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What are Toolboxes For?

78% of South Africa’s children cannot read for either meaning or enjoyment by the age of ten. They are unlikely to proceed any further unless some urgent action is taken. Even children who can technically read (decipher some basic sentences), are not comfortable with the written word. It is easier to opt out, to stop

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It’s Up to Us: A Children’s Terra Carta for Nature, People and Planet

It’s Up to Us   A Children’s Terra Carta for Nature, People and Planet.   Join world history author Christopher Lloyd on a visually stunning story of global climate change covering 4 billion years of Earth’s history, based on  It’s Up to Us – a collaboration with The Prince’s Foundation with a foreword provided by HRH The Prince of

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Books In The Toolboxes

How do we choose the books?  Keeping up with new books and reviving past favourites is an endless (but lovely) task. Thousands of new books are published every year … and then often go out of print in a relatively short time.  Our booklists cannot be permanent as books so often become unavailable, or new titles

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What Is A Bookbag?

In each of our Reading Toolboxes, there are a number of themed bags, packed with books, ideas, challenges, and excitement.  Most importantly, there is a handbook. This is the roadmap, the way in, the explanation of how to get the most out of the contents of the bag.  In the theme Bravery, for example (Red

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Fashion Fun

Children have a discerning eye for style – as we discovered on Saturday 23 April, when CBN explored ideas around clothes, shoes, jewellery, beadwork, and architecture. This time non-fiction was the backbone of the reading activities, backed up by a CBN story focusing on how consumerism can get in the way of real values. Large

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Workshops in April

Children’s Book Network is always trying to change and keep ahead. That has been difficult lately, particularly in the last two years. We have to think – and act – fast.  We are doing more, smaller workshops, so that we can comply with Covid restrictions, but also so that we can work more closely with

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Franschhoek Rides Again!

Franschhoek Rides again! 2022 sees the return of the Franschhoek Literary Festival with its attendant excitement of writers, publishers and intellectuals. It also signals the reinvention of a reading event for younger readers, and CBN will be there! The revived event will be called Franschhoek Reading and will involve upper primary school learners – just

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Engage with the Page

Book-Books This entirely novel concept could have a boring title like ‘Project Book’.  Book-Book says a lot more. We experimented with these books during lockdown, when we could only wok remotely with children. We found it created a tremendous sense of pride and achievement. The books were beautifully decorated and presented. (Illustration is a whole

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Car Design

Car Design by Andrew Sparg and Jeanne Maclay-Meyers is a delight and a lovely surprise. Why don’t we have more books on technology? Especially such well written and designed ones? CBN uses this book in it’s collection of stories about imagination – just to show that imagination isn’t all about fairies and wizards. Imagination is

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