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Calling all BOOK LOVERS…Book Week is coming!

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island.”

-Walt Disney-

Each year all across Australia, the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) bring children and books together by celebrating Book Week. This year book week falls on the 18th-24th August with the theme being “Find Your Treasure”. This is a time to honour Australian children’s literature.

Gruff especially enjoyed reading one of the 2017 winners: Go Home, Cheeky Animals! By Johanna Bell and Dion Beasley and he is very excited to see who the winners will be this year. Have you read any of the books on the shortlist? Here is a link to all of them, https://www.cbca.org.au/short-list-2018 .

Why is reading so important?

Reading out loud with your child is a wonderfully enriching experience and an opportunity to spend quality time together. Research has found that shared reading with an adult is highly beneficial for children, whether they can read by themselves or not.  Some of these benefits include:

• Introduces your child to more diverse topics and language.
• Helps your child develop their listening, spelling and reading comprehension.
• Fosters a positive attitude towards reading so your child can become a ‘lifelong reader’.
• Encourages your child to become curious about the world around them by introducing them to a variety of different topics, both fiction and non-fiction.
• Improves your child’s concentration.
• Your child sees you as a reader and a learner, and you are able to model good reading strategies and habits.

For children who speak more than one language, reading plays an important role in maintaining a connection with their culture and community. Developing reading fluency in one language has cross-over benefits in learning to read in another language. Being literate in more than one language is not only COOL, there are suggestions that it benefits cognitive development. Reading with your child in their mother language as well as in English are equally important.

Gruff is heading to the library now to borrow all his favourite books to read during Book Week. Send him a message to share what your favourite books are, write a book report for him or send a photo of your favourite place to read…