Does cold food smell stronger than hot? Do humans have a sixth sense and are cows really causing global warming? Learn the answers to all these perplexing questions and more by reading Smelly Stuff. Now you can find out how to make a particularly stinky fart and how to get rid of BO. Packed with wacky whiffy facts and quizzes, the very smelly information in this book will impress the socks off your friends – and even teach your teacher a thing or two.
After they died, the ancient Egyptians believed that they would go to an underworld beneath the Earth called Duat. A person’s spirit would have to pass through many dangers, such as lakes of fire and poisonous snakes, in order to reach the kingdom of Osiris. Osiris was exactly like Egypt was for the living, except it was for the dead.
Spells were used to help a spirit safely find its way through Duat. They would be written on coffins, and the dead would be buried with a map of the underworld. Collections of these spells were known as the Book Of The Dead. If you said the right spells you would pass through Duat unharmed.
The last test a spirit had to face was to have their heart weighed in front of the god Osiris. The Egyptians believed that a person’s heart carried a record of all their deeds. If you were true of heart and free of crimes, you could pass into the kingdom of Osiris. If you were untruthful a goddess called the Devourer of the Dead would eat your heart and you would not get to live on in the afterlife.
To find out more, check out this book.
Have you ever wondered how long it takes photographers to gather footage to use in wildlife films? They may have to wait days or weeks to get shots of certain animals. One of the ways they gather information about an animal is looking at its footprints and droppings. A huge amount of information can be gained about an animal without even seeing them in action.
This awesome book, Animal Tracks and Signs, will give you all the skills you need to track animals as well as loads of other great information. See what mischief your pet dog or cat get themselves into, and next time you are in the bush take the time to check for footprints. You will be surprised at what you find.
Hey you guys, if you want to hear the book reviews for the top 10 books chosen for May’s Kids Choice listen to this podcast! These are your reviews! You guys are doing a great job at sending them in! Keep reading and sending us reviews on your favourite books, then listen to the podcast to hear your review read out by the librarians! You can get the review slips from your local library or you can also do a review online. We are waiting for your June favourites now!
“Now, Moxy loved to read books. She loved books so much that sometimes she would stay up all night and read. It’s just that Moxy liked to read what she wanted to read and not what someone told her to read. And it wasn’t as if Moxy hadn’t tried to read ‘Stuart Little’. She had not been exaggerating (very much at all) when she had explained to her mother earlier today that the reason she hadn’t finished reading ‘Stuart Little’ had nothing to do with the fact that she had spent too little time with the book. ‘We’ve been practically like best friends all summer,’ she said. ‘Inseparable.’….. So why hasn’t Moxy read the book she was given by her teacher to read over the summer holidays?”
Moxy Maxwell does not love Stuart Little by Peggy Gifford is a funny book, a must read!
Hi! This poll is for all you Stories@7 people! You get to pick the theme for the next Stories@7 on Friday the 4th of July. You can vote by visiting the link below, or come in to the central library children’s section to let us know what you think!
Stories@7: you choose!
p.s. you can also get to the poll from the kids homepage.
Did you know that you can watch and listen to stories from the comfort of your own home on your own computer?
We have a few cool stories available from the Downloads page of the Kids’ website that you can listen to any time you want, including Snake and Lizard by Joy Cowley, overall winner of the New Zealand Post Book Awards this year.
There are other sites you can visit with online stories too, for example Storyline Online, where you can listen to famous Americans reading picture books… like Al Gore (who used to be the Vice President of the United States), or Elijah Wood (who was Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings movies).
Check them out!
Animal Tracks and Signs by Jinny Johnson is a great book. It has loads of pictures and fascinating facts. It shows you how to track over 400 animals from around the world, including foot prints, feeding signs, hiding places and droppings. Even if you’re not into tracking animals it has great facts on each animal which you can learn quite a bit from. I liked the Tracks Quiz at the end of the book, but I wasn’t very good at it. I think I should just stick to tracking down good books to read from the library 
If you don’t know who Jacqueline Wilson is, you should check out Totally Jacqueline Wilson to get you up to speed. Written by the famous author herself, it tells you a whole heap of background stuff that you may not know. Learn about the real Jacqueline Wilson and the characters in her books. It even has stuff about Nick Sharratt, the illustrator of all her books. For Jacqueline Wilson fans or any other readers, it’s great to see how an author starts from “scribbled stories on one of her notebooks” to a shiny new book you can read from the library!
Have you ever wondered why your grandparents have wrinkles? I have till now… I always wondered why my Opa and Oma had lots of wrinkles! Grandfather’s wrinkles is a special book; he explains to his granddaughter how he got his wrinkles… It’s made me think about mine, and how I’ll look when I get older and how I’ll explain my wrinkles one day! I read this book to some grandparents the other day. They thought it was a special book too!
