 Hi everyone, my name is Steph. This is Little Bookish Teacher and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I am going to be sharing some picture book reviews all about kids generally being awesome. It's really easy to find picture books where the main characters are animals or non-human entities, but it's also really important to see great picture books that reflect kids as they are, as well as a diverse range of cultures that children come from. But today I've picked out six books that I wanted to share with you that I probably haven't talked about on this channel yet, and I've got a little bit of a summary of the book as well as some really cool things about the book that could be used in classrooms. So I think it's really fitting that I start this video off with Hello and Welcome by Greg Dries. This is a book that is about acknowledging country, which is very important here in Australia, and it is about a group of students who acknowledge country. Greg Dries is an Indigenous author here, and this book is just gorgeous. It is students acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which they play and work and learn and grow at school, which is something that happens in many many schools across the country. Our students at my school lead the acknowledgement of country at assemblies. They lead it in classrooms, and it is a really important part of us recognizing the rich history and importance of Australia's First Nations people. This book is a celebration of culture, of elders, and of what is to come for future generations. It does feature dual language, so there is a glossary of words at the back, so you can unpack that with students. It is, I think, based off the Southwest Queensland Indigenous Language Group, which is different to the language group from where I am. But I think it's really important that we have multiple representations of the different language groups, because one of the other cool features that we have in this book is the political map of Australia, and all of the different colours here are the different traditional owners of Australia, because there are hundreds of different Indigenous groups, and they all had their own language, their own customs, their own history, and their own stories. And while some of them have similar themes through them, they are all individuals, and it's really important to acknowledge that. This would be great before you create your own class acknowledgement of country. It's a great jumping off point for thinking about why the things that the children in this book acknowledge are important to acknowledge, and how they might have customised it to where they are from, and how we can customise it to where we are from. It's also a really great jumping off point for beginning an investigation or an inquiry into the traditional owners of the land on which your school might sit. So it's a really wonderful book to have. The next one is quite a popular book, and you've probably heard of it. It is called Ish by Peter H. Reynolds. This is about Raymond, who is an artist, but one very stray comment by his older brother makes him lose confidence in his art, and so he has to regain that art, and it's about remembering that whenever you create something, it's always ish. So it's vase-ish, or it's car-ish, or it's tree-ish, and it doesn't have to be an exact replica of what it is that you are trying to recreate, that your artwork is valid and important. I really love the illustrative style in here. I love the line work, and I love the pops of watercolor, and the fact that it's not too perfect, because that is the entire message of this book, that things do not have to be perfect. This is great for art lessons, for building culture in an art room. It's also really great for unpacking the value of persistence and not giving up. It's also great to talk about how our words and our actions have an impact on others, and you could have discussions around how could this have played out differently, or what would you have said, and what would you have done. So it's great for coming up with those hypothetical situations. It's also a really great jumping off point for identifying things that kids might be good at, so give them the opportunity to grab their writer's notebook and put down what are you good at, what are you super confident in, and then maybe go into what are you not so confident in, what do you like but you need to get better at, what is something that you don't know how to do yet but you would like to, and create those lists and create that culture of it's okay to not know how to do something yet, that we can grow and we can learn how to do them in the future. There is The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig. This is an absolutely gorgeous book about a little boy who feels invisible in the classroom and we all know those kids who are really quiet and who sort of almost fade into the background a little bit because sometimes there are kids who are incredibly loud or who take up a lot of time and so even as a teacher, like it's always a conscious effort to make sure that we make sure that everyone has that equal opportunity and in this case Brian is just this very gorgeous, very quiet boy who is often not picked for things or doesn't know when to speak up and it's not until the new boy starts at the school Justin who gets picked on initially for his lunch and Brian you know offers friendship because he sees this happening and he doesn't know how to stand up to all the other kids and say hang on no that's not right but he knows that he can go up to Justin and he leaves him a note and says hey I thought your lunch looked really cool and so it opens up the opportunity for their friendship and then through Justin who is quite a confident character, Brian is able to begin to develop stronger friendships because he's got an ally with him. Brian spends a lot of time almost ghost alike until he begins to develop that confidence and then you see color come back into him and it's such a gorgeous little story. At the back of the book there are plenty of questions for discussions in the classroom as well as resources for parents and also recommended read lists for kids. Also you guys know I love talking about end papers so in this end paper we have Brian all on his own at the start of the book because that's how he feels he feels invisible and alone and then at the back of the book we see that he's starting to join in and everything's in color so it's a really gorgeous thread through the book. In terms of use in the classroom I mean there's plenty of uses in the classroom it is great for talking about small acts of kindness and treating