Haberfield Public School librarian Michael Fraser oversees a library with 22,000 books, with titles for every age and interest, including Harry Potter and the Philosopher\u2019s Stone in Latin.<\/p>\n
The school has embedded books into its daily rhythm, with lunchtime reading circles where library monitors from Years 3 to 6 read to younger students. The library is open to parents and carers before and after school so they can read with their children or help select a new book to borrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce kids love reading, they will be readers for life,\u201d Mr Fraser said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see it in our reading circles, with students sitting around at lunchtime chatting about books. It\u2019s wonderful.”<\/p>\n
\u201cMost kids today have never been in a bookshop and busy parents often don\u2019t have time to take them to the local library, so the role of the school and the school library is even more important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both boys and girls at Haberfield Public School enjoy Enid Blyton\u2019s The Famous Five, the Treehouse series by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Harry Potter titles.<\/p>\n
\u201cGirls like books about relationships so series like The Baby-Sitters Club are popular. Boys often go for graphic novels. They like reading the text in chunks and they love the illustrations,\u201d Mr Fraser said.<\/p>\n
A librarian for 26 years, Mr Fraser encourages students to read the classics, like the timeless Paddington Bear, the relatable characters in Enid Blyton\u2019s catalogue, the Asterix graphic novels and Tintin.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s in the library bag?<\/p>\n
An analysis by the NSW Department of Education of borrowing patterns in public primary school libraries shows clusters of popular authors across different year levels.<\/p>\n
Australian author Aaron Blabey is phenomenally popular with students in their first two years of school.<\/p>\n
Blabey\u2019s Pig the Pug series \u2013 picture books about a rude and mean little dog \u2013 dominates library borrowing lists in Kindergarten and Year 1, with Pig the Pug, Pig the Star, Pig the Blob, Pig the Tourist and Pig the Monster, competing with another Blabey title, Thelma the Unicorn.<\/p>\n
In Year 2, Dav Pilkey \u2013 the American comic book writer of children\u2019s fiction \u2013 takes line honours with the Dogman series, a graphic novel spinoff of his Captain Underpants franchise. Popular titles are Dog Man, Dog Man: Unleashed\u202fand Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties.<\/p>\n
By Year 3, Dogman is still featuring in the top books borrowed, joined by Roald Dahl\u2019s classic Fantastic Mr Fox.<\/p>\n
From Year 4 to Year 6 American cartoonist and author Raina Telgemeier\u202fcleans up with her autobiographical webcomic Smile, and graphic novels Ghosts (about a girl who can see ghosts), Guts (about the author\u2019s stomach problems and adventures at school) and Sisters (growing up with her younger sister).<\/p>\n
Haberfield Public School Year 6 student Cecilia Cowell loves reading Roald Dahl and graphic novels \u2013 \u201cand all the Harry Potter books\u201d \u2013 as well as non-fiction titles about cooking, animals and countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cReading teaches me a lot about the world and connects me all around the world,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I\u2019m enjoying a book, I\u2019m in my own world.\u201d<\/p>\n
School captain Cecilia has these words of wisdom for kids who may not enjoy reading: \u201cJust start with something easy and work up from there. If you start with something hard or boring, you will just give up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Haberfield Public School librarian Michael Fraser oversees a library with 22,000 books, with titles for every age and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-69640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}