It was thought until this rap that book raps were more suitable for students who were nine years or older. The Stellaluna Book Rap is the first rap to cater for much younger children. As well it is the first book rap to go international and have its own web page for teachers. Book raps provide a powerful motivation for students to communicate with each other and for teachers they are a wonderful literacy project.

WHY A BOOK RAP?

It intrigued me to think that book raps were only thought to be purposeful with children aged nine and over as I thought that younger children with some guidance could also participate in this type of communication. So as an early childhood teacher I wanted to see if book raps could be used successfully with children as young as five. As noone had ever attempted a junior rap I decided to be a book rap co-ordinator for such a rap.

While teaching my multi-age class at the small two teacher country school of Hillview in Queensland, I was fortunate to be selected to participate in the first Connect Teachers Course conducted by Education Queensland in 1996. As part of that course I was to conduct a computer project, which is another reason why I chose to be the coordinator of a book rap.

In October last year with the help of my friend and visiting librarian, Libby Daly, I chose the book Stellaluna by Janell Cannon for the book rap because of its universal appeal to children and people of all ages.

WHAT IS A BOOK RAP?

A book rap is a book discussion conducted via email under the guidance of a coordinator. Groups of students or individuals can discuss the scheduled books or nominate a book of their own choice. Guests for the book rap can sometimes involve authors, illustrators and other experts relating to the content of the book.

This discussion takes place via a list set up by the book rap co-ordinator, Lindy McKeown, for that particular book which each school or group has to join. The co-ordinator posts a rap point approximately one per week to which the students respond to and then they respond to others' responses. Each book rap usually has two or three rap points and a rap rap wrap up which is of a sharing nature.

WHY RAP?

Book raps aim to encourage reading for pleasure and to promote discussion with other children about books. It also aims to promote Australian children's literature via the Internet, although international authors are not excluded.

Advantages

1. The structure of a book rap encourages everyone to participate because all responses are accepted. There is no censoring by list managers, although there may be some guidance at the school level.

2. Shared reading experiences allow students to respond to others' thoughts and feelings.

3. Discussing the book with their peers gives the students more security and enables them to consider the differing views of others outside their class, in other schools and other countries and to revise their opinions if necessary.

4. The speed of email allows students to maintain their interest.

5. Students respond to the book rap language and enjoy using it.

6. It gives a real purpose for reading and writing which can involve sharing letters and modelling letter writing and joint composition.

7. As more authors, illustrators and other experts come on line there is a greater opportunity for students to discuss their reading experiences and understand the work of the author and illustrator.

8. Students are no longer isolated as students can join regardless of where they live and the use and speed of email makes everyone seem close.

THE STELLALUNA BOOK RAP

The book Stellaluna is a picture book written and illustrated by Janell Cannon. It tells the story of a young fruit bat who is separated from her mother and raised by a family of birds. She has to abide by bird rules and happily grows and learns to fly despite her differences.She is reunited with her mother yet stays in touch with her bird siblings.

The book's universality, its appeal to young children and its popularity around the world made Stellaluna an excellent choice for the first international book rap. Initially when this book was selected, I thought that it was set in Australia. Janell Cannon likens the book to Òa mirror, so that anyone who looks into it will see their own story their own way.

Stellaluna has also been made into a living book by Broderbrund. This gives an extra dimension to the story as everything seems to come to life. The conversations of Stellaluna, the baby birds, mama bat and the other bats make all the characters appear more real. The antics of the birds and Stellaluna are seen as quite comical. The different sections on the CD, Lets Read, Lets Play and Bat Quiz make it even more interactive.

THE AUTHOR

Janell Cannon is a self-taught artist and writer from southern California in the United States, who has always admired animals, especially creatures that have been misunderstood or neglected, especially bats, spiders, komodo dragons and snakes. The lack of books available on bats made Janell Cannon write her own story about bats.

