National Simultaneous Storytime coming to Narrogin from International Space Station

Narrogin is gearing up for a National Simultaneous Storytime of galactic proportions with activities, dress-ups and a live reading from the International Space Station.

At 11am on Wednesday next week, students from Saint Matthews Primary School, Narrogin PS and East Narrogin PS will pack out the Narrogin Town Hall to hear Give Me Some Space! by Philip Bunting at the same time as more than one million other children around Australia.

Give Me Some Space! follows astronaut-in-waiting, Una, as she sets out to discover extraterrestrial life armed with her wits, ski gloves, mum’s white ugg boots and a gold fish bowl for a helmet.

But the lighthearted, rollicking read also features a healthy dose of science with plenty of cosmic facts packed in to the story and set to feature on the day.

Students in Narrogin and around Australia will be recording and reporting their local temperatures to build a nationwide heat map.

The activity will complement an experiment conducted by astronauts on board the ISS who will be showing how small changes to the surface of balls can result in massive temperature fluctuations.

Library services manager at the RW (Bob) Farr Memorial Library in Narrogin, Kay Weaver, said having the ISS involved was “very exciting”.

“We’ll have people dress up as aliens and have a great time singing and some dancing and then the ISS will actually come online and read us the story,” she said.

Ms Weaver said Bunting’s book was chosen for several reasons.

“This is a lovely fiction story but it’s written about a very factual matter ... it’s quite difficult to write non-fiction books for kids,” she said.

“It’s a young children’s story and it talks about a little girl who’s always wanted to go to space, but it’s also full of interesting facts about space.”