Barbara Throws a Wobbler

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A perfect empathy-building book, with a joyful ending which brings a lump to the throat. A totally silent little boy is nurtured by empathetic teacher Miss Flotsam who builds his confidence to realise his voice is beautiful, until he finally uses it, very movingly. Every child deserves the chance to have an empathetic adult in their lives, and Miss Flotsam shows how powerfully transformative this can be. Design a game in which a person has to catch a ‘wobbler’ and un-make it, like Barbara does in the story. 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

Why does the story end with a question? What does it make you think? Could you use this technique in your own stories? Thankfully Nadia Shireen isn’t giving us a ‘fix’ for wobblers, she is giving children a way to manage them when they appear - poor Barbara looks like she has a few more lurking wobblers to deal with going forward, just like every little Barbara out there. But thanks to Nadia Shireen, who has hilariously normalised a wobbler, we can now all help the ‘Barbara’s’ in our lives and classes SQUISH theirs and encourage a healthy understanding of emotions, feelings and acceptance. Yet, rather than just Barbara being cross, an actual red, jelly-like cloud emerges above Barbara’s head and stays there, forbidding any hugs or friendly attempts at talking. The Wobbler threatens to take over Barbara altogether, until she talks to it and realises she’s in control after all. With a little bit of effort, can Barbara make the Wobbler disappear?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”. 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? In the 3-6 age category we have this year’s one and only author to have been a previous winner. Nadia Shireen won with her debut picturebook, Good Little Wolfin 2013 and now appears again with Barbara Throws a Wobbler, an empathetic tale which helps us to reflect on the universal impact of a bad day. Anna Milbourne’s I’m (Almost) Always Kindfollows immediately upon her 2021shortlisting success with I am not (very) afraid of the Darkand similarly successfully relays an important message to young readers. In this case about the necessity to see things from another’s perspective which is a strong theme across this list. In Tom Percival’s haunting tale, The Invisible,he sensitively confronts the issue of being excluded by poverty, while James Catchpole and Karen George’s What Happened to You?gives us the positive viewpoint of a child with a missing limb but no shortage of imagination. Alex Latimer and David Litchfield’s Pip and Eggis a gentlestory of friendship, nature and the circle of life and the final book in this group is the inspiring Freedom we Singby Amyra and Molly Mendoza, published by Flying Eye, which poetically explores what freedom really means and looks like. Picture books that can bring tears to the eyes even after repeated reads are few and far between. John Burningham mastered the skill with Granpa, as did Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb with The Paper Dolls. But it’s particularly impressive that debut author Lauren Ace and illustrator Jenny Løvlie achieved the feat while fresh to the game with The Girls, about four schoolgirls whose friendship and lives blossom under an old apple tree. The tale won the illustrated book category of the 2019 Waterstones children’s book prize, and the pair have since received messages from readers worldwide thanking them for reflecting their own friendships and inspiring the next generation.

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. 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 Research some phrases / idioms to describe emotions (e.g. on top of the world, hopping mad, feeling blue). 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?

A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.