How many of these Kate & Jol Temple books have you read?
The Alice Toolie Series
1. Your Troolie, Alice Toolie: Letters From My Enemy
2. The Birthday Wars
3. The Battle of Book Week
The Underdogs Series
1. Catch a Cat Burglar
2. Fake It Till They Make It
3. Hit a Grand Slam
The Jimmy Cook Series
1. Captain Jimmy Cook Discovers Third Grade
2. Captain Jimmy Discovers X Marks the Spot
It all started with The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA).
Established in 1945, the Children’s Book Council of Australia was founded at a time when Australian children’s books were few, and Australian authors and illustrators were virtually unknown. In 1946 the CBCA established annual book awards to promote books of high literary and artistic quality. The awards fostered growth in publishing Australian stories, about Australian lives, told with Australian voices.
Book Week is all about celebrating books as well as authors and illustrators. It's a fantastic week and great to see young learners getting excited about books!
Theme: READING IS MAGIC!
Dates: August 19th - 23rd 2024
About Kate!
Did you always want to be a writer? YES! Well actually there was one other thing I wanted to be… an inventor of ice-cream! I thought it would be brilliant to come up with new weird flavours all day, like ham and lavender or exploding cactus. It wasn’t to be, so instead I became a children’s author because when you’re a writer you can still invent ice-cream and whatever else you like too!
What made you write books? I loved reading from a very early age. I still do. When I was a kid I didn’t always have a great time at school. Sometimes I had a brilliant time, but not always. I think I was a bit naughty. Reading was always a wonderful place to go, it was full of mystery and adventure and I was always looking for adventure.
What is your favourite book, that you have written? My favourite book of ours is the new Alice Toolie, Birthday Wars. I really like Alice because she is a REALLY funny girl and I don’t think there are enough super funny girls in children’s literature. She’s just as silly and blindly ambitious as Jimmy so they make a great pair. I also love Room On Our Rock because I think it’s really important that we have more empathy towards each other.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing? Right now I’m training my pet baboon Rango how to do backflips. I also enjoy drawing.
What is your favourite book, that you have written? The favourite Kate & Jol book for me is ROOM ON OUR ROCK. It was a real challenge to write a story that would still make sense when you read it both forwards and backwards. To do that and to give it a strong message about empathy makes me pretty happy!
Tell us something people don’t know about you? I actually don’t have a pet baboon called Rango. I have a cavoodle called Wicket. She’s named after an Ewok.
Georgia Norton Lodge is a Sydney-based graphic designer and illustrator. When she's not creating brands, she's working on her own business, Georgia Draws A House. People send Georgia a photo of their home, or their address, and in return Georgia draws it for them! Georgia loves to live-draw in front of a crowd and has been seen creating Giant Colouring Books for children across Australia, and drawing ginormous house murals on the sides of people's homes. She first got in to children's books when she teamed up with her sister Zoe Norton Lodge, writer and television presenter, to create the popular Elizabella series.
Letter Writing Class
What are the differences between handwritten and digital letters? What are the similarities?
When you are creating a response for your Reading Reflection, think about how the text might relate to you in one of these 3 ways.
Book Week is always the best week of the year! But when Alice Toolie and Jimmy Cook get involved, it's set for disaster. From kooky costume ideas to accidental author visits, nothing is safe. It's no wonder they've been fired as Library Monitors! The only way they'll get their jobs back is by winning First Prize in the book parade. And that means working together. Can these two best frenemies leave their differences behind long enough to win the Battle of Book Week?
Great News!
The Battle of Book Week by Kate & Jol Temple is part of Wyvern Reading Challenges. When you have finished reading it, make sure you add it to your challenge.
For boys who are completing the Premier's Challenge, The Battle of Book Week needs to be added as a CHOICE book.
In Humour, you'll also see:
From Britannica
Letter writing began in the ancient world as soon as rulers of nations, separated by some distance, found the need to communicate with each other. It is known, for instance, from a remarkable collection of documents found in 1887 at El Amarna, Egypt, that many rulers in the ancient Middle East kept up a lively correspondence with the pharaohs. Among the ancients the Roman consul Cicero was a prolific writer of letters, especially to his friend Atticus. In the Bible most of the books in the New Testament are epistles, letters from St. Paul and other Christian leaders to various congregations and individuals. Throughout history many well-known persons have written letters that, although originally intended as private correspondence, have been collected and published. In the matter of published letters, it should be noted that a letter as a document becomes the property of the recipient; but the contents remain the property of the sender, who must consent to any publication.
In the late 20th century the practice of letter writing has diminished considerably, probably resulting from the influence of mass communication technology such as telephones and computers. Many people also use the occasional greeting card to replace letters, especially at Christmastime. Nevertheless, some types of personal correspondence remain in use: formal invitations and replies, business letters, thank-you notes and letters, and letters of application. Of these kinds of correspondence, only the thank-you note and letter are generally written at the warm, personal level. The others are more formal, even austere. Invitations, for example, hardly seem to be letters at all, since they often are engraved on high-quality paper and are very formal. One kind of correspondence that is more public than personal is the letter to the editor, an individual expression of opinion on some issue of current interest written to be published in newspapers and magazines.
Each week after completing your reading of The Battle of Book Week, choose one of the following prompts to complete your Reading Reflection sheet.
1. Come up with a list of words (at least 5) to describe the sort of person you think Alice Toolie is.
2. Make a prediction as to what will happen next in the story..
3. Choose a letter from today's reading that stood out to you. Write the page number first. Why did this letter stand out to you?
4. Write a question that you have about The Battle of Book Week after reading part of the story today.
5. Choose one of the main characters. Explain two things you have learned about them. Give evidence to support your answer from the story.
6. Finish this sentence. Today's reading was important to the storyline because..............
7. Think about the reading today. Can you make a connection to yourself, or the wider world or another text you have read. Choose one to use to write your prompt.
8. LibGuides: Look at the section 'Letter Writing - Compare and Contrast. What do you think are TWO differences between handwritten letters and digital (email) letters?
9. There is a great deal of humour in this novel. From your reading today, describe something you found extremely humorous.
10. Jimmy and Alice are sometimes described a 'best frenemies'. How would you describe 'a frenemy' ? Start your description with - A frenemy is...............