people with respect and making sure that we are including others. It's also a really great book for pulling out you know what makes a good friend what would you do in this situation? I think it's also important for acknowledging that not every student has to be loud and outgoing and has to be the center of attention. We definitely have those kids and that is very valid but also our quieter kids are valid and it's okay that you don't feel like you want to shout your thoughts and feelings out to the world. How do we work with those kids to give them a voice and to make them feel like they're seen? So those are really important because it acknowledges that not every student is the same and I think any book that helps us to look at how do we be more inclusive in a classroom space is really important. There is Clancy and Millie and the Very Fine House by Libby Gleason. This is an absolutely gorgeous Australian picture book. This is about Clancy who has moved from a very quiet sort of suburban house into a very big townhouse in an urban area that just feels to him very sterile and imposing and while his family are unpacking he ends up in the backyard and he has all of these boxes and he starts playing with them and creating things and then Millie pops her head over the fence and asks if she can join in and so it is the start of their friendship. Again really great for talking about friendships and how we make friends and how sometimes we might invite people but how we might also have to ask if we can join in and I think that's a really important conversation to have because kids these days don't always know how to ask to join in. They expect that they will just get invited and sometimes we have to have conversations about how can you let people know that you're interested in playing with them. It's also a really important book because you often have kids who move around a lot so having stories that you can use to unpack those feelings of moving it's not always the best feeling initially and that moving means lots of big changes and picture storybooks are great for unpacking that and talking about you know well why would Clancy feel really overwhelmed by this new place? What words of advice could we offer him? In terms of using it as a mentor text it has really great varied sentence structure. You've got simple compound and complex sentences in here it also has a beautiful vocabulary and I was sitting here and this may be because I spent two days doing professional learning around spelling and vocabulary. I've actually pulled out some t2 words that I just thought were absolutely beautiful that you could use with this book so here we go. Some of the vocab I loved in here were dwelling fine whispers comfortable flops creeps and pokes. Being able to study that language and pull it apart and build kids vocabulary with that through this book would be just such a fun time. You could also use it as a jumping off point for play construction get out some empty boxes or get out some blocks and have kids work together to create something and then share it and also I've used this for many many art activities. It was a shortlisted book many many years ago and quite often we would just get brown paper or recycled paper or even empty boxes and cut them up and create shapes and then talk about what kind of things we had created out of our boxes so it's a gorgeous book. Another stunning book for small acts of kindness is Crumbs by Phil Cummings. This book is about a little girl and her father who are out having lunch and they see a homeless man who most people are ignoring and yet this man has nothing and shares his crumbs with the birds around him and it is this really beautiful moment where the little girl and her father show compassion and they actually share their lunch with him. I love this book because it's a really great book for talking about the fact that not everyone has the same privileges as each other and for older kids it would be a really great conversation starter around that. Similarly as a mental text it does have lots of varied sentence structures a lot of compound and complex sentences which makes it great for studying for older readers because they're used really effectively and just like in Clancy and Millie in The Very Fine House the vocab in this is stunning so you've got things like words like whisper fragile precariously teetered pleadingly weaving quivering haunting slumped cruel soothing crumpled and scattered vocab is one of those things that is so important to teach the more words that kids leave school with the more success they're likely to have and the way that we unpack these words is in context is in books because quite often for many of these kids it's the only time they hear them and so I think finding those books with really rich language opportunities is absolutely essential and the last one is one that has been around for many many years and it is Whoever You Are by Mem Fox. This is a gorgeous book that just celebrates the idea that no matter where you are in the world you have the right to experience joy and laughter. You might experience pain or loss or sadness but all of those feelings are universal and everyone can experience the highs and lows. It's also great because it does look at cultural diversity from around the world with beautiful illustrations and really simple text. It's very lyrical and just gorgeous to read aloud. It sounds beautiful when you read it out loud. It would be the perfect book for a jumping off point for a unit on personal and cultural identity. For older readers it would be great at looking at the rights for children specifically maybe exploring the convention for the rights of the child by the UN which would be a really great inquiry unit and also I have used this many times for collaborative projects with my classes where we actually talk about the world and we might create a map of the world and show where everyone is from and then we do handprints or something to symbolize that we are a community and that we all belong and it's just really stunning. All right so those are some books featuring children doing incredible things and I hope that it gives you inspiration to use some of these books at home or in a classroom and that you enjoy them because they are just beautiful. If you have read these books before feel free to let me know or if you have other suggestions for books that would fit this category please feel free to share them. I love finding new books. If you'd like to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a bird emoji down below otherwise I hope that wherever you are you are staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.