The Night Walkers by Otto Coonz

Gulls are dropping out of the sky, dead, Cecil the local tip attendant has mysteriously disappeared and, now Nora's neighbour Martin Craven is suddenly ill and stays in a darkened room away from the light.  Mr Craven's housekeeper, Mrs Cribbins knows something is wrong after Martin tries to attack her and infect her with his soul-destroying illness, but no-one will believe an old lady.  After visiting Marty, Nora's brother Tony starts exhibiting the same symptoms and is taken to hospital. Nora suspects that this mysterious infection afflicting many of the children in Covendale is something far more sinister than just a virus. But no-one will listen to her, not even her parents. So with the help of her friend Max, she sets out to rid the town of this evil.  This book came about because of author, Coontz's concern for environment protection. Despite it's environmentalist bent, it is a gripping read. I read it in one sitting. If you like horror or adventure, give this one a go. I think I'll have to now get hold of his more well-known novel called Isle of the Shapeshifters.

101 Wacky Facts About Mummies by Jack C, Harris

Do you like to read about weird stuff? If you do all the unbelievable facts about mummies are here in this little paperback. Once a tomb was discovered with over a million mummified birds! I feel sorry for whoever had to count them. Sometimes ground up mummies were used to cure stomach aches. Imagine sprinkling that on the top of your spag bol! Mummies often still have their toenails and eyelashes, now that's pretty gross.  There are no mummy-making manuals to be found, it seems a topic too sacred to write about, or maybe nobody wanted to share their secrets. This is an engrossing read and once you start you won't want to put it down. 

No one knows exactly what secret ingredients the Egyptians used for preserving their mummies. But scientists know that the ingredients included oil of cedar (similar to today's turpentine) and natron, a mineral with a high salt content.

The text is sprinkled with ink illustrations and is divided into the following chapters: Will the Real Mummy Please Lie Down? Wrap Session, The First Mummy Wrappers, Tomb It May Concern, Grave Robberies "R" Us, Farewell Mummy Dearest, I Want My Mummy, The Chinchorro Connection, Natural Beauties and Better Left Shut: The Tomb of King Tut.  Now, did you also know that apparently only a few thousand mummies have been discovered so that means hundreds of millions of mummies are still out their waiting to be discovered. So get your shovel and start digging...failing that, grab this book and start reading.

The Bamboo Cutter's Tale by Sayumi Kawauchi

The first bilingual book in our little classroom library, this book tells the story of a bamboo-cutter who finds a small girl in in a bamboo stick sheathed in light. He takes her home and he and his wife care for her. Soon she grows into a beautiful young maiden and men from all of the country want to marry her. However, she has no desire to marry and leave her loving parents. As time progresses she tells them she must return to the moon. This book has a mix of  full colour plate illustrations and also some black and white ones.The Japanese translation accompanies the text. This is not a demanding read and story is enchanting.

The Emperor's New Clothes retold by Susanna Davidson

This version of the famous tale by Hans Christian Anderson is very accessible for most readers and supported with comical, colourful illustrations complete with speech bubbles by Mike Gordon. This hardback has been organised into five short chapters: Nothing to wear, Slimus and Slick, The two cheats, The emperor's visit, and, The royal procession. The king has just about every style of royal clothing, but he is not satisfied. In fact he has seven thousand, three hundred and twenty-two outfits. He wants new clothes, he wants something special. Little does he understand the great swindle which is about to take place. This is a gentle and amusing read, with a really creative and quirky treatment of this age-old tale.

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.