9th February World Pizza Day

February 9th has been the official World Pizza Day since 2000 and people all around the globe celebrate with this cheesy dish!

When my children were small going out for pizza was a treat. Sometimes we made them at home, but pizzas were associated with birthday parties. Now the children I teach are very quick to tell me pizza is their favourite food and they could eat it every night!  

Nevertheless if you want to read about pizza parties there are several books to choose from: 

Then these four are fun too!

Still hungry? Explore the history of pizza...

or make a young beginning reader love you with a gift of a Pizza and Taco book or two!

20th July International Moon Day

International Moon Day marks the anniversary of the first landing by humans on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 lunar mission. This is an important event to commemorate, but I have done a blog entry on it before. I want to look at how else the moon appears in children's picture books. It is often personified and the reader gets to hear how it feels. It is also often associated with magic and night mischief.

Today I want to look at three moon stories that I love sharing with students where the moon has a very different role from being a place that astronauts visit. Rather it is something awe-inspiring, magical and even endearing.

1. Happy Birthday, Moon  by Frank Asch. Students love the fact that they have knowledge that the main character, Moonbear does not have. Some even shout out while I am reading to tell you that Moonbear doesn't understand how the moon works. Then when it comes to the echoing parts they have even more to say. It is a good example of the reader having the power, not the author or the main character.

2. Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle. It is Monica's wish to have the moon play with her and her papa tries to get it for her, not an easy task, but one a father tries in order to please his daughter. The paper engineering works with the suspense of the story and keeps the reader invested in the outcome. This book gets tatty in a library very quickly because of the pages that open outward and upward, but we replace it regularly so it can be loved all over again.

3. Ace Dragon Ltd by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake. When I first read this book to a class, I had a small reader-size book which was mainly black and white, but nevertheless the story worked a treat. Years later  it was republished in a bigger format and with more colour. This made it even easier to maintain the students interest in the sword-wielding John and a dragon named Ace when they venture off into space. They land on the moon and have quite a quandary to solve.

Four well loved author illustrators, Frank Asch, Eric Carle, Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, all with classic stories that have really gone the distance with young children!

Some other picture books where the moon holds magic for a young protagonist:

• Imani's Moon  by JaNay Brown-Wood and Hazel Mitchell

• Kiwi Moon  by Gavin Bishop

• The Moonkeeper  by Zosienka   (Zofia "Zosienka" Gibbs)

• Do You Speak English Moon?  by Francesca Simon and Ben Court

And if you do want to commemorate the moon landing, but from a slightly different viewpoint look for:

• A Kite for Moon by Jane Yolen, Heidi E. Y. Stemple and Matt Phelan

A young boy, seeing that Moon is lonely, sends up a kite to cheer her up, then after growing up and learning many things, he becomes the first human to visit her. Dedicated to Neil Armstrong and written in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the first U.S. moon landing.

• I Am the Moon by Nanae Aoyama and Satoe Tone 

The Moon finds that she is lonely and in need of a friend. She leaves her place in space and travels to Earth, in search of an astronaut who visited her many years ago.

1st June World Milk Day

World Milk Day is an international day established by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to recognise the importance of milk as a global food. 

During COVID19 at school we are making students take books from a display, so as to avoid too much touching or rummaging on shelves, so we are making sure there is plenty on display.  There would be five or six topics displayed at a time so when the students come tomorrow they will be greeted with a book display for World Milk Day. We were surprised just how much we had, about five books with 'milk' in the title, but when we extended it to cheese and cows there was an abundance.

Here's some milk titles:
• Don't Spill the Milk  by Stephen Davies
• Milk and Cookies by Frank Asch
• Oliver's Milkshake by Vivian French
• Tea With Milk  by Allen Say
• Milk Goes to School  by Terry Border

and a chapter book

• Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman


and some nonfiction books worth looking for
• Journey of a Glass of Milk by John Malam
• From Milk to Ice-Cream  by Bridget Heos
• Eat Smart Dairy by Vic Parker
• Dairy  by Honor Head
• From Farm to Table: Dairy by Woody Brambles 


Lots of fun 'cheese' picture books:
• The Great Cheese Robbery by Tim Warnes
•  The World-Famous Cheese Shop Break-In by Sean Taylor and Hannah Shaw
• I Don't Like Cheese  by Hannah Chandler
• Dinosaurs Love Cheese  by Jackie French
• Mack and the Missing Cheese  by Chae Strathie
• Cheese Belongs to You by Alexis Deacon



