A sample of the many amazing New Zealanders who have achieved fame in their lifetime. This anthology covers sporting greats such as Sir Colin Meads, Scott Dixon and Barbara Kendall; Artists, including Sir Peter Jackson, Rhys Darby and Margaret Mahy; Adventurers Sir Edmund Hillary and Jean Batten; Scientists Ingrid Visser and Sir William Pickering; and many more. This book has concise stories of their lives and accomplishments, with some very funny anecdotes. There are great illustrations by cartoonist Bruce Potter who draws outlandish caricatures for us to laugh at.
Got a tricky assignment? Can’t find the answer? Is it due in tomorrow?
Head along to AnyQuestions.co.nz between 1-6pm Monday to Friday to get live online help with your homework.
AnyQuestions.co.nz is an online chat room run by librarians like myself where you can ask that tricky homework question and learn where to find the answer on the web. It’s fun, safe and really helpful and you can even chat in te Reo.
You could also check out ManyAnswers to see if anyone has asked the same homework question before. ManyAnswers is where we list all the common questions we get at AnyQuestions.co.nz, so the answer to that problem might already be waiting for you!
Don’t forget- we also have a homework help page where you can find links to AnyQuestions.co.nz, Encyclopedia Britannica, and our Kids Catalogue (which has heaps of awesome websites listed).
Good luck!
In the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland, dragons are referred to as wurms, or lindwurms.
They have wings and two legs. Their bodies are 15 metres long, or more, and their two legs are not strong enough to support the entire weight of their bodies: so Scandinavian dragons drag their bodies along the ground, leaving a trail of slime and dead plants.
They have smooth, impenetrable hides, and soft, vulnerable underbellies. They have sharp talons as strong as iron.
They live in human burial mounds and abandoned buildings. They love to hoard treasure and can hibernate on top of a pile of treasure for many years.
Scandinavian dragons are intelligent and often capable of speech. They are also greedy and easily made angry. They breathe fire and inject venom with their fangs!
If you enjoyed this post and want to read more, you can find out more about dragons in The Dragon Companion: An Encyclopedia by Carole Wilkinson. This is an adult book, but it is okay for kids to read too. All the facts in this post were taken from this book.
Books written for kids about dragons that you might like to read are:
The Dragon of Trelian by Michelle Knudsen
Fangs ‘n’ Fire by Chris Mould
The Book of Dragons by E. Nesbit
The Fire Series by Chris D’Lacey
The Dragons of Wayward Crescent by Chris D’Lacey
How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell
Do you enjoy the Horrible History books? Are you short of time? Here is a new series of Horrible Histories in condensed comic book format. You can now gather all those essential, gory, historical, but humorous facts about Knights, Egypt and the Tudors super quick.
100 Most Awesome Things on the Planet is the title of this new book. It is divided into 2 sections – Awesome Natural Wonders and Awesome Human Creations. It’s not a huge book but has great photos and blocks of facts for each awesome thing. There is even an “awesome rating” for each entry. Some of the top rated awesomes are Grand Canyon, Monarch Migrations, Blue Whales, Solar Eclipse, Nanomachines, Blackbird(a plane), Spirit of Australia (a boat) and Bagger293. If you want to read more about these or see what the other 92 are, reserve a copy.
What can happen in a minute? I can’t think of an answer for that question until I came across this book, Every Minute on Earth. It is truly an astounding book with funny illustrations and even activities for you to do. Bet you didn’t notice that an average person blinks 15 times in a minute. Hard to be a zookeeper when ten adult elephants can produce 500 grams of poo! Yikes! Don’t hold that sneeze because it travels 2.7 kilometres per minute. Bless you! So read this book and be amazed at how much you can squeeze in a minute.
Two of Shakespeare’s friends, actors from the King’s Men, collected together 36 of Shakespeare’s plays and had them published in a leather-bound folio. The First Folio was printed in November 1623 and sold for 1 pound.
