The Great Library Tour: Brisbane Square Library

December 10, 2012Library Tourbooks, Exploring South East Queensland, libraries, library toursubversivereader View all 5 comments

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Brisbane Square Library

The Great Library Tour

Heading into the City used to be something I did almost every day. Now it’s a special event! Squirm and I had taken the train in to see Santa and thought this was a perfect opportunity to visit the absolutely gorgeous Brisbane Square Library.

Brisbane Square Library is a relatively new library (opened in 2007) which replaced the library behind city hall (which replaced the old library in city hall). It is a three story library, complete with numerous meeting rooms, study rooms and computers, as well as places to watch DVDs, separate kids and young adult areas and tonnes of events. It’s really the centre of the Brisbane Libraries, which is exactly what the library in Brisbane City should be.

The kids section is as beautiful as the rest of the library, but has something I haven’t seen in any other library I’ve been to. Some libraries have no theme through them, others have a simple theme (nature in Caboolture, space at Chermside) This, though, is a children’s section completely designed around one book!

Home, by Narelle Oliver, is the story of a pair of peregrine falcons who take up residence in a city. Based on the real story of Frodo and Frieda, the book was actually written for the library – a book which would both capture something of Brisbane City and could be interpreted into the design of the children’s section. You can definitely see the influence through the children’s section. Pages from the book are framed around the outside, images are throughout the section and there are hangings in the middle of the area with images from the book on them, along with falcons soaring through the air.

Along with these decorations, there are slanting windows with their own views out over the city, trees with tables around the base of them, a train tunnel which would be a great place to curl up with a book and lots of comfortable chairs and sofas. I also like that the novels and picture books were on opposite walls – gives slightly older kids a bit of room to select their books and read.

The children’s section seems very popular – it was one of the busiest ones we’ve visited on our tour. There were heaps of families there, and all were having a great time. The books were also excellent – a very large and varied picture book selection, with lots of new books available – I went to grab three to read with Squirm and ended up reading 6 to him!

This is another ‘must-do’ library. It’s a stunning space, and really shows what a modern library can be.

The best parts of Brisbane Square Library

A kids area designed around an award winning book written for the project – brilliant!
A great range of kids books
Lots of comfortable seating

Important Information about Brisbane Square Library

266 George Street
Brisbane City

Website – Check out the website for all the activities happening.

Open all week. See website for details

Best to take public transport (bus, train, ferry) to this one – parking is hideously expensive in the city!

While we were there . . .

Brisbane City around Christmas time is pretty magical. Around lunch time we caught carollers in the centre area. We also checked out the windows at Myers and saw Santa at Santaland. If you’re in the city you can take a walk to the City Botanic Gardens, take a historical walk around, check out the Museum of Brisbane, or head down to the river to catch a City Cat somewhere. There’s also Farmer’s Markets on Wednesdays with lots of great smelling food!

Everything I Could Ever Want For Christmas

December 8, 2012Opinion and Other Random Thingssubversivereader View all 5 comments

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the things I really want for Christmas. Since then the lovely Jess from Essentially Jess started a meme of epic proportions – if you could have ANYTHING, what would you like for Christmas? I’ve been tagged at least three times, but it’s been such a week that I haven’t managed to post until now. So here’s my ‘anything I want’ post . . .

1. Mr Pilot to have one of his dream jobs

Mr Pilot would really love to work at restoring classic World War One and World War Two aeroplanes. This would be an awesome job in so many ways! So if Santa could just drop this perfect job in our laps, we’d really like that.

2. Unlimited Travel Around the World

In the last 5 years we’ve been to New Zealand twice and to Japan once. (Mr Pilot has also been to Malaysia, South Africa and Mozambique, but that was for work and he didn’t do much touring) I’d love, love, love to see Europe and to go back to the United States and Canada (my parents took me when I was 12). And I think we could spend months in New Zealand. Of course, all our family would have to be included in the unlimited travel, so my sister in law could go back to Japan to see her family whenever she wanted and my mother in law could spend her own months in New Zealand which she loved when she was there earlier in the year 🙂

3. A Magical Library

My own personal library (with a sliding ladder, of course) with all the books I could ever want to read. But like the Tardis, it’s bigger on the inside 🙂

4. A Personal Stylist

I’m daggy and I know it. But I don’t really want to be daggy – I want to be fabulous and comfortable! Somewhere along the line I just missed getting any kind of fashion sense. So my own personal stylist would be awesome, please.

