Thanks to the wonderful Sarah (@SeraphimSP) and Carol (@CarolDuncan) the Twitterverse has united to raise awareness of a very important cause.

On Friday September 3rd, Carol and Sarah are asking tweeps to turn their avatars pink and join them in promoting breast self-examination.

Both Carol and Sarah know women that have been impacted by breast cancer (click on their names to go to their blog posts about #FeelThemUpFriday). In one of those co-incidences that happens so often in Newcastle, the young swim instructor that so inspired Carol is my cousin.

For me, breast cancer came a step closer last year when my mother was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ which resulted in two attempts at lumpectomy before my mother finally chose to have a complete mastectomy.

My mother’s cancer wasn’t clearly visible on mammography. She had to progress to fine needed biopsy before there was a clear diagnosis. If she hadn’t been aware of her own body and the changes that had occurred, her treatment might not have been so timely nor her prognosis as positive as it is.

Many years ago when I lived in Orange I went along to a women’s health talk where the guest speaker greeted us by handing around some ‘sample’ breasts and telling us all to ‘have a good feel’. Most of the demonstration breasts contained at least one lump and we were encouraged to see if we could find them. In the beginning we were a bit self-concious, but it didn’t take too long for people to relax and it was amazing as we chatted to discover that the only women who did check their breasts regularly were those who had close encounters with breast cancer through friends and/or family.

Breast self-examination is free and it could mean an early detection and diagnosis that could save your life. Why wouldn’t you check regularly?

Not sure what to do? The Breast Cancer Australia website has an easy to follow guide to breast self-examination.

Join the pink revolution on Twitter this week to help raise awareness of breast health. Follow the #FeelThemUpFriday chat on Friday. I’m sure it will be not only informative but highly entertaining and probably just a little bit naughty at times. Do yourself and others a favour by promoting breast health awareness.

Summary (Kate Hunter website)

Katie Crisp has talent, it’s just that the report card hidden in her room doesn’t show it. School’s out for another year and Katie is set to spend the summer lazing under the sausage tree in the backyard of the only home she’s ever known. So, when she discovers that Parfitt’s Family Soft Drink Company is about to be taken over by a corporate giant, leaving her mum out of a job and them both out of a home, it’s time to finally show everyone what she’s made of.

With her nose for trouble and her eye for advertising, and a little help from some neighbourhood friends, Katie declares Mosquito Advertising open for business.
Pocket money and creative thinking can stretch a long way when everything that means anything to you is about to be destroyed.

Comments

I really enjoyed reading this modern story featuring a group of kids (early teens) solving a mystery and simply enjoying hanging out together over the summer school holidays. I loved the Australian setting, the humour and the very real way that the kids related to each other.

As for the mystery at Parfitt’s, this had a very Trixie Beldon/Famous Five feel about it as Katie and her friends realised that there was a problem and set about solving it, mostly ignored by the adults in the story.

I like the way the advertising industry is portrayed with the money-hungry, do anything to get the contract attitude of some of the characters balanced with an acknowledgement that good advertising strategies are necessary to promote a product and gain sales, without which a business cannot continue to function effectively. The initial Parfitt’s Christmas Greeting posted as a YouTube clip was a particularly good way of highlighting the way modern technology can be used to reach a market audience. Mosquito Advertising even has their own website.

This book was brimming with humour and fun.  I think it would be a great discussion text for late primary school/early high school students studying the influence of marketing and advertising, but it is also simply an enjoyable book that should appeal to both male and female readers who like to read books with a mystery to solve.

Can’t wait for the release of the second book in December 2010.

Review Copy Details
Title: Mosquito Advertising #1: The Parfizz Pitch
Author: Kate Hunter
Publisher: University of Queensland Press, 2010 (210 pages)
ISBN: 978-0-7022-3771-3
Genre: Children’s fiction
Age range: 9+

Related Links:

• Review of Mosquito Advertising: The Parfizz Pitch at Suite101

Summary (back cover)

On New Year’s Eve Cal is chased down the street by a staggering, sick man with a deadly warning..They killed your father. They’ll kill you. You must survive the next 365 days! Hurled into a life on the run, with a price on his head, the 15-year-old fugitive is isolated and alone. Hunted by the law and ruthless criminals, Cal must somehow uncover the truth about his father’s mysterious death and a history-changing secret. Who can he turn to, who can he trust, when the whole world seems to want him dead?

