Kyle Mewburn

Picture Source - used with permission.

Kyle Mewburn was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1963. He studied at the Queensland Institute of Technology completing a Bachelor of Business Degree before traveling overseas. Kyle travelled in Europe and the Middle East and then settled in New Zealand in 1990. He has been writing for children full-time since 1997.  Before that he spent time as a journalist,     EFL teacher, Environment Centre manager, dishwasher, interviewer, traffic surveyor, apple-picker, machine operator and Kibbutznik (a member of a kibbutz). Kyle lives with his wife in Central Otago in a grass-roofed house he built by himself. (You can see his grass-roofed house in the background of the photo above and on his webpage).

Kyle has written many picture books which have been published in nine countries so far. He has also written numerous school readers and a junior chapter book series Pop Hooper's Perfect Pets. His first junior novel A Crack in the Sky was released in 2010 and his latest Do Not Push was released just last month. A new junior chapter book series Dinosaur Rescue is due for release next month.

Kyle Mewburn won the Joy Cowley Award in 2005 and his books have been finalists in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards several times, with Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! being the Picture Book & Children's Choice Winner in 2007 and Old Hu-Hu  the Picture Book & Book of the Year Winner in 2010.

Books by Kyle Mewburn we have in our library: The Hoppleplop;  Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck!;  No Room for a Mouse;  Duck's Stuck!;  Old Hu-Hu;  The Eleventh Sheep;  Hill & Hole; Daisy's Maze; Three Cheer's for No-Ears! and Hester and Lester in the Picture Books. Also copies of books in the Pop Hooper's Perfect Pets series and A Crack in the Sky in our Fiction section. Books in the Dinosaur Rescue series are coming soon.

Upper Hutt Library currently holds copies of 20 children's books by Kyle Mewburn.

Most of the above information about Kyle Mewburn was adapted from here and here.

For more information about Kyle Mewburn and his books visit Kyle Mewburn's Homepage.

On the New Books Display this week

Picture Book:

• "Three Cheers for No-Ears!" by Kyle MEWBURN
• "I'm Me!" by Sara SHERIDAN

Mature Picture Book:

• "The Blue Lotus" by HERGE (Tintin series)

Fiction:

• "The Quest for Paradise" by Geronimo STILTON (Geronimo Stilton series)
• "The Mind-Swap Manace" by Steve COLE (Astrosaurs series)

Senior Fiction:

• "Half-Minute Horrors" edited by Susan RICH

Non-Fiction:

• "How to Play Chess" by Daniel KING
  
• "Natural Disasters" by Andrew LANGLEY (Kingfisher Knowledge series)

Milly-Molly-Mandy

Another in a series of posts about children's classic books available for borrowing from our school library.

Milly-Molly-Mandy lives in a “nice white cottage with a thatched roof” along with her father, mother, aunt, uncle, and grandparents. They have a small farm and Milly-Molly-Mandy gets to ride to market with her grandfather in the pony and trap, paddle in the brook, keep a little yellow duckling, and grow a pumpkin in her own vegetable patch. She also has two friends, called Susan and Billy Blunt, and together they sleep outside in tents made from sheets and kitchen chairs, learn to cycle on two old bicycles, and make a little house together in a tree.

Picture Source

The Milly-Molly-Mandy stories were written and illustrated by Joyce Lankester Brisley who was born in Bexhill, England in 1896. Most of the Milly-Molly-Mandy stories were first published in the Christian Science Monitor, and then collected into three volumes: Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories (1928), More of Milly-Molly-Mandy (1929) and Further Doings of Milly-Molly-Mandy (1932). A fourth volume of stories, Milly-Molly-Mandy Again was published in 1948.  In 1992, Puffin published the four books together in a single volume titled The Adventures Of Milly-Molly-Mandy.

We have The Adventures Of Milly-Molly-Mandy in the fiction section of our library.

Upper Hutt Public Library has five Milly-Molly-Mandy titles and one audio book in the Children's section.

Most of the above information was obtained or adapted from: here, here and here.

On the New Books Display this week

Picture Book:

• "The Cat's Pyjamas" by Catherine FOREMAN
• "Alpha Monsters" by Chris KENNETT

 Fiction:

• "Ottoline and the Yellow Cat" by Chris RIDDELL (Ottoline series)
• "Amulet : The Cloud Searchers" by Kazu KIBUISHI (Amulet series)

Senior Fiction:

• "Secrets" by Jacqueline Wilson
• "Conspiracy 365 - December" by Gabrielle LORD (Conspiracy 365 series)

Non-Fiction:

• "The Story Of Science" by Anna CLAYBOURNE
  
• "Great Art Attack Stuff" by Neil BUCHANAN

Lauren Child

Image from Little London Magazine HERE

Another in a series of posts about popular children's authors and their books.

