The Dinosaur Diner and Other Poems by Paul Sidey

This hardback book contains twenty-four quirky poems about dinosaurs. It has a fairly sizeable cast including a fun-loving camarasaurus, a postie tyrannosaurus, the swotty iguandon, the struthiomimus who lives in  a penthouse, the parasaurolophous with strange dress sense and many more. The accompanying comical ink illustrations by Susan Hellard,  mirror the text well. This illustrator has a great portfolio which is worth a visit. Click on the link under the cover. The Dinosaur Olympics, one of the longer poems is certainly worth a read.
http://www.arenaillustration.com/Artists/thumbsSusanHellard.html

The Dinosaur rap is very entertaining:

If you wanna be a reptile you gotta stay cool
Snarl at your parents, don't go to school
Talk with your mouth full and pick your nose
Who's gonna stop you, do you suppose?

Get down my man and blow your horn
We're gonna party until dawn
There's no need to read so don't bother to write
It hurts your brain - hey let's go fight

If you mess with me you're gonna get zapped
Who says funky dinosaurs can't adapt?
If the world explodes, OK, no sweat
Let's boogie in the ruins to a rap cassette.

This could well be the anthem for a couple of students in my class this year.  Anyway, this will join the poetry section of our little classroom library and is a great reference point for looking at rhyme schemes and rhyming couplets.

Ducks at Play by Sophie Bevan

I picked this book up mainly because of a certain duck called Pee Pee that my son used to own. 

"When brand new ducklings enter the world they will bond with the first moving thing they see. Hopefully, this will be their mother, but it has been known for ducklings to believe they are human and to follow their owners around, mimicking their behaviour."

Now this is exactly what Pee Pee did after been bought from the Hobart Royal Show as a hatchling. Travis didn't used to run round messing on the floor everywhere, but Pee Pee followed him absolutely everywhere and wasn't the least bit interested in me, even though I made him the box with the suspended light bulb and scurried home from school during the recreational breaks to refill the water bowl he would regularly upend. Eventually, Pee Pee, the water-loving duck, became too big to keep in a suburban back, so we released him into a pond on the property of a friend of a friend. 

This little hardback is packed with beautiful photographs of all manner of ducks, quotations from famous writers and some interesting snippets of information. It is a perfect short term read for an upper primary student. It is compprised of four chapters: not so ugly duckling, quack quack, preening poultry,and, a duck to water. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of owning a duck will surely enjoy this little number.

The Dictionary of Wimps by Alan Grant, David McPhail and John Gadsby

A funny little wimpy dictionary from our New Zealand neighbours written by well-known television personalities (not that I have heard of any of them.) sure to delight anyone who reads widely and has an extensive knowledge of words and their origins. it is basically a field guide to wimpotence and had me laughing out loud from time to time. So if you are a wimp or think you know one, this book could quite easily appeal to your wimpy side. The ink illustrations by Chicane add greatly to the humour.  Here are a few wimpy definitions starting with the first one in the dictionary.

aardvark: a typically wimpish mammal. Dwells in burrows, only comes out at night, and lives on termites, presumably because it hasn't got the guts to come out in daytime and hunt for real food like a man. Wimps always make a beeline for the aardvark cage whenever they go to the zoo.

Further in we have the jury defined as twelve wimps unable to decide the fate of a real man.

And towards the end we have a discussion of teddy bears apparently many people keep these cuddly soft toys far into adult life. Most wimps, however, were secretly afraid of them and quite glad to get rid of them.

My favourite is probably  team:that which a wimp was never asked to be part of at school, and was only included in because the teacher said that somebody had to have him.

Friends A Book of Quotations

I guess this is what you'd call a gift book. It is a collection of quotations about friends and friendships. So if you want some inspiration in this area, it's a quick and enlightening little read.  Here are a few cited in the book:

An honest answer is the sign of true friendship
Proverbs 24:26


It's the ones that you can call up at 4:00 a.m. that really matter.
Marlene Dietrich (Popcorn in Paradise)


Treat your friends as you do your best pictures, and place them in their best light.
Jennie Jerome Churchill

A friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
Walter Winchell

A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.
Fr. Jerome Cummings.


Friendship is one mind in two bodies.
Mencius

A Teddy Bear's Little Instruction Book by David & Tracey Brawn

This is a light-hearted read which adults and children would enjoy alike. It was given to me by a beautiful young student Miriam back in 1996 and I have read it many times. It has some little words of wisdom, some play on words and some advice from a teddy bear's point of view. At the bottom of each page is an ink teddy. You can flip through the pages rapidly to watch a bear descend from the sky with a balloon and do a  short dance routine...or, flip it the other way and watch him do this in reverse. It sits upon one of the shelves in the little shelves of little books.  Here is some great advice if you are a bear.

If you are a bear

*get plenty of exercise - walk round and round the garden

*Eat up - obesity is more acceptable in a bear than anorexia

*Travel in style - not hanging from the rear-view mirror

*Don't become a projectile in domestic disputes

*Never be a substitute handkerchief

*Avoid the indignity of the Lost Property Office

*When camping, take only the bear essentials

*Handwashing is much more gentler than going in the washing machine

*Don't be ashamed if you are stuffed with old tights.

The Pied Piper: Keith Smith's Riddle Book for Kids by Keith Smith

 This lovely little riddle book was published in 1960 and is a real little Australian gem. It contains some really great riddles which I will use in our classroom "riddleoffs" which I hold from time to time. The author, Keith Smith, sadly passed away last year in June.  It so happens that years and years before any of my class were born, or me either actually, that Keith Smith thought it would be a good idea to have a radio program, called "A Word From Children."  In it boys and girls had their say about all manner of things. Then five years later Keith started another program called "The Pied Piper."  Since that time children sent him thousands of riddles and asked him riddles during his Pied Piper program. the program was produced in front of live audiences in theatres and town halls all over Australia This book is the result of all that.

 

The Hypnotiser by Michael Rosen

This is true to Michael's Rosens quirky  and sometimes side-splitting style.  His poems are created out of real situations which confront kids in every day life from the difficulty of eating a soggy pizza stuck in its paper bag on a train to a boy's beloved gold fish dying in its tank. There are many about the family and the funny little situations families are often confronting on a day to day basis. Many students will be able to identify with the themes in these poems. So, this poetry book joins two others by Rosen in our little classroom library. I promise the poems will brings smiles to your faces. Below is Rosen reading one of his poems from this book.