 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I'm going to be talking about Last Place Lynn by YChim and illustrated by Frida Chu. This is a new release, children's picture book from Alan and Unwin. They did send it to me for review, so thank you very much to the publisher for that. And I'm really excited to talk about it with you. This is a gorgeous book about Lynn who is attending a school sports day and she is very unathletic. Like she is giving everything her best go, but she just struggles. And there are some kids who bully her and are telling her she's not good and that she is Last Place Lynn. And so she starts to feel that and she starts to feel very self-conscious about it. But when the final race of the day is a fun race and everyone has to participate, Lynn reluctantly joins in. And despite the fact that she is still coming last, she persists and she shows resilience and determination to finish. She has plenty of people cheering her on and supporting her in this. And it has a really great message that even though some things are hard, giving them a go and trying them and doing your very best is the most important thing. It is a book that is based on YChim's experiences on survivor brains or brawn. There's a bit of an author's note that talks about how she didn't think that going on survival was a thing that she could do because she was much more of a brainy person who liked to write and do all of those sorts of things, but was not super active in sort of that space. And I love that her first foray into picture books is a book about resilience and persistence and trying your best because I think it's we need more books like this and we need more relatable stories that fit into school settings that this is highly relatable. We have athletics days in Australia all the time and kids have to participate in a variety of things even if they've never tried them before. So what I loved, it's really fun. It's very vibrant. The illustrations are gorgeous. The characters are great. There's a lot of expression on the kids' faces. It's highly relatable and I really love that positive message of never giving up. As to how I would use it in a classroom, I mean this is a perfect text to use before an athletics day, particularly with junior students who might not have experienced it before or who are feeling a little bit nervous about participating things that they've never participated in before. I think it opens up wonderful opportunities for discussion about persistence in the face of adversity, which would be great with older kids as well as younger kids, but I think you could have a really detailed in-depth conversation with older students. It's a great one for making connections, particularly getting students to think about times where they've faced challenges and how they've overcome those challenges and what got them through them, as well as having conversations around how do we support people who are trying their best and who might be struggling and who might need us to be encouraging and what can we say and what can we do to help them through tough situations. It would also be a really good one for identifying character traits, particularly around Lynn because of everything that she faces and everything that she demonstrates as a character. It's not spelled out on the page. It is something that you have to infer, so it would be a great way to actually unpack her character and to see what kids take out of the book. And again, linking back to my first point, it would be a great mentor text for writing about familiar events like an athletics day, like school events, using it as a way of showing how could you tell a story about what you've experienced. So yeah, it's a really gorgeous book. I'm so glad that I read it. I will leave links down below where you can find out more information about the book as well as links to the author's website. I would love to know if you're planning on picking up the book or if you have read it and what your thoughts are on it, watch him is a really fantastic author. I have mostly read her young adult fiction and that is incredible as well, but this was a really gorgeous foray into picture books for her. So thank you very much to the publisher for sending me the copy. I hope that we're here on the world just staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Bye everyone.