10th October World Porridge Day

World Porridge Day celebrates that wonderful Scottish breakfast...porridge or oatmeal. Porridge appears in so many children's stories and picture books, probably as it is the epitome of warmth, family and comfort. Two of the best known porridge stories are traditional tales that appear in a large number of picture book versions - Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Magic Porridge Pot.  Every child has read a version of these, even if it was simplified to become a 'reader'.
There are other fun titles though which feature porridge so it will be easy to celebrate by cooking and  eating porridge while reading a book!

1st October International Coffee Day

Finally a day that is hard to celebrate using children's literature...International Coffee Day. I found it difficult to find any picture books featuring coffee, probably because it is not something associated with children. There's plenty of books that feature tea though, so why not coffee?

The Biography of Coffee outlines the journey of the coffee bean to being made into coffee ready to drink, so it fits in well with the aims of this year's International Coffee Day...




International Coffee Organization has chosen a very special theme for this year’s celebrations: ‘Women in Coffee’. Women play as important a role in the whole of the coffee chain as men, from planting the seeds to processing to trading to brewing… and drinking it.

So it is very fitting that this book has a woman on the cover! Go have a cup of coffee and think about the women who were involved in its production and perhaps you can think of how coffee could feature in a picture story book.