 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher, and today I'm going to be sharing with you some recent picture book reads. Now these picture books are not necessarily new releases, but they are new reads to me. Some of them are things that I have purchased, others are things that I have borrowed out from my school's library, so I thought I would share them with you, and they are a very odd assortment of titles. The first one is The Stone Line by Margaret Wilde, and while I love Margaret Wilde's book, I had never actually read this until it came up in a professional learning session that I was participating in, and I knew I had to get myself a copy of it, because this is a really fantastic mentor text, particularly for middle and upper primary school. So this is about a stone line who sits outside a library wishing that it could be alive and couldn't run through the park and just experience life, because it's constantly watching people coming and going from the library. And this line finds out that every stone creature has one opportunity to live and to experience that. And when a young girl who is caring for a baby stumbles across the stone line and places the baby in a basket at the feet of the lion in the middle of a snowstorm, the lion is forced to rethink what his chance at life could look like. It is absolutely beautiful. I love the gorgeous old school style feeling of these illustrations. Even just the tones of them feel very sort of classic old school picture book. It's a story of kindness and compassion, and the ability that we have to change people's lives by demonstrating kindness and compassion. This has beautiful sentence structure. The character development for the lion in here is absolutely gorgeous. Great for exploring the development of a character in a picture book. And I love the word choice in here. So you have things like count, crouched and scuffled, cradled, wheat, desire, prowling, limp, fervently, contentment, like all beautiful words that are great to unpack with students and to think about what are the everyday words that we use for those ones and where could we include these, this rich vocabulary in our own writing. So absolutely love this. It was gorgeous. Then there is the alphabet tree. This one is by Leo Leone. This is the story of the alphabet tree on which letters live on each of the leaves, but in a very big windstorm, the leaves find themselves being blown off the leaves. And so they have to find a way to stay attached to the tree. And they learn about joining together to make words, which makes them stronger. And then they learn about making sentences, which makes them even stronger than that. And this one has a beautiful message about peace on earth and whatnot. It's a very simple text. It is a great one for exploring letters versus words versus sentences with kids, which is how I stumbled across it. And it also has some very beautiful, colourful artwork. Then there is Sunday Skating by Andrea Rowe and Illustrated by Hannah Somerville. This is a new release book. This is by the same author of Jetty Jumping. If you've read that, it is an incredible book that I use a lot in teaching. And this is the newest one and I knew I had to get a copy of it because Andrea Rowe is really great at crafting sentences and choosing really rich words that are great to unpack with students. So this is about a group of friends who go skating on a Sunday afternoon, all different types of skating, rollerblading, roller skates, skateboarding. And Clancy is very nervous about skating. It's probably his first time. He's never really done it before. And he's really worried about falling over it and making a fool of himself in front of his friends. So he just follows them, but he doesn't actually skate despite them encouraging him to. Which, if you've read Jetty Jumping, is a very similar story theme for Andrea Rowe. So this book is really about risk taking. It is about beautiful friendships. It has gorgeous illustrations. And the thing that I love in Hannah Somerville's illustrations is the way that she uses colour to really highlight the time of day. This one, you can tell it's just early afternoon, the sun starting to go down, the light changes. It's beautiful. Andrea Rowe uses different types of sentences to accent the story, which means it's really great to study different types of sentences. And there's some really great tier two words as well like settles, clatter, rattle, shuffles, glides, creeping. My favourite one was doodles because some kids will never have heard that before, have a context for it. So all of those are really great to unpack. And beyond that, it's just a really lovely story about being brave and not being afraid to take a risk, particularly when you've got people supporting you. Then there is How Do You Say Hello. This one is by Ashley Barton. This book is part of a series that Ashley Barton has released. There is How Do You Say I Love You, How Do You Say Grandma, How Do You Say Grandpa. They're all books about different cultures and languages and celebrating the diversity that exists on our planet. And this one is no different. So this is all different ways to say hello. On each page, we meet a child. There is a very brief four sentence story about them. It's lyrical, it's rhyming, and it introduces the way that they say hello. Now it doesn't tell you on page exactly where they are, but at the back of the book there is information about the language, where that language is spoken, and a little bit about the way the child in that country might experience life. And it's really, really beautiful. It's a great way to introduce different languages to other students. I love this series a whole lot. And this one will just be absolutely perfect if you are planning on embarking on, say, a morning circle time where you say hello in a different language every day. I used to do that all the time and the kids really loved it, and that's the way we would say hello for the day or a couple of days. So this is a really great way to talk about cultural diversity and different languages, and I love it so much. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do next because I've loved all of Ashley Barton's books so far. Then I finally read A Pair of Pairs and an Orange by Anna McGregor, which I have seen around for a long time and I just have not picked it up and read it. And I know that this one, a speech pathology book of the year award. So this is about two friends, little pair and big pair, who are best friends. And then Orange comes along one day and asks if they can join in. And so they start playing together, but big pair begins to feel a little bit left out because all of the things that they used to do no longer work with three of them. And so big pair sort of wanders off and tries to find another place to fit in, but realises that maybe it's a little bit about compromise and about communication and ends up coming back to their friends. It's really, really gorgeous. It's great for talking about friendship and about how you negotiate play, which is a really, really big thing for young kids. It's also really good for talking about how we include others and how we make them feel welcome, particularly if we're used to playing with the same people over and over again. There are lots of really fun puns in this book, as well as some really quirky, fun, bright illustrations. So it is a visual feast for the eyes as well if you read it. And then the last book that I'm going to talk about in this video is Frankie and the Fossil. This one is by Jess McGeachan, who I also really love their books, but had not read this one yet. This is about Frankie, who is a little girl who loves dinosaurs. She knows stacks about dinosaurs, and she finds that often people are just not as interested as she is. But one day she's at the museum and she comes across a Diplodocus's skeleton and she notices a sign underneath that says, please don't feed the fossil. And she thinks this is a bit rude and it's a bit unfair for the fossil. So she leaves the fossil, her cheese sandwich, and the Diplodocus follows her home and they become good friends. But eventually the dinosaur has to go back to the museum. And Frankie has to find a way to keep that friendship going because she feels lonely and she knows that the dinosaur feels lonely. And so she has to think of a creative way to keep that relationship going. This book is perfect for dinosaur lovers and also for challenging the stereotype that it's only boys who like dinosaurs. It's also a great discussion opener for the fact that, you know, sometimes it can be hard to find people who have similar interests to you. But maybe sometimes it's about coming at it from a different angle rather than trying to just bombard people with the things that you like. Maybe it's a little bit about compromise. But it would be a great conversation starter for how you can find out about other people's interests. It has really fun illustrations. The dinosaur at some point is hidden in the background and it's really fun to spot. And there were some really lovely T2 words in here, things like memorised or peering or snoozed. And it would be great for exploring some of those words as well. So those are some picture books I have read recently. I will very shortly have some more recent reads. I borrowed a stack of books out from my library via Libby. So I'm going to be reading some kids ebooks and I will definitely be sharing those. And then I will get back into my CBCA shortlist reviews very, very soon. In the comments, I would love to know if you have read any of these books or if you're planning on picking any of them up. As always, you are very welcome to share some of your favorite picture books that you think I might enjoy reading. I always love those recommendations. If you'd like to support the channel, I do have an Amazon wishlist down below that has books on there that I would love to feature on the channel. I hope that wherever you are in the world, you're staying safe and healthy. And I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching. Bye everyone.