5. Crafting Time

I love to craft, but I just never seem to have the time to do it properly! I’d like some of that time please 🙂

And a wish for others.

This is a big one. I’d love every child in the world to be loved, clothed, fed and educated. I’d love it if every child in the world could experience books and travel and dream jobs when they grow up. I want every child to be happy.

I don’t think there’s anyone left to tag! But feel free to tag yourself (leave your blog address in the comments) and do the meme and I’ll link to you in next week’s weekly round up!

Weekly Wrap Up – 8 December 2012

December 8, 2012Weekly Roundupsubversivereader One comment

Adventures of a Subversive Reader - Weekly Wrap Up

Oh what a busy week! I was going to wrap things up last night, but then I fell asleep feeding the baby!

Smell the Roses

Oh – the trip to Stradbroke Island was an absolute winner. It is such a beautiful place!

What I’ve Been Reading

The complete Trebizon school series for me, Christmas books with Squirm

What I’ve Been Doing

Mr Pilot and I took Squirm over to Stradbroke Island to meet up with a friend for her 40th birthday. Squirm also had his first dip in the ocean then. We had a Christmas party with friends on Sunday night, then suffered through two incredibly hot days. On Wednesday, we popped into the city to see Santa and also saw the Christmas windows and carollers and took a trip to the city library. Thursday was our ABA Christmas picnic and on Friday Mr Pilot stayed home to help get ready for Squirm’s baptism tomorrow!

Favourite Blog Post of the Week

Book Activity: The Sugar Plum Fairy at My Little Bookcase
I loved how this activity had so many good learning elements to it!

What have you smiled at, read or done this week?

A Matter of Expectations

December 7, 2012Family, Opinion and Other Random Thingssubversivereader View all 4 comments

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Expectations

“Is he a good baby?”

I am asked this question constantly. I’m asked it by friends, ex work mates, complete strangers. It’s the ‘do you know what you’re having?’ of early motherhood.

The easy answer is yes. Occasionally I adjust it to ‘he’s an easy baby’, or ‘he’s a good sleeper and good feeder’. I’m incredibly lucky to have a healthy baby who feeds well and sleeps well most of the time.

But sometimes I wonder – is he an easy baby because he just is, or is he an easy baby because of my own expectations?

I’ve been lucky in my journey into motherhood that I’ve fallen in with a great group of parents, mostly online. A lot of them have children older than Squirm, and the parents have real life experience, and are happy to share. And one of the things that they share is: Almost everything babies do is normal.

Babies cry. Babies have completely strange sleep patterns. Babies feed differently at different times. Babies achieve things then don’t do them again for ages. Babes do things in their own time.

These parents have taught me that the most predictable thing about babies is that they’re rarely predictable at all!

There’s a lot of baby experts and authors out there who sell tonnes of books telling us exactly what we should expect from our babies. And if our babies don’t meet those expectations, we’re told how to make them conform. If that still doesn’t work, we’re encouraged to stress out, to be upset about our failure or to believe that we have a difficult, child who isn’t ‘good’. (Not to say babies can’t be difficult – I was a shocker, and I think my mother is still recovering 30 years later)

Pre-baby I used to stress out about everything. But since Squirm was born, I’ve been strangely calm. I’ve (mostly) handled the late nights/early mornings/sleeping patterns continuously changing. I’ve handled the feeding (after some minor freak outs in the hospital – though a lot of that was baby blues inspired). I’ve handled a couple of nights of gas pains (thanks to the help of Mr Pilot) and I’ve even handled vaccinations all on my own.

I can’t help but think that my lack of expectations helps with this strange calmness. I don’t refer to a book or a website to find out what Squirm’s supposed to be doing. (I rarely even get his weight checked.) I don’t follow the advice of one ‘guru’, though I do read parenting books on a range of topics that interest me, including breastfeeding, positive discipline and baby led weaning. I consider the ‘shoulds’ thoughtfully, and decide which ones are important to follow – I should make sure Squirm is correctly restrained in his car seat, I don’t need to worry so much if he drinks the bath water.

In my mind, having expectations thrust upon us – whether they are about how long a baby should sleep, or what behaviours make a ‘good’ baby – make this parenting job so much harder. Instead, we need more support to understand that our babies are all different – just as we adults are all different.

None of us are really that predictable at all.

Where do you get the best parenting support from?

Four Months Old: A Letter to Squirm

December 6, 2012Familyfamily, Letters to Squirm, Motherhood, smelling the roses, squirmsubversivereader View all 7 comments

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: 4 Months

Dear Squirm,

You’re four months old today! Now I can stop telling people that you’re nearly four months 🙂

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been finding myself amazed at how long you are – you’re nearly as tall as your 11 month old friend. Your father and I keep remembering how small you were, how you used to curl up on our chests. Now you’ve started wrapping your arms around our necks when we hold you. We’re terribly thankful for the slings and wraps now – it’s the only way we can hold you for long periods of times. We have two new wraps now – a woven and a Manduca which let us carry you on our backs – something you really love.

You want to be involved with everything at the moment. You want to sit up with us when we eat and you are fascinated when you watch us do household tasks like washing the dishes or hanging clothes on the line. You laugh at some of these tasks, which definitely makes them easier to complete. You laugh at the funniest times now, but almost always at home. You’re not a big fan of laughing away from home!

You’re also even more involved with your toys. You love your giraffe still, but you’ve started to play with some of your blocks and some new toys with mirrors in them. We’ve also bought some squirting toys for the bath, which you absolutely love.

You were sleeping through most the night until about a week ago, where you hit your four month sleep regression. You’ve been waking at three, like someone’s set an alarm. When we go and get you, you’re usually in all sorts of funny positions – the other night you were completely upside down in your cot! Luckily the sleep regression has been matched with an increase with daytime naps which I sometimes share with you!

You keep on charming people, even just random people passing you on the street. You’re so smily at people – they can’t help but say hello to you. You had your photo with Santa yesterday, and you just smiled at the camera the whole time!

Everything is still going into your mouth! We think we’re getting closer to teeth – you get very upset and frustrated at times, and only gumming on something seems to make you feel better. It’s not nice when you’re upset like that, but luckily, you seem to feel better pretty quickly.

Your big step this last month has been sitting unsupported. You have to support yourself on your hands, but you really love looking at the word in a different way. You are really rolling from front to back a lot, and you are very, very close to rolling from back to front.

We’re still reading to you lots and taking you to lots of libraries. You’ve started to reach for books yourself, and you turn the pages on board books, though not always the right way. Your father gave you a catalogue the other day which you pulled to pieces 🙂

It’s been such a lovely month together and I can’t wait for the exciting month ahead.

Love

Mum

Read more letters to Squirm here

Squirm’s Book Reviews: On Our Way to Christmas Edition

December 5, 2012Books and Readingbooks, Squirm's book reviewssubversivereader View all 6 comments

Each week I review books we’ve read with Squirm. This week, I’m concentrating on Christmas Books!

Christmas Carols by Holly Russell

This is a pretty simple concept – a board book full of Christmas carols, well known and not so known. They are laid out simply, with simple textured illustrations, and come with an accompanying CD. There were a lot of my favourite carols here, and it was nice to see a wide range of them.

The raised illustrations immediately encourage interaction with this book, which is further enhanced with the CD. The songs are peaceful and well sung, which is not always a given when it comes to Christmas CDs! It’s also nice to read the carols without music – most of them sound really nice as poems, and listening to them in that way can bring some new meanings out.

This is a great way to introduce and discuss Christmas Carols. You can talk about the focus on cold in carols and how weather in the northern hemisphere is different to southern hemisphere weather at Christmas time. You could draw your own illustrations for the carols and even turn them into christmas ornaments or other decorations for the house.

