A first workshop in a new area is always a little tense. Will the children come? Well, at the frst CBN workshop in Stanford, twenty children turned up at very short notice – and they came dressed to party! A small, glittering crowd approached the Butterfly Centre ten minutes before the appointed time. The girls […]
The Stanford book party begins … Read More »
We are pleased to present our annual report for a very exciting year of workshops and CBN activities. To see the full report, please go to: https://www.childrensbook.co.za/sites/default/files/resource-documents/annual-report-2015-final.pdf
2015 Annual Report now online Read More »
CBN has been working with books and music for years now. They go together like … well, like children and books should. On 29 March – just after the Easter weekend, when children are looking for something to do with all this spare time – we will be holding the first of what we hope
Singing up a workshop … Read More »
A Cape Flats dad has converted his backyard into a library to encourage the children in his neighbourhood to read. What better news to close Library Week? The homemade library in Hillview boasts over 5 000 books, and you can find anything from fairytales to encyclopaedias. Now father-of-two John Nicholson’s home gets dozens of little
A library for kids in a backyard Read More »
What a pleasure to visit a beautiful library in Grassy Park, full of books and interest and, above all, READERS! Library Week in South Africa is celebrated in libraries all over the country and it was a great honour for CBN to be invited to join the party in the most impressively resourced library at
Celebrating Books and Reading! Read More »
We allow a self-selection process, which is administered by community workers or librarians. Permissions forms are issued to children who are interested (hopefully within the specified age groups, although children are always trying to sneak past this factor). Children who are motivated enough will collect the forms, take them home, ask a parent or carer
How do we select children for workshops? Read More »
The CBN team works with children who are needy in all of these aspects of their lives, underprivileged in the lack of opportunity and resources to learn to love reading, disempowered in not having books available and role models who read. We began at Red Hill Informal Settlement, where we gave our first pilot workshop
Where does CBN work? Read More »
Champion of Children. CBN was really – really – sorry when Rosemary announced her return to Britain after three years of providing a firm structure to both the running of the workshops and the administration of Children’s Book Network. We are going to miss her in so many ways, and so will the children. In
Here, as promised, are the blogs and web reports (with pictures) of the Book Dash on Saturday. It was a truly splendid occasion! • Books LIVE article by Helen Moffett: http://helenmoffett.bookslive.co.za/blog/2016/03/06/a-dashing-day-the-magic-of-making-books-for-children/ • Blogpost by Lesley Beake: https://www.childrensbook.co.za/news/2016/03/05/book-dash-action • Times LIVE article by Tanya Farber: http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2016/03/07/Book-club-pumps-up-the-volume • Blogpost by Nancy Richards: https://nancyvrichards.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/mad-dash-moments/. She also took voice
Book Dash dashes on Read More »
Google has counted the total number of books in the world arriving at a total of 129,864,880. Like most statistics, this number tends to vary, but it remains a significant amount of reading. To read more about how Google did the counting, go to: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7930273/Google-counts-total-number-of-books-in-the-world.html
Never say you can’t find anything to read! Read More »
This year, IBBY (International Board of Books for Young people) has produced a short film of the authors and illustrators who have been nominated for what is known as the Nobel Prize for children’s books. To see the film just go to: https://youtu.be/d2L6mrEc6eM
IBBY’s Shortlist for Hans Christian Andersen Award Read More »
This document explains just what a Children’s Book Network workshop might be for a child.
What is a Workshop? Read More »
Nal’ibali is a wonderful resource for story telling advice and encouragement, these two articles may help you to get started: http://nalibali.org/reading_story_topics/how-to-get-story-telling-with-your-children/ http://nalibali.org/reading_story_topics/storytelling-activitie/
Advice on Story-Telling from Nal’ibali Read More »
This adaptation from a traditional African tale comes from Fairy Tales of the World… enjoy it! The grass shrivelled up and turned a pale grey. Rivers and pools dried up. All day long animals scurried around looking for food and finding nothing. Mr Tortoise was getting desperate. Every day he woke up to the sound
How the Tortoise got its Scars Read More »
Book Dash has an incredible range of books created by author-illustrator-graphic designer teams on their epic Book Dash days. All of them are available free of charge online or you can order a printed copy from this section of their website: http://bookdash.org/see/books/
Book Dash – Open Source Books Read More »
From our Front Line Book Correspondent at Centre for the Book The Dash is on as twelve teams (each with editor, designer, illustrator and writer) go for the nine pm deadline in an event held by Book Dash at Centre for the Book in Cape Town. The aim is to produce, by the end of
Book Dash in action Read More »
On Saturday 13th February, 24 children (twenty-five including a baby on someone’s back!), and ten adults converged on Simon’s Town Library for a story carnival that lasted most of the day. The aim was – as always – to promote reading, and a great deal of reading was done before lunch, quietly spread out on
Possibilitrees for Red Hill children Read More »
At a recent panel discussion, Genevieve Hart, chair of IBBY SA described books for children as being: ‘Windows to look out at the world, and also windows to look back in.’ The quote comes from a fascinating (and very fast!) TED Talk by Scott McCloud: His talk refers more to animation than to children’s books,
Windows in and windows out Read More »
In a panel discussion at a recent PRAESA event in Cape Town, Professor Genevieve Hart, gave the following statistics about libraries in South Africa. The library statistics come from foreword by Arts & Culture Minister Mthethwa to the DAC booklet “The State of Libraries in South Africa” August 2015 – then DAC’s briefing to the
Some encouraging news Read More »
