give you more opportunities to interact with others. Rhyme time should be up and at it at the local library, so it looks like we’ll be heading there next week!

Over the last month, the biggest development has been starting solids. You’re a bit of a baby-led weaning champion. You usually pick up and try all the food on your tray, and you eat a decent amount of food for a new eater. You really enjoy tomato, cucumber, avocado yoghurt and broccoli – and you’ve had a lot of fun making messes with those foods and plenty of others. It’s been so much fun experimenting with food with you, and I’m eating so much better too!

The other development has been in how you move. Last month you could roll and move backwards. Now you can roll, move backwards, forwards, in different directions, from sitting to your front. You’re not quite crawling, more like a mix of crawling and commando creeping. You move really quick across the floor – especially if there’s something you desperately want on the other side of the room.

Your sleep patterns have improved, especially when it comes to napping. Most days we can be sure you’ll get two naps, some days we’re even lucky enough for three. You don’t need to sleep on me anymore either, which makes it easier to get things done, but I do miss those sleepy hugs at times.

There’s been times during this month when you really need me nearby, or at least you need to know exactly where I am. I suppose it’s a bit of separation anxiety, though you’re usually fine with other people as long as I’m nearby. You’re quite happy playing on your own nearby, though – you’re particularly fond of anything which makes noise, as well as your treasure basket and the discovery bottles I made up for you. You keep trying to get into any bags we have around in reach, so I’m making you a special bag to hide your treasures in.

It’s been a really good month, and we’ve really enjoyed watching you meet all these new challenges and your joy when you conquer them. Here’s to another great month ahead of us!

Love

Mum

Read more letters to Squirm here

Introducing Book Talks (and my very first Vlog!)

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I’m totally blaming this on Janet at Redland City Living and Rachel at Redcliffe Style (the Red-y pair!) but this morning I recorded my first Video Blog. The idea was planted when Rachel linked to her post about Vlogging, and then pushed along by Janet’s post, and the idea for not just one Vlog, but a whole Vlogging Series was born. And what was I going to Vlog about? Well, books of course.

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Book Talks

Book talks used to be one of my most potent weapons when it came to reading in the classroom. Instead of telling students they should read a certain book, I’d sell the book to them, tell them why it was so good, read a bit to them.

So now it’s time to introduce my Book Talk series, and hope that people are as enthused by the books I choose as I am!

 

3 Ways to Play with a 6 Month Old

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As Squirm gets older, the ways he interacts and explores constantly change. Over the last few weeks, he’s become more and more active, and we’ve been trying some new ways to play with him. Here’s three of those . . .

3 Ways to Play with a 6 Month Old

Adventures of a Subversive Reader:3 Ways to Play with a 6 Month Old

1. Build a Fort

Squirm isn’t crawling yet. But he can roll, and push himself forward and backwards. So I thought about creating a kind of track, using pillows and other soft furnishings, for him to follow. However, he decided not to play to my rules, so clearly the track needed to be turned into a fort. Then it needed to get bigger.

A fort always seemed to be something we would do with Squirm when he was a lot bigger. However, it was really easy to use a sofa as one side (with easy hiding underneath) and various pillows and cushions to create the other walls. A couple of dining room chairs served to give us some more structure, as well as giving tunnels (which no one got in or out of, except a few stuffed animals. However, the humans did enjoy looking through them) and a way of creating a ‘ceiling’. Two undone ring slings created a canopy overhead, with the rings around the tops of the chairs and the ends anchored in other places. Add in some baby blankets as ‘curtains’ and a bunch of stuffed toys as ‘guards’ and you have a very comfortable place to hang out, play, read and giggle with your baby.

Although Squirm wasn’t 100% sure what was going on, the fort really did allow him to experience a lot of fun. He enjoyed watching us build it. He liked having a safe place around him (walls are fun to roll into when they’re soft) and it was brilliant for peek a boo games. At the end of the day, it was easy to pack up, ready for another day of fun.

Adventures of a Subversive Reader:3 Ways to Play with a 6 Month Old

The fort during the early stages of construction . . .

 

2. Treasure Baskets

This is totally not my idea 🙂 I think I found it first on How We Montessori (which is a fabulous site, even if you’re not looking specifically for Montessori information). The idea is that the baby is given a basket of different objects, most of them everyday and regular, which they are able to explore.

With Squirm, we are slightly restricted to safe materials, because everything still goes in his mouth. I had some difficulty finding a good open basket of natural materials, but found a good sized plastic one at my local discount store, which is serving as a strong substitute. I’ve put a whole range of things in there at different times. Once I collected a range of balls for Squirm to play with, another time it was a collection of different spoons and ladles (he adored the ladle.

These baskets are brilliant when I need a few more minutes to finish something. I’ve found Squirm will sit quite happily with the baskets, taking out one item after another, examining them and carefully putting them aside. Mr Pilot and I sometimes join in the fun too – there was even a ladle vs. wooden spoon fight between Mr Pilot and Squirm 🙂

One of these days, I’ll make them as beautiful and meaningful as How We Montessori, but for now, we’re just having a lot of fun with them.