Lauren Child was born in 1967 and grew up in Wiltshire, the middle child of three sisters and the daughter of teachers. Her first creative act was to change her name from Helen to Lauren when she was a child - "I just didn't like my name very much, I didn't dislike the name itself, I just didn't like me being called it."

Lauren studied Art at Manchester Polytechnic and London Art School, after wards she worked in a variety of jobs. She also started her own company making exotic lampshades. The turning point came after talking to a business manager who suggested she should write a children's book and design a product range around it.  The result was Clarice Bean. 

Her first book Clarice Bean, That’s Me, was published in 1999, and was the first of many books about this character. It took her five years to get it published, after many rejections, but after publication it was highly praised and shortlisted for the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. Although Clarice Bean started life as a picture-book character, Lauren has now written several novels about her adventures too.  Alongside the Clarice Bean series, Lauren Child also began another series of picture books in 2000, about a brother and sister called Charlie and Lola. This series, which began with the award-winning I Will Not Ever, NEVER Eat A Tomato, has proved even more popular than Clarice Bean.

Lauren Child is also an illustrator, her humorous illustrations contain several mediums including magazine cuttings, collage, material, photography and watercolour. As well as illustrating her own books Lauren has also illustrated books by other author's.

Lauren has won a number of prizes and awards for books in the Clarice Bean and the Charlie and Lola series as well as several of her stand alone titles.

Books by Lauren Child we have in our library: Goldilocks and the Three Bears - a Picture Book, and copies of Utterly Me, Clarice Bean; Clarice Bean Spells Trouble and Clarice Bean, Don't Look Now in the Fiction section. 

Upper Hutt Library currently holds copies of 40 children's books by Lauren Child and three Children's DVDs.

Most of the above information about Lauren Child was adapted from here, here, and here.

For more information about Lauren Child and her books visit the Official Lauren Child website.

Happy Birthday

Hooray!

St Brendan's Library Blog is One Year Old Today.

By alicia rae [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The above picture is from HERE

On the New Books Display this week

 Picture Book:

• "Sparrow Girl" by Sara PENNYPACKER
• "Elephant Joe is a Knight!" by David WOJTOWICZ

Fiction:

• "The Battle for Rondo" by Emily RODDA (Rondo series)
• "Zac Power : Frozen Fear" by H.I. LARRY (Zac Power series)
• "I'm not a Supermouse!" by Geronimo STILTON (Geronimo Stilton series)

Senior Fiction:

• "The Falconer's Knot" by Mary HOFFMAN

Non-Fiction:

• "How Maui defied the Goddess of Death" by Peter GOSSAGE
• "How to Improve at Playing Rugby" by Jim DREWETT

Harry Potter Fans

Just a little over one month to wait till the release of the final Harry Potter movie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2.  If you haven't seen the movie trailer yet you can watch the trailer here.

If you feel the Harry Potter books and movies have been a big part of your life over the last few years, think about what the movies have meant to the actors, especially those young ones just beginning their acting careers.

If you had to describe your Harry Potter experience in one word, what would that word be?

Watch this video to find out the words some of the actors chose.

On the New Books Display this week

Picture Book:

• "Tom & the Dragon" by Juliette McIver
• "The Wonderful Book" by Leonid GORE

Fiction:

• "The Seas of Doom" by Steve Cole (Astrosaurs series)
• "Two Naughty Angels : Round the Rainbow" by Mary HOOPER (Two Naughty Angels series)
• "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. TOLKIEN

Senior Fiction:

• "Slave Girl" by Patricia C. McKISSACK (My Story UK series  for girls & for boys)

Non-Fiction:

• "The Top Ten Inventions that Changed the World" by Chris OXLADE
• "Awesome Aotearoa" by Margaret MAHY

FaBo Story

Last year a group of nine New Zealand writers created The FaBo Story with the help of school children from throughout the country (and some cool illustrators too).  Each week children were challenged to write the next chapter in the story with the winning chapter published on the FaBo Story blog.  After 20 weeks The FaBo Story was complete - you can read it here.  

FaBo Story is back and you can find out all about it here, but don't dawdle because the competition begins on June 13. In the mean time you can visit the new FaBo Story blog to find out more about Planet FaBo2 and this years competition as well as how to take part and pick up tips about writing.