Kym Lardner
Our school librarian Angela introduced me to Kym Lardner's books way back in my early days of teaching (nearly 30 years ago).
I loved the books... and then I saw a video of Kym telling stories to a bunch of kids at Dromkeen ... and fell in love ... after nearly making myself sick with laughter. His use of humour with kids, his passion, the glint in the eye, and most of all, the reaction of his audience won me over. He's also won over every class I've shown the stories too - and that would be ALL OF THEM! (As well as becoming family favourites with the nieces and nephews). To me, his books celebrate the most simple and most precious aspects of childhood - kindness, imagination, bravery and friendship.
Kym has audio stories as well. We use them for 'listen to reading' at daily 5 time and they are always the most popular audio stories and the worst problem we have is that the classroom erupts with regular peals of laughter from the kids with headphones on and it's hard for the rest of the class to concentrate - (a pretty great problem to have).
I'm a better teacher because of Kym Lardner, simply because I remember - and put into practise daily - the simple premise that genuine kindness, passion and laughter are priceless gifts when you're working with any bunch of kids.
I've never met the man himself. Angela got me a signed book of Arnold the Prickly Teddy, but it was 'souvenir-ed' by a little class member years ago. I've had to rebuy the books a few times over the years and audio cassettes and videos have evolved into CDs and DVDs. I've always wanted to see him live when he visits a school, but so far the librarians I've nagged, have booked him the year after I've left the school!! (It's a plot!!) One day...
Here's his site if anyone's got this far! http://www.kymlardner.com/index.php
Update: May 6th 2015. Yay! He was here, he performed for the kids and none of us will ever forget him!! Blogpost
Kym has audio stories as well. We use them for 'listen to reading' at daily 5 time and they are always the most popular audio stories and the worst problem we have is that the classroom erupts with regular peals of laughter from the kids with headphones on and it's hard for the rest of the class to concentrate - (a pretty great problem to have).
I'm a better teacher because of Kym Lardner, simply because I remember - and put into practise daily - the simple premise that genuine kindness, passion and laughter are priceless gifts when you're working with any bunch of kids.
I've never met the man himself. Angela got me a signed book of Arnold the Prickly Teddy, but it was 'souvenir-ed' by a little class member years ago. I've had to rebuy the books a few times over the years and audio cassettes and videos have evolved into CDs and DVDs. I've always wanted to see him live when he visits a school, but so far the librarians I've nagged, have booked him the year after I've left the school!! (It's a plot!!) One day...
Here's his site if anyone's got this far! http://www.kymlardner.com/index.php
Update: May 6th 2015. Yay! He was here, he performed for the kids and none of us will ever forget him!! Blogpost