Christchurch City Libraries Blog

The Territorials cross the Bridge of Remembrance on the way to King Edward Barracks. [25 Apr. 1926]

Collated for 2009 Beca Heritage Week’s ‘Doves & Defences’ – Discover Christchurch in Peace and Conflict

Christchurch City Libraries is inviting the public to be part of a gathering and documentation of historical photos on peace and conflict in Christchurch from 14 September until 23 October. We are collecting images of Canterbury’s involvement in peace and conflict over the years and will publish them on the libraries’ Flickr site. This year we are looking at three broad themes in fitting with this years Heritage Week: Life at Home, Away from Home, and Peace and Remembrance. So gather up those photos and send them in! The Christchurch City L ibraries Photo Hunt 2009 is open from 14 September until 23 October and is part of the Beca Heritage Week’s ‘Doves & Defences’ celebrations. Winners will be announced and contacted on the 2nd November 2009.

We’ve been getting some delightful new picture books in the library lately.  Alot of picture books just pass you by, but every now and again there are some that stand out, whether that’s because it’s the latest book by a great author and illustrator or from a stand-out publisher.  Here’s just a couple of the latest and greatest.

Your Mother Didn’t Do That is a delightful New Zealand collaboration between author Sharon Holt and Brian Lovelock, the illustrator of the New Zealand Post Book Awards finalist book, Roadworks.  Holly’s dad decides to tell her a bedtime story about the night that she was born so Holly asks if she hatched out of an egg like a chicken.  Dad tells her if she were a new chick, her mum would have fluffed up her feathers and sat on her to keep her warm.  He tells her ‘Your mother wouldn’t do that.’  They go through all the animals they can think of until Holly’s dad finally tells her what her mother did do when she was born.  It’s a perfect bedtime story about the bond between mothers and their babies, and Brian Lovelock’s soft illustrations perfectly match the story.

My first impression of Ulf Nilsson’s When We Were Alone in the World was ‘What the?’  It starts with a boy who is waiting at the front gate of his school for his parents to pick him up.  He has just learnt to tell the time and he knows that he gets picked up at 3 o’clock.  When his Dad doesn’t arrive he walks home.  He gets home to find that the door to his house is locked and his parents are nowhere to be seen.  He comes to the conclusion that they are dead, probably run over by a truck, and so he sits on the steps and cries.  ‘I wasn’t even six years old and I was alone in the world,’ he says.  I thought this was a little strange considering it’s a children’s picture book, and so I had to keep reading to find out how the story ended.  I won’t give the ending away (you’ll just have to read it to find out) but needless to say, it’s positive.  It is actually quite a clever story that is warm and funny, especially at the end when you realise what has happened.  When We Were Alone in the World is another fantastic Gecko Press publication.  If you haven’t already discovered some of their translations of ‘curiously good books from around the world,’ we have a great selection of them in the library.  Also, if you loved Joy Cowley and Gavin Bishop’s Snake and Lizard, look out for Friends: Snake and Lizard, coming in October.

Riduan Tomkins painter, teacher and ardent traveller died recently after a prolonged illness. Tomkins, born in Dorset in 1941, studied at The Royal College of Art in London and was visiting Senior Lecturer, then permanent Senior Lecturer in Painting at the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts between 1986-1996. He is credited with influencing a generation of New Zealand artists including Séraphine Pick currently exhibiting at the Christchurch Art Gallery and Shane Cotton.

His work is characterised by fresh, clean colours and often featured tiny figures overlaid with paint and engaged in a variety of actions: flying or falling, juggling and hanging etc. These figures anchor the lines, shapes and colours and deliver paintings that successfully fuse abstract and figurative elements. His work is held in numerous private and public collections in North America, South America, Europe, South East Asia and New Zealand.

On leaving New Zealand, Tomkins taught in Ontario, Canada and at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London before relocating to Jakarta, Indonesia. After a period as guest artist at Jakarta Institute of Art ,Riduan founded the Central Kalimantan Cultural Collective a non-profit organisation aiming to establish a Fine Arts programme at the University of Palangka Raya.

The sartorialist is one of my favourite  blogs – Scott Schuman takes evocative portraits of people on the streets.  One of the cool things about it is it ain’t just young models, there’s many a shot of an older gentleman rocking a three piece suit, or a glamorous white bobbed madame. It’s all about style and what pleases his sense of what constitutes well-dressedness.

Now his book The sartorialist is out and it captures those moments of Sartorial eloquence. The timing is as impeccable as the clothes.  September is the most fashionable month – Air New Zealand Fashion Week takes place in Auckland from the 21st to the 26th September 2009 and New York, Paris and Melbourne also play host to their respective Fashion Weeks.

Finally, people are coming up with products that allow us to fully enjoy books!