The Clock is ticking. Any second could be his last.

Callum Ormond has been warned. He has 365 days. The countdown has begun…

Comments

I’m not much of a thriller reader, probably because they are either chillingly realistic (defying my ‘reading as escapism’ mantra) or stretch the bounds of believability so far that my rather cynical nature kicks in and the flow of the story is broken by my continual eye rolling at yet another coincidence that saves/threatens the hero.

I have enjoyed the first few books of this series, but have found the breakneck pace of the plot at times a little annoying. Just how many ‘random’ events can happen to threaten the safety of one teenaged boy? Putting that aside, the pace did keep me turning pages to see just how the author was going to get Callum out of his latest impossible-to-escape-from dilemma or what disaster was just around the corner when he did finally get a chance to relax for five minutes.

Older audiences or those familiar with the suspense/thriller genre might find the day and time countdowns scattered through the text distracting. I was often left wondering just how a particular event had taken 20 minutes to unfold or how they had managed to cram so much action into 5 minutes. For me, the reading experience would have been much better if the story had simply been broken down day by day.

All that being said, these books will no doubt be quite popular with young male readers particularly and apparently have quite an enthusiastic following amongst teens. I haven’t checked out the Conspiracy 365 website in any great detail, but there is additional info and interactive experiences on offer there including monthly competitions.

With a new book released every month during 2010, it isn’t too late to get on board with Conspiracy 365. The book for September will be available within the next few days and another three books are still to come before the series draws to a conclusion in December.

Review Copy Details
Title: Conspiracy 365 (series)
Author: Gabrielle Lord
Publisher: Scholastic, 2010
Genre: Tween/Teen fiction
Age range: 11+

Related links

• Review of Conspiracy 365 at Suite101

Summary (Walker Books website)

Two diverse cultures, countries and families are linked with warmth and charm in this two-in-one picture book.

This innovative picture book comprises two stories designed to be read simultaneously – one from the left, the other from the right. Page by page, we experience a day in the lives of two boys and their families. An Australian family, whose way of life strikes a familiar chord, and a family from a far away country with a way of life that differs more than one can imagine. As we read we discover the simple truth that despite these differences we are all the same. We are the mirror of each other.

Comments

I am not, by nature, the kind of person that gushes over things, but I am willing to make an exception for this incredible picture book.

I love Jeannie Baker’s work and I was looking forward to the release of her latest book, Mirror, with great anticipation. I was particularly excited when I discovered that the artworks from Mirror would be on display at the Museum of Sydney and that Jeannie would be there to sign books on the 22nd August. So excited that I packed the rest of my family in the car and headed to Sydney for the day so that we could meet her and view the artworks up close and personal.

The exhibition is amazing. It will be travelling around Australia over the next two years, visiting several capital cities as well as Newcastle. To see if it is coming to a city near you, take a look at the exhibitions listing on Jeannie Baker’s website. It is definitely worth the effort of visiting if you can.

I love the format of this book, that you can fold the two stories out so that they can be ‘read’ side by side. Even after numerous readings, I am still finding new details that are reflected within the two stories.

I will confess to being more than a little bit in awe of Jeannie’s talent and I am so grateful that she has chosen to put together her thoughtful and thought-provoking artworks into picture book form so that they can be enjoyed by everyone.

If you’ve never read any of Jeannie’s books, Mirror is a wonderful place to start. We also love Window and Belonging.

Review Copy Details
Title: Mirror
Author/Illustrator: Jeannie Baker
Publisher: Walker Books Australia, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4063-0914-0
Genre: Picture book

Related links

• Review of Mirror at Suite101
• Article about visiting the Mirror exhibition at the Museum of Sydney at Kids Book Review

The last month seems to have whizzed past on fast forward.

I could offer an extended list of commitments to explain my absence from my blog over the past weeks, but I’m going to forgo that entirely and simply pick up where I left off since time is of the essence.

‘Time is of the essence’. What a bizarre phrase. Don’t you hate it when you utter some trite cliché and then realise that you have no idea what it actually means? Never mind. Time waits for no man and I don’t have any time up my sleeve to worry about it now.

Over the next week or so I have a number of reviews to publish as well as trying to get back into a routine of general blog posts. I have lots of things to tell you and some great books to recommend, so hopefully you haven’t all given up on me and you’ll call in to see what I’ve been up to.

Back soon with some news and reviews, so stay tuned.

