Kids Blog

Come along to enjoy story reading and face painting by Presbyterian Support Central at the Central Library to celebrate Children’s Day on March 7th. Face Painting will be available from 1.45 – 3.30pm, with story reading from 2.15 – 3pm.

It’s YOUR day! Celebrate it!

Nina Fairy Ballerina Series: Party Magic by Anna Wilson

Your favourite book club for 7 and 8 year olds is on next week! BookBusters is happening in these times and places…

Tuesday 2nd March: Central, Island bay and Karori Libraries at 4pm

Wednesday 3rd March: Tawa Library at 4pm

Thursday 4th March: Kilbirnie and Jonsonville Libraries at 4pm.

Find out before anyone else about all the new things the library has at BookBusters! Tawa Library is celebrating different cultures at their BookBusters meeting – come along in your national costume and wow everyone.

BookBusters is a free monthly bookclub for 7 and 8 year olds. Ask for more information at your local library. Or check out BookSeekers - for 9 to 12 year olds! 

If you are into climbing trees, flying kites, skimming stones or playing tricks on someone then have a look at Things to do with Dad by Chris Stevens, call number J790.121 STE. This book is full of fun and exciting things that I’m sure your Dad got up to when he was a young boy. So grab those Dads and have a go at making your own golf course, send a message in a bottle, or have a finger football match. Lots of great ideas for having fun.

Nina is a thumb hurter. A hearer of voices. And it is her destiny to lead the people but first she must travel far from her village to the Dark Mountains to The Place of Dark where she will find the sword Brightsong and the armour Lightskin. On her journey she meets Alen, a thief and Brod the ogre who help her defeat the monsters living on Dragon Spine and save her from the assassins who come, with poisoned knives, to kill her before she reaches her goal. Exciting and action packed with a real twist at the end. 4 stars

Check the catalogue to see if Nina of the Dark by Ken Catran is in the library.

Don’t panic! The library is a good place for homework stuff. We can even help you from the comfort of your own home.

1) Any Questions? If you’re stuck at home and you want librarian help then AnyQuestions is the place for you! Get some great advice on how to find the answers to your homework questions. Also, if a librarian isn’t available there’s ManyAnswers, a database of , well, many answers from how to make candyfloss to what is global warming (and are the two connected??)?

2) Kids Cat. The Wellington City Libraries Kids’ Catalogue has a whole heap of subjects you can browse. Just hit the “Explore” button for topics like Languages, Geography, Human Body and much more.

3) MyGateway. The library has several ENORMOUS online databases that you can access to help you with your assignments and things. Go to our students page for general encyclopedias and tools. One really cool database we have is the Times Digital Archive. Here you can see actual Times newspapers from 19th Century Britain. For example (because librarians are such ghoulish people) I found an article from 1891 about Jack the Ripper. Once you’ve found a cool article that you want to use for your project you can print it out and it looks like an old-fashioned newspaper. Articles go back as far as 1785! You need to enter your library card number and last name to use these.

4) Homework and study hints. Our Homework Help page has tips on how to make your schoolwork easier.

Gordon Korman, who wrote Schooled among other things, has written a book called Zoobreak, about kids who decide to rescue zoo animals, breaking them out of one (bad) zoo and into another (better) one. Sounds like a nearly impossible task.

If you’ve been reading the Book of Time books by Guillaume Prevost you will be pleased to hear that you can now read the next story in the series, The Circle of Gold. Sam must go back in time to see his mother, but he’s not good at getting the time right, which sees him travelling to Ancient China, and also forward in time to 2025 (where he makes an alarming discovery).

Flight of the Phoenix by R.L. LaFevers is the first book in a new series called Nathaniel Fludd, beastologist. Sent to live with a distant relative who is a beastologist (a person who studies beasts, I suppose), Nathaniel must travel to Arabia to protect the last known hatching phoenix egg. Then his cousin goes missing, and Nathaniel must rescue him, and save the egg… a tall order!

See other new children’s fiction recent picks in My Library.

It all started with Atherton: the House of Power… then came the Rivers of Fire, and finally the third book in the  series about the planet Atherton, The Dark Planet by Patrick Carman. Find out what the conclusion will reveal about Edgar’s quest. It is like the other books in the series, full of gripping and out of this world adventure!

If you’re aged between 9 and 12 and you like talking about books with other people and having a bit of fun then BookSeekers is the thing for you.

BookSeekers clubs meet every month, talk about books, get the first word on hot new stuff to read, do activities and other book-related things.

It’s fun, it’s free, and it’s all about books. You can find out more about BookSeekers (when the meetings are, how to join) by checking out this information page, or you can ask about it the next time you go to the library.

See you soon!

Want to learn more about stuff? This month in the library we’ve got books about time and how people have measured it in history (The Time Book), words and the English language (The word snoop), the best way to make people laugh (Funny business), some more disgusting facts and trivia (Why does ear wax taste so gross?), and how does the internet work anyway (How did that get to my house? Internet)?

For more new non-fiction arrivals have a look at the My Library Children’s Non-Fiction page.