So tonight's Lit Chat question comes from the 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' card, as voted for on Instagram so, without any further ado, let's get lit chatting...

What is you favourite movie adaptation or television series on a book? What made it a good adaptation?

I think for this I have two favourite movie adaptations! I loved 'The Secret Life of Bees' by Sue Monk Kidd, and it's probably one of the first books of adult literature that I read and really loved and when I saw the film at the cinema I couldn't believe how much the film was like the way I had envisaged the book. The characters and setting were exactly as I pictured. Some time had lapsed between reading and watching so I can't remember if all the nuances and details were the same as the book but I was really impressed with it as capturing the story as I remembered it!

And a more recent one is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society which I deliberately re-read in the week before going to see the film at the cinema. The book is truly wonderful and had me laughing out loud and weeping in equal measure. As did the film. There were some variations from the book, which is understandable due to the time constraints, but I thought it was a particularly good adaption especially when you consider that the whole book is written in letter format. The acting was brilliant, the scenery breath-taking and the whole experience left me feeling uplifted. I can't wait to watch it again!

What is your least favourite movie or television series based on a book? What didn't you like about it?

Now this is a tougher question and I had to think about it and I think I'm going to choose a film that I do really like but also really disappointed me. I chose to study 'Chocolat' by Joanne Harris for my English literature study in high school and became fully entranced in the world. So much so that when my mum returned from a work trip with a cuddly bunny rabbit (no I was not too old for cuddly toys and I'm still not!) I called it Pantoufle after the little girl's imaginary rabbit. I had written paragraphs about the symbolism in this book and Pantoufle played a huge part in that. And, no, Pantoufle isn't cut from the film - he's replaced with a kangaroo. Completely destroying all the symbolism of the character, and sort of breaking my heart a little. So although I enjoy this film, I despair at this poor casting choice!

What do you think? Please share your opinions in the comments below - or I'll link to the Instagram discussion too!

A post shared by BookBairn and Mummy (Kim) (@bookbairn) on Jul 15, 2018 at 12:18pm PDT

Let's Lit Chat!

Kim

As you may know I am a teacher-on-career-break since having the bairns, and since starting the blog I've become really passionate about how, we, as parents can help support children at home. And how, we, as teachers, can help parents do that. I know at parents evening I always got asked by parents how they could help their children at home, and since becoming a parent myself (though not of a school aged child) my insight into this has changed. And during the summer holidays there can be a huge dip in children's ability to retain what they learned in the previous year, teachers refer to it as the summer slide. So I thought I would share a few tips with you on how you can help your kids learn at home.

This is probably a predictable one coming from me! Read read and read. And by this I mean a few things. I mean read with your child. Even if they can read themselves. Read aloud to them. No matter what age they are. Remember they might struggle to read books that they actually find interesting by themselves. School reading schemes are good in many ways but having read Biff, Chip and Kipper many times I think I'm qualified to say they are pretty dull.  Please don't just read the set reading pages for homework at home. You need to find something more interesting. Help them find a blogger such as Book Lover Jo who has the best recommendations for middle grade and early chapter books to find out what new books are available. Ask the librarian. Ask the bookseller. Be interested in what they are reading. Talk about it. Talk about what you are reading. Make books a conversation. Make them a passion. Did you know that reading twenty minutes a day means reading roughly 1.8 million (yes!) words a year? Think how much that could help your child learn.

I'm an advocate of technology to support learning. We all love a little screen time. Screen time is great! I'm all for it. And BookBairn loves her tablet. She uses it daily. We try to use it wisely though. She plays educational (and fun) games on it, she uses to to draw and create, she watches TV programmes on it, she watches nursery rhymes, she watches people on YouTube opening surprise eggs (I know!!!). There are lots of great apps out there for kids to help them learn as well as having fun. We use CBeebies a lot for BookBairn because of her age and have recently become very excited by the Oi Frog app. But for older kids the Nosy Crow apps are great for literacy and when I was teaching, I loved Nessy (and so did the kids) which is great in helping support children with phonics. I also love the BrainPop videos for learning lots about a whole variety of subjects. Ask you child's teacher if there's a programme they use in school and see if there's a home learning version. We also love our Osmo, which is essentially a mirror that clicks over the camera on an iPad and allows children to play educational games on a table top but the mirror picks it all up and connects with the iPad to play interactive games. BookBairn has some of the more basic games - tangrams is a favourite but we also have a pizza game and whilst BookBairn plays on 'junior' mode just making the pizzas it has other options up to fully running a shop - pizza making, dealing with payments and stock ordering. There are lots of great games that you can get and I love the look of a coding game that they have for when BookBairn is older. Technology can be our ally - if we get it on our side. And the occasional YouTube video never hurt anyone.

I was recently sent a huge bundle of Leckie and Leckie homework books to review but of course my kids are too young for this sort of activity book so I enlisted the help of some friends, both mums and teachers, to get their opinions.

Joshua

"This is awesome mum, it's just like a textbook." - Joshua, 7. Isn't it fascinating how kids often really love textbooks?

