Children’s Book Week runs from 6th – 12th July 2015 and celebrates the joy of books and reading in schools and libraries up and down the country. Chris Riddell has provided the illustrations for this year’s posters which can be downloaded from the Booktrust website. If you are looking for some book-inspired activities to do with your class:
- Download a toolkit from the Booktrust website for KS1, KS2, KS3, and SEN
- Download Chris Riddell’s ‘Illustrations in search of a story’ and get your class to make a book to accompany his pictures. There are 3 templates aimed at ages 5+, 7+, and 11+
- Or watch a video with your class where the illustrator Sarah McIntyre shows you how to draw a sea monkey and how to run a comic jam in the classroom
- Download the Booktrust Best Book Guide 2015 for inspiration on books to share with your class
The Booktrust have also announced the author/illustrator Shirley Hughes as the first ever winner of their Lifetime Achievement Award. Still writing in her 90s, and now collaborating with her daughter on the Dixie O’Day series, Hughes is probably best known for her picture books featuring a little boy, Alfie.
Award winner, Shirley Hughes, says:
’Being chosen for the Book Trust Lifetime Achievement Award is a tremendous honour which I appreciate more than I can say. I have derived so much fulfilment from my long career, first as an illustrator of other artists’ stories and then creating my own. Best of all has been perennially encountering very young children who are learning to look with such rapt pleasure and follow a story visually long before they are able to read.’