An Aussie Night Before Christmas by Yvonne Morrison

I’d read this one a few years ago when I was working as a teacher-librarian, so I was happy to see it released as a board book. It retells the classic A Night Before Christmas, talking of dreams of pavlova, rusty utes instead of sleighs and Santa wearing red stubby shorts. There’s more Australiana in the illustrations, with the little girl holding a koala toy, and emu and kangaroo christmas lights.

Although this is amusing to young children, a lot of the humour in it is appealing to older children and adults – like the bumper sticker on Santa’s ute that says ‘Go the Roos’ and the facts that the kangaroos hauling the ute have names like Shazza and Bazza. Santa even has a plumber’s crack when he bends down to put the presents under the tree. It has been well rhymed, though, which is not always the case with these ‘retellings’ and it rolls off the tongue nicely when you read it aloud.

It would be interesting to read with the traditional version and to discuss why certain differences were made. With older children you could talk about stereotypes – there are a lot of Australian stereotypes in here – and where else you see them at Christmas time. You could look into different ways people celebrate Christmas around the world, or even how different people celebrate Christmas in your own area.

Queen Victoria’s Christmas by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley

Throughout this lovely book, we follow two dogs around the palace of Queen Victoria and her family. Everyone’s getting ready for Christmas, when suddenly a tree appears. A tree? What can you do with a tree? It’s a big secret as the doors are closed and mysterious things happen behind them. Finally, the doors are opened and all is revealed with a lovely decorates tree and lots of presents underneath.

I really loved this book – it had a beautiful, whimsical feel, while explaining how Prince Albert made the Christmas tree the centre of the celebrations. The author’s note at the back of the book talk about how so many of the traditions we take for granted now, were developed and became popular during the time of Queen Victoria – it must have made Christmas pretty exciting.

This is a wonderful book for looking at Christmas in the past. It’s also great for taking a closer look at traditions like Santa and Christmas trees and carols. You could learn more about the royal family, or what the current Queen does for Christmas now. You could also look at how other buildings around the world – like the White House – are decorated.

Read More of Squirm’s Book Reviews Here

What is your favourite Christmas Book?

2013 Challenges: The Australian Women Writers Challenge

December 4, 2012Books and Readingsubversivereader View all 13 comments

Find my 2013 reviews and posts here

It seems very strange to be writing about 2013 challenges, but at some point I will have to face the fact that there is less than a month left of 2012!

A friend of mine took on the Australian Women Writers Challenge this year. Although the highest level of the challenge is reading 10 books and reviewing 6, she took on a slightly higher personal challenge to read 40 and review 30! She’s almost there too!

The Australian Women Writers Challenge was set up to promote women writers in Australia and to address the gender imbalance in reviewed works.

I was a little wary of taking on this challenge, until I looked at some of the books reviewed this year. Then I realised I can get a lot of them through my local library. And I just can’t resist a good challenge.

I’ll also be setting a personal goal – to read 20 (non-picture) books written by Australian Women Writers and to review at least 15 of them. I intend to get as many of them through the library as possible. I’m also going to aim to read books I haven’t read before.

So, what’s on my ‘list’ to possibly read? Well, read on . . .

Cargo by Jessica Au
Painted Love Letters by Catherine Bateson
Girl Saves Boy by Steph Bowe
Holier than Thou by Laura Buzo
Cinnamon Rain by Emma Cameron
A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper
Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley
Dead Actually by Kaz Delaney
The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth
The Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett
One Long Thread by Belinda Jeffrey
Silhouette by Thalia Kalkipsakis
Divine Clementine by Hayley S Kirk
Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta
Froi of the Exiles by Melina Marchetta
Friday Brown by Vicki Wakefield
Love Shy by Lili Wilkinson
Six Impossible Things by Fiona Anna Wood
Empire Day by Diane Armstrong
A Stranger in My Street by Deborah Burrows

No doubt there’ll be others that I add in, and some I just can’t get into, but at least this gives me a starting point.

So now, I reach out and challenge you – Will you try to read Australian Women Writers in 2013?

The Great Library Tour: Caboolture Library

December 3, 2012Library Tourbooks, Exploring South East Queensland, libraries, library toursubversivereader View all 13 comments

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Caboolture Library

The Great Library Tour

From almost the start of this project, there’s been one library everyone’s recommended. This week, I finally made the trip north and checked out the Caboolture Library – and it was every bit as impressive as people said it was.

