13th June Pigeon Appreciation Day

President Woodrow Wilson created National Pigeon Appreciation Day to honour the 150,000 or more pigeons that served the USA in WWI and WWII as messengers and spies. President Wilson chose June 13th since this was the day pigeon war hero, Cher Ami, died.

Pigeons are talked about a lot at my school because they are in the playground and the children have named them. Despite not being enamoured of pigeons, I smile because they are named after pigeons in books, Pete, Gary and Dave.

I have written about this day before here and there is a long list of available pigeon books on Pinterest here.

It surprises me just how many picture books and beginning chapter books there are besides the three well known series, Mo Willems Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus series, Andrew McDonald's Real Pigeons  series and Swapna Haddow's  Dave Pigeon  series.

There're two new series of graphic novels that also features pigeons. Look for Pigeon Private Detectives  by Christee Curran-Bauer and Pluto Rocket  by Paul Gilligan.

Tomorrow when I go into school we will put together a pigeon book display so that the students can appreciate the playground pigeons while reading all about their antics.

If you want to read more about Cher Ami look for these books: