author visit: Nicola Campbell

On Thursday, the Blair Library was fortunate to have Nicola Campbell, an award-winning BC author visit all the primary classes. Nicola is the author of Grandpa's Girls, one of this year's titles nominated for the Chocolate Lily Picture Book Award. She has also written two other award-winning books for children: Shi-shi-etko and Shin-chi's Canoe. Both of these books are based on her family's experiences in Indian Residential Schools.

Nicola spoke to all of the primary classes about her experience as an author and shared with us that she is the girl with the red pants in the book Grandpa's Girls and that the story is actually more factual than fiction and is based on her experiences growing up. Nicola shared how her aunt, also a published author, inspired her to tell important stories about her culture. She also read her first book, Shi-shi-etko to all the classes and followed up with Shin-chi's Canoe with some of the classes. Nicola is a masterful storyteller and the students were mesmerized by the way she used her arms and hands to gesture as she read her stories. 

The students had many questions for her and Nicola patiently answered as many as she could in the time she had. She told the students that she knew she wanted to be a writer by the time she was eight years old and that she also really loved to read when she was a child.

Nicola was kind enough to stay into the lunch hour and speak to a small group of intermediate students who were both interested in the writing process and about residential schools. The intermediate classes has already been read Shi-shi-etko and will be watching a short film that was made based on the book.

Nicola graciously signed our copies of her books and two new copies I acquired for her visit. It is always a special experience to have a published author visit the Blair Library and it has an honour to host Nicola Campbell.

~Ms Novakowski

Fatty Legs novel study

This week, all the intermediate classes finished reading the novel Fatty Legs by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton. Many of the students are now reading the sequel and the picture book version of the novel. The novel study has raised even more questions about residential schools for the students and we have three guest speakers scheduled in the next few weeks to help address some of the students' questions.
We used an online application called TodaysMeet for students to post their comments and questions as I read the novel to the classes. Using the iPads the students scanned a QR code to link to the secure site and were each able to post from their iPads and see the ongoing conversation on both the iPads and the big screen.

Some insightful comments and questions posted to TodaysMeet included:


Why are the "swan" and the "raven" so different??
Will Oleman be ok?Will she try to escape?
Why is the Raven making Olemaun read when she knows Olemaun cannot read?
We take our life for granted. The kids in residential schools had to work so hard yet we go home and just do the dishes, etc
How will this traumatic event affect her when she is older???
Separating kids from there parents that long is wrong
Religions differ and the people inside religions differ even further
This book is making me cry a bit in the inside
That school is like child labour with learning
If you we're ulaman and you had the chance to ran away would you run away or stay at the school


Two students from division 1 created a podcast reviewing this novel:

listen to ‘Fatty Legs by Margaret Pokiak-Fenton ’ on Audioboo

~Ms Novakowski

Canadian Childrens Book Week

Last week was Canadian Childrens' Book Week. We celebrated at Blair with bookmarks and reading books by Canadian authors all week in the library. We also added some new Canadian books to our collection from this year's book week theme of "All the Bookshelf's a Stage".

Happy Canadian reading!

~Ms Novakowski

our red cedar voting

This week, the intermediate students who participated in the Red Cedar Book Award program voted for their favourites. We have submitted them to the Red Cedar committee and should hear soon which books are the provincial winners for this year.

Our school's fiction favourites were To Stand on my Own: The Polio Epidemic Diary of Noreen Robertson by Barbara Haworth-Attard and Catboy by Eric Walters.

Our school's favourite information book titles were Totally Human by Cynthia Pratt Nicolson and The White Ballets by Rajka Kupesic.

~Ms Novakowski

Potato Joe

After planting and learning a little bit about potatoes, we have been reading some potato stories with our youngest students. Our three kindergarten classes have LOVED the story Potato Joe by Keith Baker. Something about the sing-songy text and cartoon like illustrations are so appealing to the students.

Over the last few weeks, the students in divisions 10, 11 and 12 have made their own potato character puppets, created potato stories and used the apps Doodle Buddy and Skitch on the iPads to make their characters come alive through technology!


Doodle Buddy Potatoes from Division 10:

 Potato Puppets from Division 10:

Potato Characters using Skitch with Division 11:

~Ms Novakowski