The Australian Children’s Book Week theme for 2016 is ‘Australia! Story Country’. Children’s Book Week runs from 20-26 August 2016.
Here are 10 ideas and links to help make it the best Book Week ever:
1) Discover books that will get kids fired up about reading – the 2016 CBCA Awards Notables List and the REAL Awards (YABBA, KOALA and CROC) children’s choice shortlist. (I have been lucky enough to have My Life & Other Massive Mistakes nominated in the REALs this year.)
2) Join our 2016 Room to Read World Change Challenge and help change the world by educating children in the world’s poorest countries. Schools can win book packs from all the major publishers. We have previously raised over $90,000 to buy books, build libraries and educate girls in the developing world.
3) Enter the My Life Book Trailer Competition. Make a short video inspired by my new book My Life & Other Exploding Chickens for the chance to win $500 cash for the filmmaker and $500 worth of books for your school. :))) Check out my recent post on How to Make a Book Trailer and send in your entries!
4) Here are some Book Week activity ideas on the Children’s Book Council of Australia site, on the Teacher-Librarians’ Children’s Book Week wiki and on the brilliant Book Chook blog.
5) You could book an author (or harass your teacher-librarian to book an author) to speak at your school. Here’s a list of agencies. Most authors are already booked for Book Week but if your celebration falls outside the official Book Week dates, you might get lucky.
6) Dress as a Library Ninja for the Book Week book parade, inspired by my story ‘Fungus the Bogeyman’ in My Life & Other Exploding Chickens (and Gus Gordon’s most excellent illustration above). It’s about the time I had a book overdue from the public library for five years as a child and was arrested by a gang of Ninja Librarians when I attempted to return it. (Totally true.)
7) Use my Story Scrapbook transmedia brainstorming tool to find bookish inspiration, explore videos, images and music based on the theme, ‘Australia! Story Country’ or dream up a new story of your own.
8) Jump-start writing and creativity. Try some activities in the My Life& Other Stuff I Made Up teachers’ kit or on my CREATE page. And find lots of visual / aural creative ideas in the Two Wolves / On the Run teaching materials.
9) Help me write a new Nit Boy story for the next My Life book and get your name / your class in the back of the book!
10) Connect with me on FACEBOOK, TWITTER , INSTAGRAM, PINTEREST and YOUTUBE. Let’s talk stories, create things and share the best books we’ve ever read.
