Bristlebird Books Educational Handbook
by
Margaret Sheehan & Rhonda Bunbury
with
Pauline Reilly & Kayelene Traynor

Introduction
Many readers will already be familiar with the series of books written by Pauline Reilly that were published from 1985 to 1999 by Kangaroo Press (Simon & Schuster). In 2000, Bristlebird Books Australia continued publishing the series, now entitled The Collection of Australian Animals. The books are used extensively in primary schools and frequently bought as gifts for children as well as for adults, particularly for those who have an interest in Australian animals and their life in the natural environment.

The books are aimed at readers aged eight years of age yet are based on carefully researched details of life cycles and habitat. The author is in direct contact with researchers, their papers and theses, so as to be sure to have the details correct. From this scientific data, she creates characters that have warmth and vitality. They draw readers into the daily struggles to survive, find a mate, produce and care for a family. Represented is a wide spectrum of the Australian animal kingdom, from symbolic birds to sea animals, furry animals to reptiles and, of course, the enigmatic platypus and echidna. Different social structures exist, such as conventional couples, single male or female parents, or extended families involved in breeding, all within a variety of environments. Often it is human intervention, which creates the complication or further drama within the narrative.

Preceded by Will Rolland and Gayle Russell, Kayelene Traynor became the illustrator in 2000. She re-creates the story in visual form and represents the habitat where the animals live. She too strives for accuracy, while being interested in conveying the mood and action through full-page watercolour scenes, supplemented by occasional soft, black and white line drawings on the printed pages.

A Note for Teachers
Bristlebird Books provide rich resources for the classroom. The handbook recognises this, and aims to provide classroom teachers with a range of activities that are ‘ready to go’. A busy classroom teacher simply has to choose a story, give it to the children to read – or read it to them – select an appropriate activity and photocopy the ‘Activity Sheets’ for children to work on directly. Some activities are best worked on by individuals; others lend themselves to working in small groups. Comprehension questions test the children’s concentration as they read. Some simply require literal responses; others test the children’s capacity to infer meaning. The life cycle, illustrations and even the endnotes become the focus for the questions and the puzzles. Answers are provided in the handbook, while creative activities extend and stimulate.

If library resources permit, several different stories can be read and worked on simultaneously by different groups in the classroom as each book has a range of activities on which to focus. There are activities for different purposes and teachers choose from two broad areas of the curriculum:

1. Science: life cycle of Australian native animals, study of habitat and the wider environment, observation of animal behaviour, family attributes of different animals etc.
2. English language: animal life cycle in a narrative context, word meanings, matching phrases about animal behaviour, cloze exercises, crossword puzzles about indigenous animals etc

The handbook actively avoids matching activities to specific curriculum documents. The reason for this is that it is to function across state and international borders. Arranging the activities within two broad disciplines, enables teachers themselves, to match the activities to specific curriculum documents.

Sequence of events
Over the period 1985-2008 Pauline Reilly has written a range of titles and, at the time of publishing Bristlebird Books Educational Handbook, there are fourteen titles of the Pauline Reilly & Kayelene Traynor books in print. Many of the out-of-print earlier titles are well represented in school and public libraries. Books in print may be sourced from <www.bristlebirdbooks.com.au>. So as to be sure to produce activities that are valued by practising classroom teachers, the handbook will provide activities for clusters of titles. This allows for teachers’ feedback as the series progresses. Bristlebird Books Educational Handbook includes activities for the following titles:

Eudyptula the Little Penguin
Aquila the Eagle
Tachy the Echidna
Phasco the Koala
Ornithorhynchus the Platypus
Dacelo the Laughing Kookaburra
Vomba the Wombat
Drom the Emu
Sarco the Tasmanian Devil
Hippocampus the Seahorse
Limno the Pobblebonk Frog
Crocodylus the Freshwater Crocodile
Macrotis the Easter Bilby
Arcto the Seal
Varanus the Gardening Goanna.

Collaboration
The people who are collaborating on the writing of Bristlebird Books Educational Handbook, include Margaret Sheehan, a practising classroom teacher. She has worked with children with special disabilities and has a particular interest in early childhood learning. Rhonda Bunbury, now retired, was an academic at Deakin University whose teaching and research included Children’s Literature and Language Education. Pauline Reilly OAM ornithologist, is author or co-author of more than fifty books, largely devoted to natural history. Kayelene Traynor, is a skilled artist who usually paints with oils and who has turned to water colours as well as pen and ink and soft pencil, in order to interpret the natural themes of the Reilly narratives. Tom Danby, former teacher and distributor of INT BOOKS, advises on the overall project.

Further pages to cover all species are being prepared. Notification will appear on this web page

Sample Activity from Bristlebird Books Educational Handbook

Match the description with the animal.