Barbara Throws a Wobbler

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A really good book, with lovely illustrations that shows how stress can grow and become overwhelming. Barbara’s expressions are priceless; the wobbler isn’t something to be combatted so much as named and understood; the way her friends accept her is celebratory. Nadia Shireen enjoyed making homemade magazines and comics as a child, and during her time studying law at university and her subsequent career in journalism, she started to sketch again. Her debut book Good Little Wolf received a mention in the Bologna Ragazzi Opera Prima Award, and went on to win the UKLA Book Award. Nadia’s subsequent books have since been shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, The Sainsbury’s Book Award and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize. Draw some illustrations of the same character showing different emotions. How does their face change? How does their body language change? Nadia now writes and draws full time, and dedicates her spare moments to tweeting about pop music and championing diversity and tolerance, values that are powerfully depicted in all her books. In 2017, she collaborated with Book Trust to promote their Time To Read campaign, sending 700,000 copies of The Bumblebear to school children all across the UK. Nadia joined forces with Book Trust once more, as their official Writer and Illustrator In Residence for 2018. In addition, Nadia is an official friend of the Ministry of Stories, and supports the Penguin’s Write Now initiative for discovering under-represented voices. She lives in London with her son. Billy and the Beast was recently shortlisted for the inaugural Booktrust Story Time Prize.

Elle McNicholl is an important writer. Her events are both fun and powerful and she shares her experience of being autistic wisely and inspiringly. Her books are superb and should be in every home and school library. In Show Us Who You Are the main character is Cora, who is autistic. She gets involved in the dubious futuristic Pomegranate Institute, and is confronted by momentous ethical questions: – what is perfection? Are all humans valued equally? The passionate conclusion affirms the right of everyone to You could also retell the story from the point of view of one of Barbara’s friends. How did they feel when they saw that Barbara was upset? Sona’s family are expecting a new baby and her feelings are all mixed up. It helps to talk to a best friend, her toy Elephant. As Sona takes part in the naming ceremony, choosing one of her baby sister’s new names, things start to fall into place. A warm, gentle book which helps explore the universal experience of first-born children, with fascinating insights into life and cultural traditions in India. Like many little people, Barbara doesn't really know what a wobbler is, why it’s looming or how to control it. A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.Scientific research shows that empathy is learnable and that books are a powerful empathy-building tool. The world so badly needs more empathy, and non-profit EmpathyLab aims to raise an empathy-educated generation, to build a more caring and less divided world. teachers nominated from the 85 involved in the shortlistingwill now form the final judging panel and have the challenging task of reading all the shortlisted books in all categories. The winner’s announcement will take place at the UKLA International Conference in Birmingham on July 1 st Empathy for earth and all its creatures feels especially important right now. The judges chose Linda Newbery’s powerful non-fiction book to help build understanding and action – as she says “it’s not difficult to realise animals have feelings”. This change will allow us to provide our members with new features and capabilities. So things may change around

Rewrite the story (or part of it) in the form or a play script. Could you perform this to an audience? Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

Dave the caveman has a great cave... but could he find an even better one? This amusing picture book conveys the simple message that there's no place like home in a witty new way. Barbara’s wobbler grows and grows and grows, until it is the only thing that she can see or feel. Think of strategies that you can use to calm down when you are feeling upset. Yet more fun comes in the form of Mammoth, by Anna Kemp and Adam Beer (Simon & Schuster, 27 May), a fish-out-of-water tale about a woolly mammoth who, having overslept somewhat, finds himself in New York mistaking cars for beetles, skyscrapers for trees and some furry boots for his missing herd. Available in both Welsh and English this superb short novel is set in a dystopian world where The End came in 2018. The electricity went off and the ‘normal’ 21c world disappeared. 14 year old Dylan is surviving, isolated, with his mam above Nebo village in north-west Wales. His emotions are wonderfully, sparsely drawn and we really care about him and his tiny family. A great springboard for discussion of powerful emotions, and the connections between us that make life worth living, whatever.

Winner of the UKLA Award and shortlisted for the Oscar's Book Prize and the FCBG Children's Book Award, Barbara Throws A Wobbler is a brilliantly funny and sensitive way to understand and deal with tantrums. A wise and comical look at anxiety and how to banish it ... With funny pictures and a guide to different kinds of worries, this is soothing for all ages. The Sunday Times Nadia was always destined for a career in illustration—as a child, she would doodle on her exercise books, while as a student she would doodle on her law degree notes. Then, when working as a journalist in London for pop music bible Smash Hits, she would doodle all the time on anything. The good people at Smash Hits didn’t fire her for doodling furry animals - instead they let her leave early to go to evening classes in illustration. The books are a brilliant resource to use as part of Empathy Day on 9 June, and any time afterwards too. This year’s Empathy Day theme is empathy, our human superpower and to help everyone build that power there’s a special challenge with nine very practical, creative activities. You can do these at any time, and on 9 June watch an amazing array of authors and illustrators model the same activities, as part of Empathy Day Live!

Shortlisted for the Books for Younger Children category, Children's Book Awards 2022 | Shortlisted for the UKLA Book Award ages 3-6 The judging criteria call for the selection to be from a “wide and inclusive range” of publishers and for books which “recognise a broad range of perspectives, experiences and voices” and this range is certainly demonstrated in all four categories. It is notable that once again it is small publishers such as Andersen Press, Flying Eye, Knights Of, Guppy Books, Pushkin, Faber and Thames & Hudson who dominate the lists. There are two large illustrations of the park in the book. In one of them Barbara is sad and in the other she is happy. Can you create two pictures of the same location showing a character’s different emotions and how it affects what they are doing? The teachers we work with stress how important it is for children to be able to recognise and name their feelings. If you can’t understand and articulate your own emotions, it’s hard to share and understand someone else’s . Barbara Throws a Wobbler is a brilliant example of how books can help, as it explores the range of emotions involved in feeling angry. Barbara is furious, ready to explode and doesn’t really understand her feelings until she meets her “wobbler” and realises she can take charge of it.

Nadia Shireen enjoyed making homemade magazines and comics as a child. She studied law at university and then worked in magazine journalism; it was during this time that she started to draw again. After a lifetime of doodling in the sidelines, Nadia decided to pay some attention to drawing and in 2007 was accepted onto an MA course in children’s book illustration at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Her debut book, Good Little Wolf, received a mention in the Bologna Ragazzi Opera Prima Award and won the UKLA Book Award. Nadia has been shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. She lives in London. The Free Dictionary tells me that to throw a wobbler means "to suddenly become very upset or intensely angry and make a big display of it. Primarily heard in UK, Australia."Geoffrey's got the jitters! It started last night when he was thinking about school - a funny, wiggly feeling in his tummy that grew and grew. But when Geoffrey's tummy jitters started talking to him - that's when he knew they were out of control. Geoffrey had to do something... Barbara is very familiar. In fact, there is a ‘Barbara’ in my home right now, my nearly 6 year-old daughter. Empathy appears in the new Welsh curriculum 35 times, and EmpathyLab works closely with many schools in Wales. This year we introduced a Read for Empathy Wales collection with 17 books in both Welsh and English. A wonderful picture book called The Quilt is one of these. It the story of a family leaving their Welsh homeland for a better life in America and builds empathetic insight into the trauma of economic migration. They take their family quilt with them, and it reminds them that even in a strange land, they are connected by their love for each other, and the love helps them thrive. Why does the story end with a question? What does it make you think? Could you use this technique in your own stories?