Sunday 9 October 2011

Sunday October 9th, 2011 For the Children

When I discovered that I would be writing an article for October I decided to do my research and find out what is pertinent to the autumnal month. I discovered that October third is Child Health Day, October eighth is National Children’s Day and October second to the eighth is national School Lunch Week. October tenth is Thanksgiving and the ever popular children’s holiday All Hallows Eve is on the thirty-first. After all of this information gathering I decided what better a topic for the month of October than children.

The Thunder Bay Public Library has an amazing children’s collection. It contains everything necessary to develop a lifelong love of literacy. For the babies, toddlers and preschoolers there are a variety of programs designed specifically for your child’s developmental stage. Baby Bumblebees and Beginning with Books are two presentations offered that one can attend without prior registration. Preschool Storytime and Tales for Twos are ongoing programs that parents can sign their children up for in advance. All of the presentations entail stories, songs and activities.

We also have an amazing collection of picture books in board book, hard cover and paperback. Here a few of my personal favourites: FLETCHER AND THE FALLING LEAVES, PINKALICIOUS, SKIPPYJON JONES; STELLA and CAN’T YOU SLEEP LITTLE BEAR?


For your beginner readers the library offers the Readers are Leaders program in which a volunteer reads with your child and helps develop reading skills. Our collection has many EZRead books which are specifically designed to encourage recognition of high frequency words. AMELIA BEDELIA and her classic faux pas are entertaining to read. The variety of Spider-man and Batman are popular with the boys. MINNIE AND MOO and their many hilarious adventures are my favourite EZReads.

The collection also contains magazines and graphic novels. The Archie comics, BONE and ARTEMIS FOWL are great graphic novels for the intermediate reader. CANADAIN GEOGRAPHIC FOR KIDS and OWL are popular with the non-fiction readers. Our non-fiction collection covers subject matter ranging from mythology to astronomy, paleontology to chemistry, ancient civilizations to art and geography. Everything your child could possibly need when researching for a project for school or perhaps they just have a natural curiosity about the world around them.

The collection contains many series books. These books allow children to read about the many adventures of the same characters. These books are great for developing comprehension skills as the setting and characters are familiar and the story lines are similar. The MAGIC TREE HOUSE, THE FAIRIES, GERONIMO STILTON, THE AMAZING DAYS OF ABBY HAYES, and of course the classic NANCY DREW and HARDY BOYS are available for your child’s entertainment.

If your children like to listen to stories instead of reading them, audiobooks are available as well. These come in cd, mp3 or playaway format and are great for the many of you who spend a lot of time in your car. We have music cds, cd-rom programs for your computer and movies in both vhs and dvd format.

Now, for my favourite part of the children’s collection, the novels. Fiction novels and paperbacks come in a variety of levels. I encourage any of you to explore Rowling’s incredibly detailed world of HARRY POTTER, Oppel’s AIRBORN adventures, Colfer’s AIRMAN, Wilder’s LITTLE HOUSE tales, Dahl’s quirky characters and their many misadventures, Levine’s ELLA ENCHANTED, Pullman’s brilliantly written THE DARK MATERIALS , C. S. Lewis’ mysterious realms and Montgomery’s ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, definitely a kindred spirit. These and so many more have I shared my time with. I could go on and on about how great these books are but might I suggest you come on down and take a look for yourself?

Cindy Visser-DiCarlo

No comments: