18th July Hot Dog Day

It is Hot Dog Day (the third Wednesday in July) and hotdogs are not something you usually associate with children's literature, but there are more books featuring them than you would think. I have written about the 'oldies' before ... Mo Willems' Pigeon finds one and Tom Watson's Stick Dog wants one. The three books pictured above are new, very funny and thus popular with the young audience in my library.

14th July Aaron Becker (1974)

Happy birthday Aaron Becker. He is the very clever author illustrator of the Journey Trilogy, three exquisite, wordless picture books that show a young girl's magical adventure through daytime, sunset and nighttime. Each book represents a part of the story, Journey, the beginning, Quest, the middle and Return, the ending. More recently he has published a new separate wordless picture story book, A Stone for Sascha.

14th July Shark Awareness Day

It is Shark Awareness Day and coming up it will be Shark Week (starting on 22nd July), so I thought I would highlight two biographies that have been very popular at school. They are both about Eugenie Clark ((May 4, 1922 – February 25, 2015) ,  a respected American ichthyologist who was known as the Shark Lady. She studied shark behaviour and was a pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes.

There's so many film clips, interviews and photos of Dr Clark on the web, but these two books show her as a person who really loved sharks and therefore had a great awareness of them.

Shark Lady  by Jess Keating and Marta Alvarez Miguens 

 Swimming With Sharks by Heather Lang and Jordi Solano

And another new book in the library that has proved popular is Lily Williams' If Sharks Disappeared.

13th July International Rock Day

I don't need to write at length about celebrating rocks. I have done so before, here and here, but since then some new picture books have appeared that are worth purchasing for the library.

My favourite, This Little Pebble by Anna Claybourne, is perfect for the keen rock collector in our Prep school who wants to find out more about where their rocks came from.

Bring Me a Rock  by Daniel Miyares makes you smile as you watch a group of insects attempt to cart off a pebble.

Mine!  by Jeff Mack cleverly tells a story with just one word.

A Stone for Sascha  by Aaron Becker, like his previous gems is a wordless book but with a profound message and somewhat sombre feel.

The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt and Adam Rex,  reveals the epic tale behind everyone's favourite playground game!

Dave's Rock by Frank Preston-Gannon, another funny story about Caveman Dave that features rocks.

 A Rock Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas gives a myriad of things that a rock can be.

And a new one I would like to see and read, A Chip off the Old Block by Jody Jensen Shaffer.