22nd October Nut Day

On 22nd October it is Nut Day, a day to celebrate nuts and all they have to offer animals, including us, nutritionally. This is not easy to do in schools as so many students have nut allergies. Some students are allergic to peanuts only, Peanut Day is the 13th September, but there are lots of other nuts. How many can your students list? Read April Pulley Sayre's Let's Go Nuts! and make a list.

Looking through the library catalogue for books about 'nuts' I realised that if I exclude the peanut books and the peanut butter books then what I was left with are mainly about nuts and squirrels and the nuts are acorns.

I love oak trees and acorns. I spent many hours as a child collecting acorns and making acorn people and boats and I would have dearly loved to see a squirrel run down the branches of the oak trees, but I live in Australia so no squirrels. That doesn't mean though that there cannot be a 'nut' book display and a cuddly toy squirrel set amongst the books.



Start with the classic Chicken Licken, Chicken Little or Henny Penny, where an acorn falls on a chicken's head and he runs off to tell the king that the sky is falling. Silly, but good fun with all that poultry following him without questioning the initial premise. Then there is a lovely new book by Lou Peacock and Yasmeen Ismail simply called Nuts! which takes sharing and quarrelling to a new level.


If you still want others with squirrels:
• We Need More Nuts! and Please, No More Nuts! by Jonathan Fenske
• Aw, Nuts!  by Rob McClurkan
• The Nut Stayed Shut by Mike Henson
• The Nutty Nut Chase by Kathryn White and Vanessa Cabban
• Scruffle-Nut by Corinne Fenton and Owen Swan
• Nuts to You!  by Lois Ehlert
• Nuts to You  by Lynne Rae Perkins (illustrated novel)

Without squirrels:
• I Want that Nut! by Madeline Valentine ( mouse and a chipmunk)
• Oh, Nuts! by Tammi Sauer and Dan Krall (chipmunks)
• Nuts in Space by Elys Dolan (an elite crew of furry animals)
• a series by Eric Litwin (of Pete the Cat fame)and Scott Magoon
The Nuts: Bedtime at the Nut House (Hazel and Wally Nut and family)
The Nuts:Sing and Dance in Your Polka Dot Pants
The Nuts:Keep Rolling!

12th August World Elephant Day

On August 12 World Elephant Day asks us to help conserve and protect elephants from the numerous threats they face.



It is not hard to feel empathy for elephants. It is not hard to get very young children interested in elephants either. There are so many picture books and  short novels for young children that introduce them to some of the difficulties faced by elephants. Recently a group of students and I shared Queenie by Corinne Fenton and we had a long discussion about whether or not elephants should be used to 'ferry' people around zoos. The World's Greatest Elephant by Ralph Helfer is a good book to share to discuss whether elephants should be part of a circus. One Step at a Time by Jane Jolly and Faithful Elephants  by Yukio Tsuchiya allow children to see how elephants can be innocent bystanders in a war.

Two chapter books that my Year 2 and 3 readers enjoy, but are moved to talk about are Tua and the Elephant  by Randall Harris and Akimbo and the Elephants by Alexander McCall Smith.

There are so many wonderful books to introduce children to the marvels of elephants, both expository texts and faction, where they can learn about their life in the wild and what threatens their existence.

For more elephant picture books look here.