Click through to experience the wonder…

Taglines :  ”Don’t feel burdensome with heavy books!” and “The first in its field in the world”

Last month Jane highlighted the Barack Obama book club and here’s another title that has been a recipient of the Obama “touch”.

Despite first being published in English in 1973, Open Veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent has experienced a renaissance in the English-speaking world, all thanks to the connection with Barack Obama.

Written by Eduardo Galeano, with a new foreward by Isabel Allende, Open Veins of Latin America looks at the impact of foreign intervention in Latin America over the past five centuries.

Earlier this year, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez presented Barack Obama with a copy at the 5th Summit of the Americas. Within days, the book rocketed into the top ten seller lists across across America & Europe.

You can listen to the author’s reactions to the Chavez-Obama book exchange here.

The Pacific region has a new edition available from Scribe Publications, and you can borrow it from Christchurch City Libraries.

Word is that Tiki Taane’s ballad Always on My Mind is now the second-longest running chart single of all time in New Zealand. The catchy number has been in the charts 55 weeks – pretty impressive.

Your trivia question for today is: what is the longest running New Zealand chart single?

Answers on the back of a reply please

For those who are keen on the latest music figures, the official charts are available on the Recording Indutry Association’s website. Radioscope also have all sorts of interesting information about different types of charts and what the most added songs are to radio station playlists. They also list quarterly  ratings for radio stations.

As the world celebrates Roald Dahl Day the focus is very much on his mega selling fantastic childrens books, many of which are available as talking books or have been made into films.

But there are other sides to Roald to remember. He himself recounts his early life in Boy and Going Solo

But as Roald Dahl : a biography by Jeremy Treglown tells

like his fiction, his personality was singular, forceful and provocative. He was an adventurer, gambler, connoisseur, philanthropist and troublemaker; as a devoted but frequently unfaithful husband; and as a fond, demanding, but sometimes chilly parent.

The irregulars : Roald Dahl and the British spy ring in wartime Washington recounts

the story of young writer Roald Dahl who is assigned by His Majesty’s Government to Washington, D.C. as a diplomat to gather intelligence about America’s isolationist circles. In the course of his “spying,” he meets or works closely with David Ogilvy, Ian Fleming, and the great spymaster William Stephenson (aka Intrepid)

His life with the actress Patricia Neal is well documented in her memoir, As I Am and later portrayed by Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogade in the movie The Patricia Neal Story.

For many adults they met Dahl through the televison series Tales of the unexpected – which are themselves based on the series of short stories -  Someone Like You,  Kiss Kiss and Switch Bitch.

He even wrote a few screenplays, most notably Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang and the James Bond film You Only Live Twice.

And I won’t even mention Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp and the two strangely same but different Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movies.

It’s Roald Dahl’s birthday on Sunday and children all over the world are celebrating Roald Dahl Day to remember the storytelling genius that he was.  There are lots of things you can do to celebrate:

1. Read some of Roald Dahl’s books, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Twits, Revolting Rhymes, or Fantastic Mr Fox.

2. Eat lots of chocolate (pretend you’re Charlie and you’ve just been given a whole chocolate factory!).

3. Watch a movie based on a Roald Dahl book, such as James and the Giant Peach, Matilda or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the musical version starring Gene Wilder).

4. Make some revolting recipes.  You could use the Revolting Recipes book for some ideas or just make up your own.

5. Take a test to see what Dahl character you are or colour-in The Twits.  These activities can be found on the Roald Dahl Day website and we also have some that you could do if you come into Central Library at the weekend.

Whatever you do, just have fun and be as wacky as you can.

Something that happens heaps at the Children’s Desk is parents coming up and confiding “My child ONLY likes to read Rainbow Fairies/Captain Underpants/Famous Five/insert popular series here; how can I get them to read some proper books?” I’m sure even Roman Librarians were faced with parents saying ”Meus parvulus tantum amo – I mean - my child ONLY likes to read Homer; how can I get them to read some proper books?” There are two things I normally tell parents in this situation :

1 – Any reading is good reading – comics, magazines, web pages even <groan> Dan Brown is perfectly satisfactory reading for any child. If your child likes to read, that’s awesome! Don’t get hung up on what they should be reading, just focus on what they enjoy.

2 – I used to read SUCH garbage when I was a kid and I turned out to be a wide-reading-modest-adult-genius: Sweet Valley High, Babysitters Club, Flowers in the Attic and pulp horror novels were all part of my reading diet, but it didn’t stop me from reading ‘proper’ books once I was a bit older.

One of the best things about my job is seeing kids tastes change and develop over time. It seems like it takes no time at all for a child to change from reserving all 84 (!)  books in the Rainbow Magic series, to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, or The Once and Future King.

If you want to read more about your child and reading, try “The Reading Bug“  by Paul Jennings or take a look at some of the reading resources for parents on our website.