19th August Potato Day

Potato day is celebrated on August 19th every year to appreciate this incredibly versatile and delicious veggie. The celebrations are done on a very large scale in the United Kingdom and America.

Of course I have written about Potato Day before, but eleven years ago Supertato books didn't exist and now they are the mainstay of any Prep library. There would be very few children under eight who do not know Supertato. And Potato Day at our school will morph into a big celebration of Supertato books.

"The Supertato books are hilarious and fun-filled adventure stories, packed with bright and bold illustrations. Children and adults alike adore the wacky Supertato characters. Kids love searching for the Evil Pea lurking in the supermarket aisles and the silly humour in the stories. Adults love the fact that children are introduced to new vegetables, not to mention the fact that the books are great fun to read aloud!"

In these books the caped potato superhero is fighting to save the world from his arch-villain -- the Evil Pea, so fighting and adventure in vegetable guise. 

The Supertato books are written and illustrated by Sue Hendra and her husband Paul Linnet and they have been so successful that there is now more than ten titles. (Suzanne Francis Hendra born 15 August 1973) is a British writer and illustrator of over seventy books for children. You can meet Sue Hendra and hear her read the first Supertato book here. You can meet both Sue and Paul and their book Supertato Bubbly Troubly here. They are very silly and entertaining and they read their Book Day title which we don't get here in Australia. I'd love the plush veggies they have to make a great display in the library. What a pity they are British. They would make the ideal author visit!

Add some  activities such as How to Draw Supertato, colouring in sheets and the myriad of ideas for finding a potato and making your own Supertato and you'll have plenty to celebrate Potato Day.

Parents often wonder where to go next when their child has read all the Supertato books and won't read anything else. I send them off to explore other Sue Hendra titles, the Runaway Pea series by Kjartan Poskitt and Alex Willmore and the Food Group  series by Jory John and Pete Oswald. Some of my Year 2 boys also like the graphic novels Super Potato series by Artur Laperla. We don't have the whole series and  students ask me to buy more. I'm mean. I make them wait till they are at the Junior School Library and they are in Year 3. The genre, the vocabulary and the content including Dr Malevolent make them more appealing to older students. I tried to find out more about Artur Laperla because I felt sure it was a pen name, given 'laperla' is a kind of potato. The internet tells me he is from Barcelona and has other series which are not about potatoes and they still have him as the author. So?

If you are short of potato books for a display or just want to be reminded or inspired look here for what you could have.

If you want a good source of child level information look here. It might be fun to make some lists of all the ways potatoes are served up, all the  adjectives that can go in front of potatoes, verbs you can use to describe what you are doing to potatoes...bake, slice, chip, grate, fry, mash...etc

And if you want to smile on Potato Day read Tulip and Doug by Emma Wood and Carla Martell.

Looking for a Book Week costume or something for an older child? My Life as a Potato by Ariane Costner could fit the bill.