1st October Hair Day

Today is a day to express your love for your hair. This day celebrates the beauty, diversity and importance of hair. It's a time to recognise how it can be an expression of our personal style, unique personality and even cultural heritage.

Since ancient times women have been obsessed with their hair. Cleopatra washed her hair in donkey's milk!

The young girls I teach love Abie Longstaff's The Fairytale Hairdresser series of books. They are always on loan! I also hear them playing hairdressers in the library!

Besides this series there are many other titles in the library that celebrate hair...

29th September World Heart Day

Every year, The World Heart Federation asks monuments around the world to light up red on 29 September to raise awareness of cardiovascular disease, the world’s number one killer.

• All About The Heart  by Remi Kowalski and Tonia Composto

• Words and Your Heart  by Kate Jane Neal

Picture books about the heart come in two types...one, about the heart as a organ of the body and the tasks it performs to keep us alive and two, about how hearts make us feel emotionally. This day was instigated to celebrate the first heart idea as well-operating hearts are extremely important to our health. But, in a school we also talk about hearts and feelings being an important part of our and others' wellbeing. The two books above demonstrate this well.

Others for the pumping heart:

 

Books about the feelings heart:

28th September International Rabbit Day

Every year on the fourth Saturday of September, International Rabbit Day promotes the protection and care of domestic and wild rabbits. It is nice that rabbits have a day to themselves without it having anything to do with Easter or the Easter Bunny.

This day allows books about rabbits, but not about Easter, to shine in their own right!

See these:

• The Wonderful Habits of Rabbits by Douglas Florian

• The Rabbit Problem by Emily Gravett

• Too Many Rabbits  by Davide Cali

• Those Pesky Rabbits by Ciara Flood

• Rabbits Build Burrows  by Elizabeth Raum

• Bunnies on the Bus by Philip Ardagh

• The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers

• The Great Rabbit Chase  by Freya Blackwood

• The Runaway Rabbit by David Metzenthen

• Mini Rabbit Must Help by John Bond

• The Rabbit, the Dark and the Biscuit Tin  by Nicola O'Byrne

• Use Your Imagination  by Nicola O'Byrne

And look out for these popular book series:

• Rabbit and Bear by Julian Gough

• Fox & Rabbit  by Beth Ferry

• Lettice the Dancing Rabbit by Mandy Stanley

• Ollie and Bea  by Renee Treml

And of course the library has books about caring for your pet rabbit, the rabbit life-cycle and all the different types of rabbits!

  

20th September Tradies Day

Every year, on the third Friday of September (This year it’s on the 20th), we celebrate National Tradies Day here in Australia. Tradies is a shortened form of the word tradesmen. And it is good to see that now it isn't only men, but women too, so tradies is a much more inclusive word. 

So, can we celebrate tradies with picture books? Of course we can.

My great nephew constantly wants to be like his father, a builder, even down to dressing like him. On Dress Up Day for Book Week at his preschool he dressed in high vis and boots, a hard hat and went off to school grasping his favourite book, Tiny Tradies  by Tami Sussman and Tom Jellett which I gave him as a birthday present. I got photos which really made me smile.

It is quite easy to find books about builders, but plumbers, electricians, mechanics, tilers, plasterers and others are harder to find.

My nephew and the preschoolers I teach also enjoy any of the books from Sally Sutton 

and Sherri Duskey Rinker

Look for books like these as well.

and of course also explore the nonfiction section of your library.