My children love watching MasterChef Australia and I’m enjoying the unexpected side-effects of their MCA obsession. Not only are they fighting for the opportunity to help me cook, they are happily entertaining themselves playing MasterChef. With the help of a plastic picnic set, toy food and a few spare kitchen utensils, they have spent hours these holidays testing each other with mystery box challenges, invention tests and taste tests. The latter in particular can be quite tricky when using fake food, but they seem to manage.

I have been a guest judge on several occasions and I’ve even been tempted to find a scarf/cravat to lend myself the proper air of culinary discernment as I try to choose between the banana bread with ice-cream dipping sauce and the salad with fresh baked bread and tomato salsa.

Today the kids were obviously feeling artistic, as they happily occupied themselves making chalk drawings of the remaining contestants and the judges. My 6 year old son drew the pictures of Jimmy and Jonathan. My 9-year-old daughter drew the rest. What do you think?

(ETA: To avoid confusion, I should point out that Aaron is holding a bowl containing chicken drumsticks.)

Contestants

Judges

Back when I was toying with the idea of homeschooling my children, I read a book about an American family that homeschooled their four sons (2 natural, 2 adopted) up to college age. The priority for this family was to encourage their sons to develop all the necessary academic skills, but they did this by encouraging the boys to follow their own passions and interests. For example, if an essay needed to be written, one with an interest in mechanics might write it on antique cars while another with an interest in astronomy might write it on the planets. It’s probably worth mentioning 3 of the four sons went on to attend Harvard.

While I ended up going down another path education-wise, the teaching philosophy stuck with me – that children learn best when they are learning about things that they love. I’ve tried to work this philosophy into the lives of my children, encouraging them to follow their passions and interests and offering them opportunities to learn that incorporate subjects and activities that naturally interest them. I’m sure that there is a technical term for this approach – child directed learning or some such – but for me it has simply been about offering my inquisitive children the opportunity to learn and have fun at the same time.

My children are extremely intelligent and if I was a little more focused and a little more disciplined in getting them to practice and reinforce the lessons they learn at school, I have no doubt that they would excel beyond their already excellent results. I am currently in the situation of having to decide whether to register my older son to sit the entrance exam for a local selective school for high school and I have spent no small amount of time weighing up the pros and cons of his options.

If it was simply a matter of choosing which school would offer the highest quality education for his high school years and produce the best academic results, the selective school would win out over his current school without a second thought. Is that all there is to it, though? The philosophy behind the My School website would no doubt say that it is. I should simply seek out the school achieving the highest overall results in English and Mathematics and sign him up, but I can’t help thinking that there is more to it than that.

I think that there is more to life than being smart and getting top grades. There. I’ve said it and my still-longing-to-be-teacher’s-pet heart has trembled, but it hasn’t stopped beating. My children’s intelligence is only one part of who they are and to be happy, I think they need to develop all the aspects of themselves – creativity, faith, emotional intelligence, social skills,friendships, a sense of humour, the ability to simply relax and have fun, a sense of purpose and self-worth. These things are all just as important as academic achievement in my mind for their ongoing mental and physical wellbeing.

For my children to be happy, which is what I want for them, I believe that they will need to use their intellect. It is part of who they are and one of the gifts that they have been blessed with. I don’t believe that they would ever be truly happy without being involved in something that kept them mentally stimulated. I want them to work hard and always do their best at their studies so that they can achieve their academic potential and give themselves the widest range of choices for future career possibilities, but I want them to know this is just one part of who they are and what they can achieve.

I watch parents of young children focused on steering their kids along a path that will offer them the greatest potential for academic success or even future career success, but my focus for my children will be to encourage them to follow their passion, to be brave enough to dream big dreams and then know that with hard work, perseverance and passion that they will be able to bring those dreams to life.

Academic achievement is important and we place a high value on education and knowledge in our home, but my highest priority is to see my children grow into well-rounded individuals with a real sense of purpose and joy and enthusiasm for life, not simply a career path and a 10 year plan.

That’s my passion and that’s what drives me as I love and encourage my children and help them to become all that they are capable of being.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of Popular Penguin books, Penguin has released another 75 titles to bring the total number of books in this series to 174.

I’m a big fan of the Popular Penguins, particularly because they make classic and quality books available at an affordable price. The books are available at most Australian bookshops for around $9.95 and I have recently spotted titles at Big W for around $7. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing better than buying a good book, is buying a good book at a bargain price.

