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# 5 Bringing it all together

In this final activity of the course, you’ll reflect on books which have been important to you.

## Activity 12 Sharing books

Allow about 30 minutes

Many people like to keep a record of books they’ve read and enjoyed, found helpful or intend to recommend to others.

In this activity you’re encouraged to think of an example and reflect on it, using what you’ve learned in this course.

You might like to share the results of this activity with people you know, and see if this inspires them to recommend a book to you in return.

1. Think of one children’s book that you’d like to recommend to others. Make a note of the title, author and date of publication.
2. Find some images of the book cover online, or take a photograph. Don’t forget to include the author and date of publication.
3. Write a sentence or two giving a brief explanation of why you chose this particular book. Perhaps it has personal memories for you, or maybe you feel it is innovative in some way. Did you feel that you were personally reflected in the book, or that it opened a door to another worldview for you? It could be important to a child you work with, or maybe you simply enjoyed reading it.
4. Once you’ve completed this activity, read the sample recommendations below, and see how they compare to yours.

### Discussion

Here are a couple of recommendations from course author Nicola Snarey:

> The first book I’d like to recommend is The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken, first published in 1962, because it was my favourite book as a child! It was also so much fun to read it as a bedtime story to my own children recently and I’d love for more people to discover it! As a child, I loved the extreme drama of the adventure; even the two protagonists are extremes – Bonnie is strong and improbably fearless, whereas Sylvia is almost comically timid and frail. As an adult, I can now see that the whole thing is a pastiche or even a parody of Victorian sensationalist fiction, and recognising that made me appreciate it from an entirely new angle!

> Another book I’d like to recommend is Loki, A Bad God’s Guide to Being Good, by Louie Stowell, first published in 2022. I read this to my children when they developed an interest in mythology, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it! In this story, Loki, the Norse god of mischief, is banished from Asgard to live as an English school boy, and must demonstrate to Odin that he can be good before he is allowed to return. The book is chock full of fun details taken from the Norse myths, and the doodles and cartoons are very funny. I was pleased that Loki has no fixed gender, and sometimes uses a female form, just like he does in the myths, but while this makes him more fun, it’s never played for laughs. I found the book refreshingly diverse considering it was aimed at the under 12s.

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OpenLearn - Approaching language, literature and childhood
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