Stellaluna was created in 1994, hoping that it would transform young people's fear of bats into informed affection. She points out in the book that fruit bats benefit our environment as they pollinate plants whil foraging for nectar and distribute through their droppings, seeds from fruit eaten whole. Also she wanted to touch readers with a story about a friendship shared by two different kinds of creatures, a bat and three baby birds.

PREPARATION

After contacting our book rap co-ordinator I agreed to go 'exotic' with the Stellaluna Book Rap, which could include creating a page on the web for teacher resources, involving the author, putting up actual teacher and student made resources on the web and opening the book rap to countries all over the world rather than just Australia.

In November, the initial brainstorming session with Lindy McKeown, Libby Daly, Jenny Stubbs, Venessa Lean and myself was held to plan the rap with an emphasis on resources, possible rap points and setting a time for the rap. Over the next few months, I was impressed and exhilarated with the help that I received through email.

When I wrote to the Australian publishers Koala Books to inform them about the upcoming book rap on Stellaluna they told me to contact the American Publishers Harcourt Brace. Before I could actually do this by mail, I had emailed the Kidsphere list informing everyone of the upcoming book rap in the new year and asking about resources for Stellaluna and bats, and the Harcourt Brace Children's Publicist Sarah Shealy contacted me by email offering me assistance.

Sarah sent me their Creative Curriculum Connections for Stellaluna and gave us permission to put this on our web page for Stellaluna Bat Resources for Teachers. Sarah also set up a special email address for me to correspond to Janell Cannon. I found Janell to be very interested and excited about the book rap as nothing like this had ever been done before. Janell is also very caring about the plight of bats. While Janell was willing to participate she was not willing to be involved directly in answering individual letters as her schedule is very hectic. She wrote a special introduction to the book rap, which I posted to the list, telling the children why and how long it took to write the book and specific details on how she studied and painted the fruit bats.

Using the address from the Internet for the Bat Conservation International I was able to make contact with Angela England, their Educational Resources Co-ordinator who besides sending me some good resources about bats also suggested that I could use their email list called bat-line to ask for assistance from the bat experts to help with questions children might find difficult answering by joining the Stellaluna special list called bat-info.

More meetings were held to decide on rap points to be used for discussion by students and to plan a web site with links from the Stellaluna Book Rap page at (for the Stellaluna Book Rap 1999)

http://rite.ed.qut.edu.au/oz-teachernet/projects/book-rap/stella.htm

Book raps in the past have not had web sites attached to them, but it was felt that there was so much support material available that a web site was the best way to share the information. It was also decided that the rap would be of interest to a greater student audience than was initially planned and so the Stellaluna Book Rap was divided into junior and senior lists so that each age group could discuss their rap points at their own level. A list was also created for teachers so that they could ask questions or share what they were doing with their class.

After using a number of search engines to find web sites on bats on the Internet, library resources to find relevant books and using material sent to us by Harcourt Brace, the American Publishers, and Bat Conservational International and by using HTML editors with the valuable assistance of Libby Daly and Jenny Stubbs these comprehensive resources for teachers were published on the Hillview State School page on the World Wide Web at

http://www.schools.ash.org.au/schools/hillview/currstell.htm

During this process of planning I also advertised the Stellaluna Book Rap on all the major lists to notify potential participants of the rap. Teachers could also join from the junior or senior list on the book rap site on Oz Teachers on the Internet at http://www.owl.qut.edu.au/common-cgi-bin/oz-students/listsavail.html Although the rap didn't start until mid April teachers needed to be aware so they could plan to integrate it into their program. Detailed information of how to join and rap was mailed to the lists.

THE RAP

For students the introduction of the rap lingo gives them many new words and they usually enjoy using them.