"I love the books! I've been using them for homework and consolidating activities in class. I like how they are set out so the kids can do one section rather than the whole sheet. The self assessment worked well and gave us an indication of where each pupil felt they were and was a basis for discussion with their learning. The kids said they really like them (as much as they hate homework!!) because of the ability to get points!" - P3/4 teacher

Emma (aged 10) said she liked the fact there were different challenges to try. As she hadn't used the books before she opted for [level] one but read ahead to see what the questions were like. 

Emma

"The differentiation is very good and I like the layout of the book. Easy to us and look for areas that need more work." - Emma's Mum who is also a primary teacher.

According to pupils in a P4/5 class they found the books "easy to understand."
"The questions are hard, but not too hard."
"Like that there's a score so you know how well you've done."
"Not too many questions on a page."

I liked the way that the books were organised by topic so that you could easily find a section that you know your child has been working on in class (and if you don't know you can always ask their teacher) and also liked the self-assessment tool as I found this so useful when I was working in a classroom. And, like the kids, I liked the motivation of earning points!

Board Games

It has been such a wonderful summer so far and we have been spending so much time outdoors that we have been particularly selective about what we are reading. So our 'Favourites Shelf' really represents the best of the best! And I've tried to include a mixture of BookBairn and The Wee Page Turner's favourite books.

Here are our most recent favourites and repeat-reads:

One book that we have read again and again is 'The Bear and the Piano' sound book by David Litchfield that we got for Christmas but didn't really get into until I had a bookish spring clean in April. It's the beautiful story of a bear that finds a piano, and having learned to play beautiful concertos, he heads to the big bright city and sees his name in big bright lights. But he longs to return to the forest. And will his friends be waiting for him after he left the behind? The illustrations in this book are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen! They really are incredible. It's sensational. And if you want an added element, the sound book features short snippets of beautiful piano music. BookBairn said when we read this recently: "I love the music, it makes me feel happy."

The book I have read the most this month with BookBairn is "Mrs Mole, I'm Home" by Jarvis. We picked it up in the library and have pretty much read it every day since. She loves Morris and his escapade to find his way home without his glasses to help him see where he is digging. She finds it so funny that his glasses are balanced on his head throughout the story (perhaps this reminds her of her Papa who is constantly laying his glasses down and asking her to remember where they are?). The illustrations are packed full of fun details and BookBairn particularly enjoys spotting all the books in the owl residence (one of them has her name on it) and tracing the maps of where Morris has been digging. It's a lovely story packed full of humour and I have enjoyed reading it every day for a month so it's got to be pretty good to keep our attention that long.

This is a great example of a story told with very few words! (And it's great for bedtime because it doesn't take too long to read after a long day!) It tells the story of Dave, the caveman, who decides that he is fed-up with his cave and he packs up his things and heads off to find a new cave. He tries out a few but none seem to fit. And he slumps, downhearted back, when he spots one last cave. It's perfect! But is it a new cave? Or has he returned to his home sweet home? The illustrations are great - all the humour packed into them makes me laugh and we spend as much time discussing the pictures as we do reading the actual story. The only problem with this book is that I don't do a very good caveman voice apparently.

This is a story packed full of wit and humour that I absolutely do not mind reading over and over again. It tells the story of Triangle who sets off on a journey to see his 'friend' Square and to play a trick on him. And when the trick creates hilarity for Triangle, Square is furious and chases Triangle all the way home and gets stuck in the triangle-shaped doorway. But perhaps he's about to get his own back? So much is conveyed through the illustrations that it's no wonder that BookBairn loves it. I wouldn't say it was laugh out loud funny, but rather more a deep, wry humour, which I love! And so does BookBairn!

The Wee Page Turner keeps bringing this book from room to room (which is rather funny in that he puts his hands on it and uses it to slide around on!) and he loves to be read the story. It's a tale of a lost hat blown away by the wind. But it's the Queen's hat. And so it flies all over London landmarks. Using a simple red, white and blue colour palette, the landmarks are set to shine on each page. BookBairn loves this too as she is utterly fascinated by Big Ben and Tower Bridge. And it's a great one for us to read when Daddy is away working in London.

'I Thought I Saw a Bear' by Lydia Nichols has been pulled out of The Wee Page Turner's book basket time and time again! As with the others in the series, each page repeats the phrase “I thought I saw a...” and then using the slider you can reveal the creature. He particularly loves when the bear slides on the cover and when he pops up in the car. This book has a transport theme with bear popping up in lots of different vehicles and modes of transport so it's perfect for adding in lots of transport vocabulary too. These are very simple, very clever little books that are great for entertaining little readers and perfect for popping in your bag for out and about stories.

We borrowed this from the library and The Wee Page Turner loved it so much that I bought him a copy of his own. He seems to prefer this to some of touch-and-feel books that we have, perhaps it's the mixture of textures and photographs or perhaps it's just because I have to make lots of silly animal noises as we read? But he simply loves it.

Postman Bear is a lovely lift-the-flap story about a bear, who is a postman, delivering party invitations to three of his woodland friends. It's an incredibly simple story making it a great one for The Wee Page Turner, and with interactive elements to keep his fingers busy it's no wonder that he enjoys this one so much!


