Waterloo School Library Blog

I have a lot of parents and teachers asking for guidance when it comes to choosing a book for their child or students.  Often they feel their child may be lost in the Captain Underpants or Fairy stage (trust me, this is completely normal) and are not moving forward in their reading. I often see a pattern with our young readers.  Boys, for example, will flock to the Zac Power collection, Captain Underpants, Minecraft, Pokemon, and Superhero books.  Even boys as young as Year 1 beg to take these books home regardless of the fact they are unable to read them independently.  The majority of these boys will then head to the Wimpy Kid series, Andy Griffith books, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.  I've noticed a real increase in boys loving the Bear Grylls books and Wings of Fire series.  The girls are the same - Fairies, puppies, kittens, Ella & Olivia books.  And these lead onto Holly Webb books, Famous Five, Babysitters Club, Pony novels, Harry Potter and Jacqueline Wilson novels

Library Newsletter Books The Kids’ Lit Quiz was held on Tuesday 7th May and Waterloo School was represented by a team of 4 awesome readers - Coco Holland-Waterson, Purna Amarnath Patel, Genaya Baker and Dheeren Nouthalapati.  These kids crammed their brains with all things literature and did really well on the day despite being one of only three Year 6 teams (there were approximately 50 teams in total and all were Year 7 and 8).  The quiz master asked 100 questions (divided into ten categories) - all book based, and all completely random. It’s really pretty cool to be part of a day that is devoted to ‘the sport of reading’ and the initiative is well worth following - go to https://www.kidslitquiz.com/home.php to see how it all works, and to see which school from NZ will be heading to the final which is to be held in Singapore this year. A collection  of junior chapters - a step between picture books and purple dots -  will be added to the shelves today. T

LIBRARY NEWSLETTER   Books! The Lucky Dip books were tried out on a Year 6 class last week…...and I was cleaned out.  The kids were really into the idea of getting a book that was a complete surprise and there were actually no books left for the next class!   So - I’m busy sorting out the next load of Lucky Dip books and I think I will bring them out for a few classes every week to enable everyone to have a turn.  The beauty of this is I could tailor the book choices to year groups each week as well. We have a number of titles in the library which are well-read and barely see the shelves - the Daisy Meadow Fairy books, for example.  Or the Horrid Henry books. Another popular read are the Jeff Brown books - Flat Stanley. And I only just learnt the other week that there is an online resource called The Flat Stanley Project - a literacy project that engages readers of all ages and connects schools around the world.  Basically, the kids send a flat

LIBRARY NEWSLETTER Check out all the new ‘Communities’ books in the library now.   Books   The books are piling up here, but you will see a whole lot of new books displayed to fit in with the ‘communities’ theme this term.  There are some great picture books about farming (written by a couple who live on a farm in NZ) as well as a selection on the jobs that people do (including teacher and librarian!).    Be sure to check out Jeannie Baker books as well.  I have been reading them to the classes during library visits, and they will all be floating around the school, and I will get more.  She does these wonderful community themed picture books, often wordless. She creates miniature collage artwork for the pictures in her books and they are really cool.  I will endeavour to get as many of her books this year as possible. Check her out here https://www.jeanniebaker.com/ Resources   There are a new selection of levelled readers in the resource room betwe