With the publication of the new titles, I’ve decided to revive my Popular Penguins Reading Challenge. It’s a perpetual challenge, so there is no time pressure. More than anything, I’m using this challenge as a way to motivate myself to pick up a classic occasionally and broaden my reading horizons.

If you would like to join in, you can sign up to the challenge at my Popular Penguins Reading Challenge post, where you can leave a link your sign-up post and come back to include links to any reviews you write of Popular Penguins titles. There is also a link to a spreadsheet that you can copy to keep track of your progress reading through the 174 Popular Penguins titles.

For a fun way to connect with the new titles, check out the competition running via the Australian Popular Penguins website. Match all 75 party guests with the book titles they represent and you’ll be entered into the competition to win 75 Popular Penguins of your choice plus a Mark Tuckey bookshelf to store them on. (Competition closes midnight, Monday 16th August 2010.)

How many of  the 174 Popular Penguins have you already read? What’s your favourite book from the Popular Penguins titles and what authors/titles would you like to see them include in the future?

Summary (Popular Penguins website)

Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity.  This wide-ranging selection of Keats’s poetry contains youthful verse, such as his earliest known poem ‘Imitation of Spenser‘; poems from his celebrated collection of 1820 – including ‘Lamia‘, ‘Isabella‘, ‘The Eve of St Agnes‘, ‘Ode to a Nightingale‘ and ‘Hyperion‘ – and later celebrated works such as ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci‘.

Comments
My preferences for poetry are a little like my preferences for artwork – I know what I like with very little understanding of what makes it enjoyable. With both, it’s all about what appeals to the senses and my own personal tastes.

Along with Wordsworth, Coleridge and Donne, Keats is one of my favourite poets. I studied some of his poems at school, but I don’t remember it ever being mentioned that he was so young when he died – only 25 years old. It is incredible that he wrote odes and sonnets of such beauty at such a young age.

This Popular Penguins collection of Keats poems includes favourites such as Ode to a Grecian Urn, La Belle Dame sans Merci and Ode to a Nightingale. There is a brief, interesting introduction, a selection of Keats’ work including a small collection of light-hearted and nonsense poems and excerpts from letters written by Keats to family and friends.

Reading through this short book has rekindled my love of classic poetry. I might have to track down a copy of the Popular Penguin edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets and lobby to have the works of Coleridge, Donne and Wordsworth included in the next list of titles they release.

Review Copy Details
Title: Poems of John Keats (Popular Penguins)
Author: John Keats
Publisher: Penguin, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-14-119495-0
Genre: Poetry

Summary (from Walker Books Australia website)

‘We Are What We Do’ are a movement whose aim is to inspire people – in this case, children – to use their everyday actions to change the world. Their maxim is: small actions x lots of people = big change. It’s not rocket science but it does work! The actions in the book – including one brand new knitting action – are fun and easy for children to do but add up to making a big difference. It gives children the responsibility for changing the world, one bit at a time.

Comments

This book is a fantastic implementation of a great concept – that big changes are brought about by lots of small actions. I love that the actions suggested in this book are so achievable and cover issues that kids can relate to. There are fun examples like teaching your gran how to text and more practical ones like growing your own vegetables and taking shorter showers.

To me the highlight of this book isn’t the actions, as great as they are, it is the fact that this book encourages kids to connect with other people. It encourages them to make others smile, to give compliments, to talk with others and to be positive about themselves and their potential. In a world where there is so much disconnection within families and communities, I think that this is a fantastic and very timely message.

I think it also has a much more significant impact. It is very hard to get someone to care about what is happening on the other side of the world to people that will never meet if they don’t even know what is happening to their neighbours and friends. Encouraging kids to think and care about their own circle of family and friends prepares them to step out to influence people beyond that circle when the opportunity arises.

I think that this fantastic book is a great idea for anyone who wants to encourage their kids to think more about their actions and the impact they can have in their world, whether that means being more positive and involved at school or working to protect the environment.

Check out the We Are What We Do website for more action ideas and information about the UK We Are What We Do organisation.

Review Copy Details
Title: 31 Ways to Change the World
Author: We Are What We Do
Publisher: Walker Books Australia, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-40632-7-809
Genre: Non-Fiction, Social change, Community development

Related Links

• Review of 31 Ways to Change the World at Suite101