So those are our most recent favourite reads! What have you been enjoying reading recently? And if you can't wait to see our next quarterly installment of our Favourites Shelf, I always include a book or two in our monthly Little Loves blog posts!

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*Disclaimer: Some of these books were sent to us by publishers for review and others are ones that we have borrowed from the library or purchased ourselves. These are our genuine re-reads so all opinions are our own.

Guess How Much I Love You

Love is...

Almost Anything

 Stardust 

Blown Away

Feelings

Joy

Forever

 Under the Love Umbrella 

Together

We Are Family 

Love

Let's start by saying that I love bees! I have been absolutely fascinated by them for as long as I can remember. My family have called me 'bumble' or 'bumblebee' for my whole life and most people who know me will have noticed that I buzz around like a busy bee all the time. I admire their workmanship, loyalty, dedication and, of course, their unique fashion sense.

And it won't be a surprise for me to tell you, as it has become so well-known that our humble little bees are under threat and need lots of love and care as our planet and eco system rely on them so heavily. So what can we do to help them? Plant beautiful flowers, rescue flailing bees with sugar water. But also teach our children to treasure these little treasures. And of course my solution to that is to read books (of course!). So I've done some really hard work and collated the ultimate list of books about bees (and I've even included a few that I just couldn't get my hands on yet - that's how thorough I've been!). Here are they bee books to buzz about:

I'm starting with this one because it is, unashamedly, my favourite! I love it for many reasons but primarily because the artwork is just incredible! It's a huge book meaning that it's best read whilst stretched out on the floor and it gives loads and loads of page space to incredibly detailed illustrations. The top 7/8ths of each page is dedicated to a picture packed full of artwork - so much time and love has been put into it and the bottom 1/8th of the page has lots of fascinating facts about my favourite little creatures. Because it's primarily illustrations - it's great for readers of all ages as you can interpret the illustrations and discuss them - but the actual facts at the bottom of the page are probably best for slightly older children and adults. There is also a cool newspaper section at the back of the book which is fun bite-size chunks of information. But mostly I love it because it’s a beauty! A bee-uty! (I promise this will bee the only bee-pun in this list!)

Part non-fiction and part activity book this is such a fun one for helping young readers understand about the world of bees. It is buzzing with bright illustrations and fact-filled pages as well as activities such as a board game (which teaches the life cycle of a bee), instructions on how to do the bee waggle dance, as well as activities like how to make a 'nectar cafe' and creating flower mosaics. I also love how the history of bees is told in a story format which is a great way to sit down and enjoy this book together. The bright illustrations and mix of non-fiction facts with cool activities and experiments makes this such a brilliant book for nature lovers!

Some buzzing bee stories:

Little Honey Bee by Jane Ormes

This is a beautiful book sharing with little ones the beautiful flora and fauna that surrounds the honeybees throughout the different seasons. On each page there is a rhyming phrase counting the number of flowers in the garden and the illustrations are littered with little bees to spot. Beautifully illustrated with delicate attention to detail and including under each flap (of which there are several on a page) little readers can discover another creature or plant and under the final flap is a wonderful beehive which you can explore inside. Accompanied by a poetic phrase on each page, this a beautifully magical exploration of a garden's journey across the seasons.

In this delightful story the bees have buzzed off and it's up to the other minibeasts to get them back as without them who is there to pollinate the fruit and flowers? Littered with lift-the-flaps and combining a narrative story with facts about bees this picture book is better aimed at slightly older readers (5+). It's perfect for minibeast fans and encourage children to explore the natural world, it's such a wonderful story that readers will want to be part of. The illustrations are bright and engaging and the characters are cute and quirky. A great book to remind us of the importance of those black and yellow striped beasties! 

Bee-&-Me by Alison Jay

A wordless picture book this is a story about a little girl who befriends a bee and goes on a journey of discovery about conservation of our bees. Primarily it is a tale of friendship as the bee and the girl go off exploring together but it also introduces ideas about ecology and our natural world. With stunning illustrations, the story is entirely brought to life and it's such a wonderful book to explore together and for little ones to read on their own.

If you met a giant human-sized bee you might be rather startled, and slightly concerned about the prospect of a giant-bee-sized sting! And that's Jerry's plight. (The plight of the bumblebee if you will.) All Jerry wants to do is make friends. And one day he happens across a discarded wig, pops it on his head, and gets mistaken for a schoolboy. He becomes a pillar of the community until one day his wig is swept from his head and they all run in fear. But when a surprise voice speaks out for Jerry the soon realise not to be frightened at all. And that surprise voice - was the guinea pig that Jerry had been wearing on his head the whole time! A lovely story that will make you laugh out loud!

These touch and feel books are always fabulous and I can't wait to add this to our collection when I'm next having a book splurge!

I love the look of this book and it's straightforward fact telling! The illustrations look really cute and I love that it's a slightly smaller size and a board book making it more accessible for younger readers!

I saw this in the bookshop recently and the illustrations are absolutely incredible and is a great celebration of the humble bumble and it's at the top of my to-buy list! I hope they release a paperback edition too!