Messages from Alison Lester & Rosanne Hawke for GREAT Day

Being able to read well is like a gold pass to the world.

Author of the National Book for the National Year of Reading, Alison Lester sent a special message to all the children at Gilgandra Reads Everything Around Town Day, last Friday 31^st August.  “Hello to everybody at Gilgandra. I hope you are having a wonderful GREAT Day.  It’s good to celebrate books because they make our lives so fabulous.  If you can read you are never lonely and never bored.  You can travel anywhere, meet anybody, be whoever you’d like to be and feel terrified, happy, brave and sad. 

If I am very worried about something, so worried that I can’t sit still, I read.  I have a couple of books I use in this way and they always do the trick.  They take me to another place, away from the worry that’s driving me crazy.  If you are a terrific reader you will know all this already but if you are still struggling to read, persevere, keep at it!  Being able to read well is like a gold pass to the world.”

Reading turns you into a writer

The activities on GREAT Day were based on Alison Lester’s beautiful picture book “Are we there yet?”, but we also celebrated the books of other Australian children’s authors.  Pat Clarke, author of “The Magic Forest of Goonoo” and Serena Geddes, illustrator of many children’s books, came to GREAT Day to tell us about their work, but many other authors sent messages to the children.  Rosanne Hawke from South Australia wrote “I think Reading is so important. It turns you into a writer….. I think reading a lot enriches your life. It helps you to see how others think and feel and how they live their lives. You can walk in their shoes for a little while. It also makes you a good writer. Whatever you read will make its way down your arm and out of your fingers sooner or later.  I always wanted to write stories, but I started writing Jihad in the Borderland trilogy while I was living in Pakistan as an aid worker. My thirteen-year-old daughter wanted me to tell her a story. One of our friends had been kidnapped by the freedom fighters and she thought that would be so exciting. After I told the story she made me write it down. Then she asked me to send it to a publisher. She had the vision of walking into a bookshop and buying a book that her mother had written just for her. It took four or five years but her dream came true. And I never stopped writing.”

Thank you to everyone who came to GREAT Day and to everyone who worked so hard to make it happen, and to make it fun.  Thank you especially to Lyn Greenhalgh and the Principal and Staff of Gilgandra Public School, who organised this event, and have done so since 2005.  It brings our community together in an amazing way. .On Gilgandra Shire Library’s facebook page, much loved children’s author Jacquie Harvey recently commented “I have loved the times I've been involved in the GREAT Day in the past. It's a fabulous initiative and one that should happen all over Australia!”

 

GREAT Day this Friday 31st August- The Plan!

Design a bookmark competition

Storytime and "Behind the beautiful forevers''

Storytime

Come to the Library this Thursday, 28^th June at 10.30am to join in our monthly Storytime.  We’ll be reading a picture book classic; ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle, making some lovely butterflies and caterpillars and generally having fun.  Storytime is for babies, toddlers, under-5’s and their carers, and is free of charge.

Visit Countdown to the Very Hungry Caterpillar Day! to see a video of Eric Carle talking about this wonderful book.  You can also download Very Hungry Caterpillar wallpaper and a screensaver.  We love this story, as do people the world over. It even earned its own Google doodle!

New book

 ‘Behind the beautiful forevers’ by Katherine Boo is a new arrival at our Library.  From Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo, this is a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great, unequal cities.  This well written, fast-paced book, based on three years of reporting, makes the impact of our age of global change human.

Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck, her sensitive, beautiful daughter—Annawadi’s “most-everything girl”—will soon become its first female college graduate. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a fifteen-year-old scrap-metal thief, believe themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call “the full enjoy.”

But then Abdul the garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; terror and a global recession rock the city; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest individual hopes intersect with the greatest global truths, the true contours of a competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the imaginations and courage of the people of Annawadi.

With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century’s hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.  It was reviewed by Shashi Faroor of the Washington Post on 11 February, 2012, and here is part of what she had to say:

“This is an astonishing book. It is astonishing on several levels: as a worm’s-eye view of the “undercity” of one of the world’s largest metropolises; as an intensely reported, deeply felt account of the lives, hopes and fears of people traditionally excluded from literate narratives; as a story that truly hasn’t been told before, at least not about India and not by a foreigner. But most of all, it is astonishing that it exists at all.” 

To see what other books the Library has, come in and browse our shelves, or visit our website at http://www.northwesternlibrary.com.au .  We wish you good reading!

Manga Competition

During the last school holidays, the Library held a Manga Drawing competition.  Here are some of the brilliant entries we received:

Thank you to everyone who entered!

Preschool visits Library for National Simultaneous Storytime

On Wednesday 23rd May at 11am, in schools, libraries and bookshops all over the country, children were listening to a special reading of "The Very Cranky Bear" by Nick Bland.  In Gilgandra, students from Gilgandra Preschool came to the Library to hear this story, and to help the bear ROAR!

It was so much fun!  Thank you to Gilgandra Preschool teachers and students for sharing this day with us.  You made our day!

Making up our bear and cave pictures

New website, new books, and Storytime coming soon

North Western Library, of which Gilgandra is a branch, has a new website http://www.northwesternlibrary.com.au/.  This is the URL to visit if you want to download an audio book, use World Book Online, check out the catalogue, or find out how the Library works.  To find Your Tutor, click on the Branches link on the left hand side, select Gilgandra Shire Library and you will see the Your Tutor link.  If you have any difficulty navigating the new website, please contact us on 6817 8877, or by email at library@gilgandra.nsw.gov.au.

 Storytime

Storytime will be held on Thursday 24^th May at 10.30am.  We will be enjoying Nick Bland’s wonderful story “The Very Cranky Bear”.  Babies, toddlers, under-5’s and their family or carers are very welcome to join us for songs, stories and fun!   

New books

“The red beast: controlling anger in children with Asperger’s Syndrome” by K.I. Al-Ghani is a new picture book which is designed to help children understand and deal with rage.  In the introduction, the author notes that simply living through a normal day is often fraught with anxiety and frustration for some children, and that the uncontrollable outbursts of rage that can result from this often leave the children suffering from low self-esteem.  He says “It is possible to enable the child to see that anger is like a ‘beast’ that needs to be tamed.  Taming the beast can be hugely satisfying and can lead to an increase in self-esteem, not a decrease.  By teaching techniques to children when they are fully in control of their tempers, role playing these visualisation techniques frequently, and then setting up a place where children can be directed when the ‘beast’ awakens, it is possible to lessen the frequency and ferocity of anger and give control back to the children.”  The book is a simple picture book, but it is a great tool to help children begin to ‘control the beast’. 

The new 12^th edition of “The Law Handbook” has arrived.  The Law Handbook is the plain English guide to the law in NSW, providing access to law that affects people in their everyday lives.  This edition contains 43 chapters written by over 80 lawyers and legal experts with the most up-to-date information possible about the law in NSW.  Every chapter contains a comprehensive list of the organisations and websites that you need for further information or help.  To see what other books the Library has, check out the Library catalogue at our new website http://www.northwesternlibrary.com.au .  Happy reading!