Tuesday, 13 September 2016
"Undercover - One of these things is Almost like the Others" by Bastien Contraire (Phaidon)
Labels:
Bastien Contraire,
Phaidon,
Undercover
Two new fantastic titles in the "Little People, Big Dreams" series from Frances Lincoln Children's Books. Meet Maya Angelou and Amelia Earhart!
Now two new titles have been announced in the series, available now from Frances Lincoln Children's Books.
"Amelia Earhart" chronicles the life of ace pilot Amelia, whose strong will and self-belief helped her overcome prejudice and technical problems to become the first female flier to fly solo across the Atlantic ocean.
Written by Isabel Sanchez Vegara and illustrated by Maria Diamantes, "Amelia Earhart" is filled to the brim with astonishing facts about this pioneering pilot and her aerial adventures.
"Little People, Big Dreams: Amelia Earhart" is available now from Frances Lincoln Children's Books.
Maya Angelou established herself as one of the most important and celebrated American writers of the last two centuries with an amazing body of work, including "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".
Learn more about Maya's early tragic childhood and later life with this fabulous addition to the range.
"Little People, Big Dreams: Maya Angelou" written by Lisbeth Kaiser and illustrated by Leire Salaberria is also available now from Frances Lincoln Books.
(Kindly supplied for review)
Monday, 12 September 2016
"Around the World with the Ingreedies: A Taste Adventure" by Zoe Bather, Joe Sharpe and Chris Dickason (Laurence King Publishing)
Labels:
Around the World with the Ingreedies A Taste Adventure,
Chris Dickason,
Joe Sharpe,
Laurence King Publishing,
Zoe Bather
A fabulous guest blog post from Kate Pankhurst, author of "Fantastically Great Women who Changed the World", out now from Bloomsbury Publishing
Labels:
Bloomsbury Children's Books,
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World,
Kate Pankhurst,
Mary Seacole
It quite rightly won a coveted "Book of the Week" nomination from both Charlotte and I, and today we're lucky enough to talk to Kate Pankhurst, author of "Fantastically Great Women who Changed the World" about one truly awesome lady she'd love to have lunch with.
Take it away, Kate!
My Lunch with Mary Seacole
If I had to pick one great lady from Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World to have a cup of tea with, I’d pick Mary Seacole. (Although I’m not sure if Mary’s favourite tipple was tea, so perhaps we’d sit down to a bowl of the soup she made for the soldiers she nursed back to health in the Crimean War.)
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| Mary Seacole (Image: © Maull and Company in London (Circa 1873) |
I imagine it would be quite hard to get a word in edgeways talking to Mary. She’d probably give me a grin and readjust the military medals she’s pictured wearing in the grainy black and white photos that exist of her, before telling me just how she found the confidence to shrug off all the people who told her she wasn’t ever going to nurse soldiers in the Crimea. Even though she travelled all the way from Jamaica to Britain, to offer her services to her better known counterpart, Florence Nightingale.
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| Mary Seacole © Kate Pankhurst 2016 |
A half Jamaican, half Scottish black woman claiming to be trained in nursing would have been quite unusual at the time, that’s maybe why Mary didn’t get the job. Most people would probably give up at that point, but not Mary. She decided to travel to Crimea on her own and even more amazingly, thought hang on … what’s stopping me opening my own hospital? NOTHING! (Not even a perilous journey across land and sea journey, lack of funds or the fact she was travelling to a freezing cold war zone.)
Mary’s hospital, The British Hotel, was very different to today’s hospitals. (All hospitals at the time were, modern medicine was yet to be established). It was a basic metal framed building providing food and shelter to injured men from both sides of the war. Mary just wanted to care for the injured men, it didn’t matter to her what side they were from.
Florence Nightingale went down in the history books as the pioneer of modern nursing. She placed hygiene higher up the priority list than her healthcare peers, who might wipe off the saw they’d use to amputate somebody’s leg with a dirty rag, or might not.
Mary’s hospital, The British Hotel, was very different to today’s hospitals. (All hospitals at the time were, modern medicine was yet to be established). It was a basic metal framed building providing food and shelter to injured men from both sides of the war. Mary just wanted to care for the injured men, it didn’t matter to her what side they were from.
Florence Nightingale went down in the history books as the pioneer of modern nursing. She placed hygiene higher up the priority list than her healthcare peers, who might wipe off the saw they’d use to amputate somebody’s leg with a dirty rag, or might not.
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| Mary Seacole © Kate Pankhurst 2016 |
As great as Florence was, Mary’s story made me smile and be full of admiration in a different way. She pushed the boundaries of nursing in her own slightly renegade and daredevil fashion. She did her own thing, no matter what anyone said and followed her instincts. Instincts which proved to be right. Mary’s successes are lesser known than Florence’s, but she too had the right idea about the foundations of good nursing, knowing that you can’t treat an illness or injury without paying attention to basic human needs, like a good diet and keeping warm.