Adventures of a Subversive Reader:3 Ways to Play with a 6 Month Old

3. Rhythm and Music

This one was discovered completely by accident. We were sitting at the dinner table, with Squirm in his high chair, and he was doing his usual distracted looking around thing. I wanted to get his attention for something so I tapped on the table. The next day, Squirm started making tapping noices on the tray of his high chair. Since then, we’ve discovered that he loves clapping and tapping rhythms.

We’ve built this into our day in a few ways. Sometimes we sit down with him and play pat-a-cake or we just try to create a rhythm on the floor or with our hands. Sometimes he tries to join in, sometimes he just watches (or laughs at us). We’ve also increased the amount of music we listen to (a good excuse to make sure the TV is off) and sometimes we dance along, either with him or without him – not sure if it’s increasing his appreciation, but it usually gets a good laugh.

Of course, another way we’ve been playing with rhythm and music is through nursery rhymes. I recently got into an absolutely silly habit of singing every nursery rhyme like it’s a very serious piece of music. Adds tonnes of fun, especially during the difficult nappy changing time!

What’s the best fort you’ve ever built? Have you ever collected a treasure basket? What ways do you bring more music into your house?

The Great Library Tour: Kallangur Library

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Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Kallangur Library

The Great Library Tour

After a rather eventful week, we just wanted a short trip this week, so we headed up the road a bit towards Kallangur Library. It’s a lovely big and airy library, attached to the local community centre with a lot of great parking – including excellent disabled parking. The childrens and young adult sections are smaller ones to one side of the library (and near the computers, which was a bit distracting) while the rest of the library held the adult collection.

There was a lovely looking outside reading area, but it didn’t look like it was particularly used, which is a pity. There was a seating area near the biographies and a comfortable looking seating area in the young adult section, but the library didn’t quite have as cosy a feel as I found at Strathpine, Caboolture, Narangba or Redcliffe.

The children’s area was really nice, though and Squirm and I had a great time both reading there and selecting some new books for the coming week. The colours were bright and cheerful, with the same carpet as we found at Bribie Island – the red and blue which give an immediate lift to an area. There were great displays, lots to look at in the area and the books were really easy to find. Although there was a couch to sit on, we found ourselves sitting on the floor between the low, brightly coloured shelves, pulling out heaps of books to read. I was particularly impressed to find a good collection of books from Cherbourg Primary School, an indigenous community in Queensland. They looked great!

The staff were clearly very busy, but really lovely, going out of their way to help the people in the library. They’ve got a great library, but I think there might need to be some thinking in the future about how the library can best serve a growing high school population, with the nearby new secondary college moving into senior secondary next year – the library is so close to the school, that it could really be used as a place for teenagers to find books, study and relax as the school grows.

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Kallangur Library Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Kallangur Library

The best parts of Kallangur Library

  • Bright, cheerful kids area
  • Really interesting selection of books
  • Friendly staff

Important Information about Kallangur Library

1480 Anzac Avenue, Kallangur

Website

Open Monday to Saturday

Parking available

AWW Challenge 2013: Week Five

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Follow my journey through the AWW 2013 challenge here

After a slower week last week, I absolutely raced through this week, reading 7 books – all of them childrens or young adult books. I slipped through a couple of different genres, from contemporary to fantasy and through a bit of historical fiction, and thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I’m now in the middle of a crime novel and getting terribly excited about an upcoming crime release – which is a bit of a shock to me on its own!

My favourite discovery this week would be the Our Australian Girls books which I’d dismissed before this year (probably because there was a horse charm on the cover of the first book. I am not a horse book person!) I have thoughts about these books and why they are so important, but they just got bigger and bigger until I realised that they deserved a post all of their very own.

The Squirm reading challenge chugged along too, but I’m still thinking about how to properly include it in the AWW challenge. I don’t want to include those books with my own, as I review them quite differently, but I’m not sure if I should add in Squirm as a different participant . . . any ideas of how to make sure picture books are represented?

AWW: Week 5

Subversive Reader Books Read and Reviewed

Squirm’s Books Read (Week Two and Three)

Subversive Reader Reviews: Chess Nuts (AWW2013)

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Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 20

Chess Nuts

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Chess Nuts

Julia Lawrinson
Children’s Contemporary Fiction

Library Book, Moreton Bay Regional Libraries

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A little while ago I wrote about Julia Lawrinson’s Losing It, which I quite disliked. I’m pleased to say, that I enjoyed Chess Nuts, a middle grades fiction by Lawrinson, about 100 times more than Losing It!

Chess Nuts is told through the perspectives of two children in their final year of primary school. Jackson is the sporty and popular kid, Anna is the wordy, chess playing outcast. When Jackson turns up at chess club, no one expects him to stick around, and Anna definitely doesn’t want him there. However, with the help of each other they discover how to become more accepting of each other and others around them.