The Caboolture Library is just under a year old and is part of a community building known as The Hub. Also in The Hub is an Art Gallery, music rooms, meeting rooms and art studios, as well as a cafe. The library is right in the middle of Caboolture, easily accessible by car and public transport.

One of the things I liked most about the library was how it brought different elements together. There was a number of small lounges, a local and family history room, a reference section, quiet room, indigenous section, young adult lounge and a kids section, but although each area had their own ‘feel’, the library did not feel disjointed. It seemed to come together as a whole. I particularly liked the history room, which looked like an old fashioned reading room, and the reference section desks, which also had that old world feel to them.

The children’s section was similarly impressive (and very separate from the Young Adult section, which I really liked – give young adults an identity of their own). Decorated in greens and neutral colours (my favourite colours in a children’s section, I think), there is a nature feel to the whole area. The section (which is almost a separate wing from the rest of the library), looks out with big windows over the courtyard and playground inside, the board book holders have insects cut outs on them and there is a really cool kids ‘hide out’ which is topped off with green fabric.

The section itself consists of three main areas – the books, which are off to one side, a big area with small and bigger tables (nice to have tables for bigger kids to work at) and another big area which contains board books and the hideout, as well as a big carpeted area, with tiered couches and couches around the outside of the wall. Next to the tiered couches is a big toy chest full of blocks and very cool puzzles to play with.

In the book area there were a lot of books facing out, as well as some really well chosen books on display. A lot of the books were fairly new, and it was hard to keep to a limit when borrowing. The staff here were so friendly and fabulous – they really took care of us, especially when Squirm got his latest reading certificate.

Some of the libraries I’ve been to have great kids sections, but somehow don’t extend the same friendly feel to the rest of the library. Caboolture is a library I could easily spend hours at – I even ended up borrowing books when I’d promised myself I would’t (curse their lovely displays). I totally understand why it came so highly recommended, and I highly recommend you visit it if you ever get the chance.

The best parts of Caboolture Library

The wonderful natural feel to the kids section
The friendly and helpful staff
The great selection of books
The big range of toys also for lending – must check them out further next time!

Important Information about Caboolture Library

4 Hasking Street
Caboolture

Website

Open Monday to Saturday. See website for details

Parking available at a covered car park off Hasking Street. Very close to public transport. There’s a toilet available in the children’s section.

While we were there . . .

We checked out the awesome art gallery right next door to the library. If you get there in the next two weeks you can catch The Architect’s Eye: The John Mainwaring Collection – it’s a collection of art works collected by Mainwaring and how they have influenced his work – it was simply breathtaking. There are a number of galleries and their work changes fairly regularly.

There was also a really lovely cafe there. If you have older kids the playground outside is also nice. While you’re in the Caboolture area, you might also want to check out the revamped historical museum or the nearby Abbey Museum.

Weekly Wrap Up – 30 November 2012

November 30, 2012Weekly Roundupsubversivereader View all 2 comments

A few things from this week

Smell the Roses

So many good things this week! Yummy cupcakes, organic food, talking with wonderful people, sending out the invitations for Squirm’s Baptism, finding Squirm’s baptism outfit (thank goodness), and visiting an awesome library and art gallery!

On that last point, if you can get to Caboolture, go and check out their art gallery (next to the library). It is an amazing space and the exhibition I saw was absolutely brilliant – and is showing for another couple of weeks. The upcoming exhibitions also look really good, so I’m hoping to get up and see them soon.

What I’ve Been Reading

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and Kiss Me! by Carlos Gonzalos for me. Let’s Go, Baby-o! by Janet and Andrew McLean, My Heart is Like a Zoo by Michael Hall and Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle for Squirm

What I’ve Been Doing

After a really busy week last week, we took things a bit easier this week. On Monday I headed north to the much recommended Caboolture Library (which will be reviewed on Monday) before stopping by Spotlight (yay!) on the way home. Tuesday was the Bloggers Brunch and then over to Mother’s Direct to buy some books and a new carrier for Mr Pilot. Wednesday was calm (or not so much) at home, and yesterday I escaped the heat for a while in the shopping centre.