Back to that imaginary sharing soup scenario – I think by the time Mary had finished telling me about her extraordinary life my soup would be untouched and well and truly cold. Her ‘hey ho! I’ll just do it anyway’, attitude got her a long way in life. As well as her exploits in Crimea, she travelled the world and wrote a gripping book about her adventures, titled The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole In Many Lands.
Not many people have had enough adventures in life to write a book like that, maybe if we all thought a bit like Mary, we would.
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| Kate Pankhurst |
"The Way to Outer Space" by Jay Eunji Lee (Oxford Children's Publishing / OUP)
Friday, 9 September 2016
ReadItDaddy's Second Book of the Week - Week Ending 9th September 2016 - "Hilda and the Stone Forest" by Luke Pearson (NoBrow / Flying Eye Books)
Labels:
Book of the Week 2016,
Flying Eye Books,
Hilda and the Stone Forest,
Luke Pearson,
NoBrow Press
ReadItDaddy's First Book of the Week - Week Ending 9th September 2016 - "Pinball Science - Build your Own Pinball Machine" by Ian Graham, Nick Arnold and Owen Davey (Templar Publishing)
Labels:
Book of the Week 2016,
Build your Own Pinball Machine,
Ian Graham,
Nick Arnold,
Owen Davey,
Pinball Science,
Templar Publishing
Thursday, 8 September 2016
Sorry seems to be the hardest word - A ReadItTorial
Labels:
Apologising,
Life Lesson,
ReadItTorial
The inspiration for this blog post comes from a couple of sources. One was a pretty horrible anecdote imparted to me by a friend who shall remain nameless but still sits in a cauldron full of hot fuming hatred and obviously can't stop talking about the particular incident that caused them to boil over (rightly so in my grumpy old opinion). He was hit by a kid on a bike while out walking. Both he and the kid fell to the ground, the kid none the worse for wear but him with a fairly nasty and deep cut from where the bike hit him.
He upped and made sure the kid was OK - waiting for something to happen, actually waiting for the kid to apologise.
Does your child say sorry when they hurt others? Do they say sorry to you when they hurt you?
Read on...
For a few silent minutes the pair of them stood staring at each other. The kid, by now, back on his bike but seemingly caught in some mental block of not knowing whether to flee or fight, the adult waiting for that magic word. With not a single word between then the kid eventually shrugged his shoulders in a fairly non-committal way, tutted (to add insult to injury) and cycled off (presumably to look for the next near-OAP to run over while cycling merrily along on the pavement hunting for Pokemon or whatever was filling his stress-free mind.
My friend still seethes and the whole basis of his rant was that as kids, we might have been lippy and mischievous but we would definitely have been brought up to know better than to walk away from hurting someone with nothing but a shrug and a tut.
The other thing that inspired this post was seeing this sort of behaviour fairly regularly as Charlotte has grown up. Kids are always hurting themselves (and each other) unintentionally at school, at play, during activities and during family visits or when cousins come to stay. It's just one of those things that you come to expect as a parent - that get blown out of all proportion in a child's mind when they're telling you the story of what happened (if you weren't there to witness it of course).
Quite often the first thing we'll ask is "Did they say sorry?" or "Did an adult ask them to apologise?" and the answer is nearly always "No" - Obviously if you only have your child's word on what happened, you'll never really know the full story but we know Charlotte well enough to know that if a child had apologised or an adult had intervened and asked them to say sorry, she definitely would have reported that back.
But time and time again it's a "No" which made me reassess what we do. We always make a point of
1) Taking Charlotte to one side and asking her to apologise (if she hasn't already)
2) Talking about things later on, to help her understand why hurting people (physically or otherwise) is wrong
3) Apologising ourselves if parents are around or to the child if not.
The thing is, it almost feels like there's no value placed on an apology any more. People have become so used to always being right even when they're wrong, that it's commonplace to act pretty horribly to other human beings with no recompense or remedial recourse. We do it every day on the internet. We howl abuse at other drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, little old folk in our way while we're shopping, animals that bark at us when we surprise them - you name it and you can bet your butt that even the most holier than thou amongst you have been pretty horrible to someone or something over the past week or so without bothering to apologise. Maybe even folk you purport to care about - and I think that's probably where the subject of our story had gone wrong. No one ever paused for a moment to tell him sorry, so why would he say it to anyone else?
Three Tinyville titles for busy little bees, from Brian Biggs and Abrams Appleseed
Labels:
Abrams Appleseed,
Brian Biggs,
Tinyville Town
Prince Ribbit by Jonathan Emmett and Poly Bernatene (Macmillan Children's Books)
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