I really enjoyed the two main characters. Jackson is fairly typical of the ‘sporty kid who enjoys music/dance/chess’ character that you see a lot of in children’s books – and occasionally in real life. The story with his father definitely adds another dimension to him, as does Anna’s struggles with the relationship she has with her brilliant, but not necessarily empathetic mother. Anna is defiantly smart – when she’s forced to run the cross country, she deliberately walks it. She throws out witty, wordy insults, but she’s really not accepting of anyone she thinks may not be as smart as she is. These two characters together are really interesting, though I’m very glad Lawrinson kept away from any kind of romantic plot.

There were some parts that bugged me. A lot of the supporting characters are very one dimensional, like in Losing It. This particularly annoyed me in the case of Josh, who is stereotypically a person with Austistic Spectrum Disorder – all the time. We’re never shown the shades of up and down that most people with ASD have. There’s also the use of the word ‘retard’ as an insult. While people are told off for using it, I still detest seeing it used in that way, without addressing why it’s so grating. There are plenty of other insults that bullies use, or a simple comment from a teacher about why it shouldn’t be used would have been better, rather than keeping it in circulation as an insult.

Although those things did bug me, this was definitely a book with the kind of empathy and heart that was missing from Losing It. I know a lot of reviewers raved about Losing It, I much prefer Chess Nuts for its exploration of what it means to be smart, belong to certain ‘groups’ at school, and how the game of chess can be enjoyed by everyone.

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Subversive Reader Reviews: Meet Rose (AWW2013)

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Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 19

Meet Rose

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Meet Rose

Sherryl Clark
Children’s Historical Fiction

Library Book, Moreton Bay Regional Libraries

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I absolutely loved this book. Rose is a pampered, but overly restricted girl living in Melbourne in 1900. Her mother insists on governesses, corsets and becoming a ‘proper lady’. Rose is not allowed to play cricket with her brother, not allowed to read exciting books or learn about geography or history and certainly not allowed to catch a tram or explore the more exciting stores of Melbourne.

That is, until her exciting Aunt Alice – a teacher – comes to stay. Alice had exciting ideas such as women being allowed to vote, being more involved in society and being able to use their brains. She takes Rose out on an adventure to a restaurant her mother (a member of the Temperance League) would never approve of, and a magical visit to Coles Arcade – to the disapproval of her mother. But will she ever be able to break free from the restrains that her mother places on her?

I adore this time period, so this book was always going to appeal. There were such big things going on in Australia at this time, with Federation looming and women beginning to gain power across the country (and in New Zealand). Rose is trying her best to break free of her mother’s restrictions, but with Alice’s arrival it really looks like there might be possibility of a change. I am really looking forward to reading more of this one and finding out what happens next!

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Subversive Reader Reviews: Meet Letty (AWW2013)

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Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 18

Meet Letty

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Meet Letty

Alison Lloyd
Children’s Historical Fiction

Library Book, Moreton Bay Regional Libraries

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This was probably my least favourite out of the four introductory books in the Our Australian Girl series, but it was still an enjoyable read. Letty’s sister, Lavinia is heading out to start a new life in New South Wales, when Letty finds herself accidentally on the ship as well! The book mostly looks at the difficult journey to New South Wales, as well as introducing the odious Jemima and the helpful Abner who befriend Letty on the journey.

I think one of the reasons I didn’t like this one as much is that I really didn’t like a lot of the supporting characters and I found Letty to be pretty silly at times, like when she gave away her sister’s good pillow case, knowing how expensive it was, just to keep a friend. It also feels like bad things keep happening to Letty and her sister, and it begins to feel a bit overwrought at times, though hopefully, some of the complications would be resolved in later books.

This is probably a more unspoken story than the familiar convict tales that children learn about. The idea of packing up a whole life and sailing a difficult journey around the world to start a new life is a concept which fascinates me. Again, this would be a brilliant book for the classroom and would probably be appealing to a lot of boys as well as girls.

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Subversive Reader Reviews: Meet Poppy (AWW2013)

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Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 17

Meet Poppy

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Meet Poppy

Gabrielle Wang
Children’s Historical Fiction

Library Book, Moreton Bay Regional Libraries

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Meet Poppy is actually an introduction to the third girl and time period in the Our Australian Girl series (also including Grace, Letty and Rose). Set in 1864, we are introduced to Poppy, a young orphan who is living with her brother at the Bird Creek Mission. When her brother runs away and she discovers that she is to be sent to a family in Sydney, before the usual age of 12, she decides to pretend she is a boy and set out to find her brother.

I know Heidi loved this one for many reasons, including the setting. That would be one of my few grumbles with this series – all the stories centre around New South Wales and Victoria – it would be great to see more diversity in locations to include Queenland, Tasmania, South Australia or Western Australia. These areas seem to be missed in children’s historical fiction, which is one of the reasons Georgiana was a pleasant surprise.

Poppy is an incredibly likable character, even more than Grace. She’s brave and resourceful and takes pride in her achievements. There’s a lot of learning which could be connected to this book as well, from the Missions to Bushrangers and the Gold Rush – it was a busy time in Australian history and that is reflected in the book.

While it’s not my favourite of the books (I adore Meet Rose), I thoroughly enjoyed this and can’t wait to read what happens to Poppy next.

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