6th February Lame Duck Day

I was reading today and happened to notice that it was Lame Duck Day and that made me think that I hadn't written about ducks or Duck Day on this blog. Of course being a Lame Duck has very little to do with ducks, but given how many picture books feature ducks I got to thinking about them. Well there's Rubber Ducky Day ( January, 13th), Donald Duck Day (June, 9th) and even Dead Duck Day (June, 5th) but there does not appear to be World Duck Day or International Duck Day. What a shame. There are so many endearing ducks in picture books, starting with my all time favourite Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.

The children I teach are aged between four and eight so their introduction to 'ducks' in picture books is usually a version of Five Little Ducks,  but very quickly they move to the series about ducks that we have in boxes in the library. There is
• Daisy Duck by Jane Simmons
• Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
• Baby Duck  by Amy Hest and Jill Barton
• Duck in a Truck  by Jez Alborough
• Sarah and Duck by Sarah Gomes Harris
• the madcap duck in What is Chasing Duck? in the Giggle Gang by Jan Thomas
• the zany Katy Duck by Alyssa Satin Capucilli and Henry Cole
• Duck Duck Dinosaur  by Kallie George and Oriol Vidal
• Duck Duck Porcupine by Salina Yoon.

Of course there's other ducks to fall in love with such as
• Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell and Helen Oxenbury
• Just Ducks  by Nicola Davies and Salvatore Rubbino
• Alexander in Alexander's Outing by Pamela Allen
• Ben and Duck by Sara Acton
• The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese, and the newer
• Duck!  by Meg McKinlay and Nathaniel Ekstrom
• I'm a Duck  by Eve Bunting and Will Hillenbrand
and if you are looking for a serial for this age group there's always Meg McKinlay and Leila Rudge's
• Duck For a Day  and Definitely No Ducks
And if this isn't enough duck books, look here.

2nd February Sled Dog Day

According to this website sled dogs have been in existence for over 3000 years. If so, they do need a day off to celebrate! On the news at the moment we are hearing about just how much snow some places in the northern hemisphere are experiencing, but the only way most Australian children will experience this sort of snow and the role dogs can play in it is to read about it. Last year I had bought a wonderful husky puppet and put it on display with two books about Akiak and Balto, and then I was being asked lots of questions by a group of my Year 2  and they wanted even more books. When I looked I was surprised how many books there were about the Iditarod race and individual sled dogs who had done very heroic deeds.