RAP LINGO

1. Book rap - An online discussion about a book.

2. Rap point - A topic, issue or event from the book to discuss.

3. Rap sheet - A web site about the book.

4. Rappers - The people involved in a book rap.

5. Rap Rep - The person typing the responses.

6. Rap Map - A map of the world with the other rappersÕ locations marked on it.

7. Rap Rules - Guidelines for a book rap discussion or message.

8. Rap Rap Wrap Up - Final message of a book rap.

Procedure for taking part in a Book Rap

1. Join the email list.

2. Introduce your group and the location of your school.

3. Check the mail and mark the location of other rappers on the Rap Map.

4. Read the book.

5. Collect the first rap point and prepare a response. Mail your response to the list.

6. Check the mail daily and read other Rappers responses.

7. Respond to other Rappers via the list.

8. For each new rap point follow the same steps.( 2,3 or 4 depending on the rap)

9. The Rap Rap Wrap up is the finale and is usually something that is shared.

Many schools subscribed to either the stellaluna-senior or stellaluna-junior and some to both, with the senior one having about 12 schools and the junior having about 20 schools. Most of these were different classes with their teacher but some were groups working with their school librarian. There was also a list for the bat experts called bat -info and a teachers list called stellaluna-teachers which had to be subscribed to. I was very much aware that for most this was their very first book rap so I tried to make things as clear as possible so that there was no confusion. However I don't think every group joined the bat-info list where the experts answered the childrens' questions about bats.

So in early April groups started to introduce themselves and everyone busily started to locate the different groups on the rap map.What a crowded rap map from Sunset School in Mt. Isa to Elmcrest Elementary in Boise in the USA. There were representatives from some states in Australia but groups were mainly from Queensland with several groups in both lists from the United States and one from Canada in the senior list. Even though this was advertised on the book rap site on Oz teachers I found it very hard to advertise the bookrap in other countries.

As a special introduction I posted Jannel Cannon's letter welcoming everyone to the book rap. My class enjoyed hearing about why she had written the book and how she went about writing it and painting the illustrations. Rap point one, which asked groups to describe the bats that lived in their neighbourhood and then ask rappers questions about their bats and send any questions not able to be answered to the bat-info list for the bat experts to answer, was posted on 21 April. Discussion flowed.I had to ask a what if question to get the discussion started with the bat experts as the week was running out.

I endeavoured to be a good role model for the junior list and to also ensure that my class enjoyed it and that we achieved the goals that I had set for this, not just for me to learn how to be a co-ordinator, namely to learn how to use email, write messages, discuss points and to also practise their literacy skills by responding to other rappers' letters. As my class is an early childhood class I started off with modelling the process. We read the rap point, then discussed it and together we composed the reply with me doing the writing on the blackboard. I used an aide to help the children collect the mail and print it. After discussion I then pasted the mail into a scrapbook used as a record and for the children to read. In the beginning the children sometimes helped to type up letters or I got a rap rep to type them.Later they typed their own replies. I must mention that the only computer we had with internet access was my laptop from my connect teacher course which we linked to the internet through the fax line.

During the next month I posted a rap point every week. I found it frustrating that there were so many public holidays because responding to the rap point and then to other rappers really needs a week. The children in my class were always excited when there was a new rap point and they liked reading other responses and comparing them to ours. As we progressed the children wrote small group and individual responses where they composed their replies.It was very exciting, for some members got an individual response.

One school, Sunset School made a web page for their response which was marvellous.I had started off with great ambitions to do the same for my school but there wasn't enough time with other commitments such as Year 2 Validation. I tried as much as I could to get teachers to use the teachers list but I felt it wasn't very successful as there wasn't much discussion.

When the rap rap wrap up came we were sad but for many classes I think it may have been too long or the end of semester priorities were greater as was evident in the small amount of discussion on both lists. I sent thank you letters off to the author, Janell Cannon and others who had helped and also to the lists and the bat experts who had answered childrens' questions about bats.

SUMMARY

As the rap finished I received many letters telling me how much their class had enjoyed and learnt from the rap and thanking me for co-ordinating it. I am now sure that book raps can be successfully used with children as young as five. Junior Book Raps will be another early childhood internet project just as successful as travel buddies. That is they will improve communication and literacy skills and provide a powerful motivation to share ideas with other children over the world using the internet.