Favourite Blog Posts of the Week

Libraries are for Everyone – Even Babies : This isn’t a new article, it’s one I researched for a blog post earlier in the week. I love it!
I’d Be Happy to be a Scuba Diver by Mountains and Musings. This really resonated with me. I need a new phone (mine is 4 years old and dying), and a smart phone would be ideal, but I am worried about how wrapped up I would get with it
My Strict Magazine Rules from Edenland. This made me laugh so much! I am awful with this – I hate it when my husband flicks through my Good Reading magazine before I’ve read it from cover to cover. And don’t even ask what he and Squirm did to the Spotlight catalogue!
December Photo a Day by Fat Mum Slim. I’m doing this for the first time – maybe December isn’t the best month to try, what with Christmas and my birthday, but it’s totally worth a try!

What have you smiled at, read or done this week?

Considering Organic: What I Learned at a Bloggers Brunch

November 30, 2012Opinion and Other Random ThingsCrunchy, food, shoppingsubversivereader View all 11 comments

The cool place tags at our table. The event was held at Wrays Organic and the food was awesome!

At the beginning of this week, I really didn’t know much about organic food. I mean, I knew that it existed, I knew I had friends who preferred to buy organic when they could, I knew it was there in the shops. But I’d always kind of shrugged it off as something that would be nice to do, but it wasn’t essential or anything.

Then, on Tuesday, I attended the Bloggers Brunch organised by Blogs and PR and Birds of Prey PR on behalf of Sunraysia Juice. We were there to learn more about Sunraysia’s new Organic Juices, and to learn a little more about organic food and farming – and to have some great coffee and food! We were lucky enough to have Rob Bauer from Bauer’s Organic Farm attending to tell us more about organic food and farming – and this is where my eyes were really opened.

Rob has been involved in farming pretty much his whole life and he is one of the pioneers in organic farming in Australia. He moved to organic farming in the early 1980s after becoming uncomfortable with selling produce which had been sprayed with chemicals, and the effect that those chemicals might be having on the people exposed to them. Instead of using chemicals, he turned back to a way of farming which had been working for hundreds of years before chemicals were introduced – working with the soil and nature to produce the best possible result.

It dawned on me pretty quick that there were a lot of benefits of moving across to organic food, especially as Squirm will be eating solids in a few months. The chemicals which are used on non organic crops are pretty scary, and I would really like to move away from them as much as possible. But the biggest problem for me, and one of the reasons I’d always dismissed organic food as too hard, was there was no organic food shops in my area and I thought organic food would be too hard to find.

That’s where companies like Sunraysia come in. Sunraysia have been involved in juices for a long time, and felt that it was a natural progression into organic juices. They’ve created a juice which has nothing added – no artificial colours or flavours, no chemical pesticides, no genetic modification and no added sugars or preservatives – and nothing taken away from the fruit. It’s ‘lunch box sized’ in a foil pouch and – importantly – is being sold in major supermarkets – making it easier for people like me to find it.

Since Squirm isn’t old enough to be drinking juice yet, Mr Pilot and I took on the task of taste testing the juice. It comes in four flavours – orange, tropical, apple, and apple and blackcurrant and both of us have been really enjoying the strong flavours present in the juice, as well as how easy it was to eat. I also threw a couple in the freezer, which was brilliant in yesterday’s heat. The foil pack is much easier to open when frozen then the old poppers were!

I think one of the biggest mental barriers for me, when it came to organic food, was that I was thinking you could only buy it in the ‘special’ aisle, and that would be a bit of a pain. However, I visited my local Woolies yesterday and found that a lot of the organic products are in the same area as the other products – it just takes a few more seconds to look for them, rather than reaching for the familiar. Sunraysia Organic Juices are the same – they’re in the same aisle as other juices and ‘poppers’ and easy to throw into the shopping trolley to try out.

So, all in all, I had a wonderful time at the Bloggers Brunch, and I definitely learned a lot more about organic food. I think it’s a subject I’m going to take the time to research more about – which you can do by joining the Bud Organic Club – and which I’ll probably write more about in the future.

Do you buy organic food? Where do you get it from?