TES books editor Geraldine Brennan on the inside literary track
Book Trust’s new key stage 2 and 3 online resources for teachers (www.booktrusted. com) kick off with a set of materials on bullying, including an article by former deputy head Bridget Carrington, which reminds us that “Whilst it is interesting (and reassuring) to realise that the same problems formed the subject matter for fiction a hundred years ago and more, we need to know that today’s writers are writing about reality, about life here today, and from personal experience.” There are also ideas for working with Nicky Singer’s Feather Boy and a short but selective and well annotated booklist. Each term the site will offer teaching ideas on an issue, a country (this term’s is Germany), an illustrator (first up Anthony Browne), a poet (starting with Valerie Bloom), a prose writer (Michael Morpurgo) and a genre (science fiction). All this term’s package should be available by December 13.
The section on Germany is a good way of introducing the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation, to be awarded in January. Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord, on the shortlist this year, is one of the German children’s novels featured on the site, with a “creative project” on Bambert’s Book of Missing Stories by Reinhardt Jung.