Throughout the centuries since Shakespeare’s death his plays have been regularly performed. John Garrick, who lived in the eighteenth century, started a “Shakespeare Jubilee” in Stratford-upon-Avon that is still held today.
Another Globe Theatre has been built on the same site as Shakespeare’s old one on the banks of the River Thames in London. It opened in 1997 and there is a summer season of Shakespeare’s plays held there every year. It also contains the world’s biggest permanent exhibition about Shakespeare.
The planet Uranus has 20 moons and 15 of them are named after characters from Shakespeare’s plays.
Everyone will have heard of a character or a line from Shakespeare. Hamlet is one of the most famous characters ever created. Perhaps you have seen a Shakespeare play or a film of his plays? In 2009, theatre groups across New Zealand performed as many of Shakespeare’s plays as possible throughout the year, to celebrate 400 years since the publication of his sonnets.
The playwright Ben Jonson wrote of Shakespeare that: “He was not of an age, but for all time.”
These facts about Shakespeare are from this book:
William Shakespeare and his dramatic acts by Andrew Donkin
If you want to know more about Shakespeare, then check out these books too:
What’s so special about Shakespeare? by Michael Rosen
Shakespeare: his work & his world by Michael Rosen
William Shakespeare: The Master Playwright by Haydn Middleton
William Shakespeare: the extraordinary life of the most successful writer of all time by Andrew Gurr
William Shakespeare by Peter Hicks
The world of Shakespeare by Mistress Anna Claybourne and Mistress Rebecca Treays
Shakespeare by Peter Chrisp
In 1609 Shakespeare’s theatre company, the King’s Men, acquired another theatre called Blackfriars Theatre. It only held 700 people (compared to The Globe’s 3000) but unlike The Globe it had a roof! Therefore the company could perform at The Globe in summer, and then move to Blackfriars Theatre in winter. The company also charged six times as much for each ticket so they earnt the same amount of money in winter as they did in summer!
Historians do not know exactly when Shakespeare retired. The nearest they can guess is between 1611 and 1613. The company hired another writer to replace Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and he and Shakespeare wrote three plays together: Henry VIII, Cardenio and Two Noble Kinsmen.
In January 1616 Shakespeare drew up his will, leaving his wife “the second best bed!” Shakespeare died on April 23rd 1616 . He was buried in the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Shakespeare wrote his own epitaph for his tombstone: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear to dig the dust enclosed here; Blest be the man that spares these stones and curst be he that moves my bones.”
The threat of a curse upon anyone who moves Shakespeare’s bones has worked. No one has ever shifted them.
I always get stuck when I try and multiply 11 with another two digit number. I can do the first nine multiples because you just write the same number twice. Like 2 x 11 = 22 all the way to 9 x 11=99. But multiplying it with a double digit number is another story until I came across this secret strategy that I’ll share with you. For example:
12 x 11 will be 1+2=3
Insert the 3 between the 1 and 2: the answer is 132!
Or 14 x 11 will 1+4=5
Insert 5 between 1 and 4 : answer is 154!
And if the two digits also add up to a two digit number, insert the second and add the first. For example:
75 x 11
7 + 5 =12
Insert the second digit as before between the 7 and 5: 725
Then add the first digit from 12 which is 1 to the 7: answer 825!
Try it: it’s awesome! If you’d like to know more shortcuts about anything check out Thirty days has September at the library now.
In the Middle Ages knights painted symbols on their shields, and crests on their helmets, so they could be identified in battle. These symbols became family coats of arms. Heraldry is the study of these coats of arms.
Often knights had dragons in their coats of arms as a symbol of power, strength and bravery. Different kinds of dragons were featured:
Amphisbaena: A dragon with two heads – one at the end of its tail.
Amphitere: A legless, winged dragon.
Basilisk: A dragon with the head of a cockerel.
Dragon: A heraldic dragon has four legs and an arrow-tipped tongue and tail.
Hydra: A dragon with seven heads.
Wyvern: A two-legged, winged dragon.
