26th September International Rabbit Day

International Rabbit Day is celebrated on the  fourth Saturday of September each year. This day promotes the protection and welfare of both domestic and wild rabbits. Rabbits are considered pests in Australia as they have done so much damage to indigenous fauna's habitats, but it is nice to see that they do have a day of their own that has nothing to do with Easter. There are some wonderful books worth sharing too because books like these do not have a rush on borrowing at Easter. Where the rabbit in a story is not a toy, it is often adventurous just like Peter Rabbit in Beatrix Potter's classic.

See 

• The Wonderful Habits of Rabbits  by Douglas Florian and Sonia Sanchez. This is one long poem that begins

 ' The habits of rabbits are many, not few,

 with plenty of things that they love to do!'

• The Rabbit Problem  by Emily Gravett. This beautiful book follows a pair of rabbits through the year as they cope with their ever expanding brood. It is also a good introduction to Fibonacci and his number sequence!

• All Because of Jackson by Dick King Smith. Jackson, a rabbit wants to see the world so he stows away on a ship hoping to have adventures. This is just the way rabbits came to be in Australia!

• Tom Crean's Rabbit  by  Meredith Hooper and Bert Kitchen.  This is a true story about a rabbit that went to Antarctica with the Scott expedition!

• The Great Rabbit Chase by Freya Blackwood. This is the story of a mother and daughter who chase their escaped rabbit through the streets of town. Mum is wrapped in towel! Kindergarten love this story.

• One Runaway Rabbit  by David Metzenthen and Mairead Murphy. This too is a chase, but this time a fox is chasing the rabbit.

• The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers. This time a rabbit is trying to escape from the 'big black rabbit'. Children love to be in 'on the secret' when you read books like this where the big black rabbit is in fact a shadow.

2nd February Hedgehog Day

Hedgehog Day interests me, even though I've never seen a hedgehog,  because they seem so endearing.  This makes them ideal characters in so many children's picture books. Think Beatrix Potter's Mrs Tiggywinkle,  Isaac in Rosie Wellesley's The Helpful Hedgehog series, Little Hedgehog in M. Christina Butler's series of picture books, Horace and Hattiepillar in Hedgehugs or Hedgehog in Jonathan Emmett's Mole and Friends series and Max in Hodgeheg,  the novel by Dick King-Smith.

When I first read these books to classes, I did not have any factual books about hedgehogs in the library and we do not have them in Australia so like me, most of my students had not seen one. It is much easier now to share facts with classes because of the internet and I have purchased some good expository texts, the most recent being from the exemplary Nature Storybook series. It is called Say Hi to Hedgehogs! and is written and illustrated by Jane McGuinness. If you are looking for books to display see here.

20th September Arthur Geisert (1941)

American Arthur Geisert, trained as a sculptor, but is now an illustrator and storyteller who has a fascination with etching and pigs. I too, love etchings and the detail that is possible with black lines. His books are often textless or have very minimal text so they rely on the reader to create  their own story. My favourite story of his, Ice is textless and features pigs. This community of pigs is suffering because it is so hot and they go in search of ice. It then becomes a tale of inventiveness, change and adventure. My favourite illustrations though are in the sequel to Ice, The Giant Seed,  where this time, the pigs need to get creative when their home is destroyed by a volcano. Luckily, beforehand they had buried a large mysterious seed. This seed features on the cover and I would dearly love to own a copy of that particular etching.  His books highlight themes such as ingenuity, problem-solving, creative thinking and coping with change. Great for circle time, group discussion and thinking routines. They just need to be published as big books!

Unlike Dick King-Smith, Geisert was not a pig farmer, but who would have thought you could make porcine creatures so endearing.

27th March Dick King-Smith (1922)

Dick King-Smith is a prolific British author who is probably best known for his novel Sheep Pig which became the movie Babe and the book seems to have been renamed this too. Dick King-Smith makes an ideal author study because:

• he has written so many books that it is easy to locate enough books for a whole class.

• the range of reading abilities his novels cover mean there will be a book for every kind of reader, from the one who needs lots of scaffolding right up to the reader who is both a fluent and independent reader.

• he has a wonderful way with words. The vocabulary and turn of phrase allows for plenty of discussion and research.

• his books are humorous.

• his books have common themes and can be grouped using a variety of criteria.

• there is a number of children's biographies written about him.

My favourite books to serialise are:

• The Hodgeheg

• Hairy Hezekiah

• Aristotle and

• Omnibombulator

but there are so many more. See a full list.

My daughter still often mentions the year she went to the Book Week dress-up parade as The Invisible Dog and how the school librarian wasn't amused. She obviously hadn't read the book!