My favourite cow stories:
• Belinda by Pamela Allen
• Kiss the Cow by Phyllis Root
• Myron's Magic Cow  by Marlene Newman
• Cow by  Malachy Doyle
• Prudence the Part -Time Cow by Jody Jensen Shaffer
• The Cow Who Fell in the Canal by Phyllis Krasilovsky 


And if Tony  a poem by Ed Galing and Erin Stead is in your library borrow it too. In this story the narrator reminisces about how, when he was a boy , he would go out early each morning and greet Tony, the horse that pulled the milk cart. While on the topic of milk deliveries, I was always fascinated by the 'milk float' that delivers milk in London in the Shirley Hughes' Alfie stories.

11th January National Milk Day

It is National Milk Day in the US today. It is World Milk Day on he 1st June, it is World School Milk Day in the UK on 25th September and it is Chocolate Milk Day on 27th September. No matter which day you celebrate milk on, there are three different opportunities to do so. I have time to write now so I can prepare a list of books for a display in June when my students will be at school.

I dislike milk intensely and I'm sure it is because we were made to drink milk that had sat in the hot sun curdling, from when it was delivered until we drank it at morning tea time around 11 am. Milk was delivered free of charge to school children in NSW in an endeavour to make sure we all had a daily dose of goodness and calcium. There was no such thing then as flavoured milk and we weren't allowed to put Milo in it.

School children today have a much bigger choice when choosing a milk drink and it is not compulsory to drink it at school. Some of the five year olds I taught last year are such city children that they had no idea where milk even came from other than 'out of the carton'. That was quickly remedied by books, a film  and a visit to a farm where they each had a turn at trying to milk a cow. There were some hilarious photos of these attempts.

It is important for children to know about where there food comes from and to recognise milk as a global food. There is a large variety of non fiction books that do milk and dairy foods very well. Look for:
• Milk from Cow to Carton  by Aliki
• From Grass to Milk by Stacy Taus-Bolstad
• Journey of a Glass of Milk by John Malam
• • From Milk to Icecream  by Bridget Heos

There are fewer stories about milk but these are good ones to look for and they cover a range of ages, include humour and address empathy and point of view well:

• Milk and Cookies by Frank Asch
• Don't Spill the Milk by Stephen Davies and Christopher Carr
• Milk Goes to School by Terry Border
• Fortunately, the Milk  by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell
• Chocolate Milk, Por Favor by Maria Dismondy and Donna Farrell

24th - 31st October Honey Week

It is Honey Week in the UK, but I thought I'd dig out books that feature honey, put them out on display and celebrate in the library anyway.
All the pizza books went on the first day so I am hoping these will be borrowed too. Besides it's a good excuse to revisit Elizabeth Honey's poem Honey Sandwich which is in her book of poetry by the same name. There are masses of books about bees (see pinterest page here) but here I've included only the books that have honey in their title and where honey means that wonderful tasting golden syrup that bees produce, not someone's name.

October Pizza Month

October is Pizza Month in the USA. The children I teach love pizza, so much so that if I want to reward them for finishing something like the Premier's Reading Challenge we have a pizza party in the library. The students love the thought of eating in the library even if the reality isn't what they think it will be! We read Adam Rubin's Secret Pizza Party and everyone is sworn to secrecy so that the students who weren't there have to keep wondering what it was like.

My students will be back at school next week after two week's holiday when they probably ate plenty of pizza, but nevertheless I have put out a table full of these resources (all the pizza books in the library) to celebrate Pizza Month. I will also add some cook books which have pizza making.

19th January Popcorn Day

It's Popcorn Day. Get out the popcorn machine and eat popcorn while you read any of the books below. Compare the procedure you undertook to get popcorn with the ones in the two expository texts or share a story. The Popcorn Dragon by Jane Thayer is an oldie but a goodie and Frank Asch's title has been reissued in a new cover. Look in the library as there's bound to be other titles as well!

6th August Barbara Cooney (1917 - 2000) Frank Asch (1946)

Barbara Cooney is a well known American author/illustrator who won the Caldecott Medal twice, for The Ox Cart Man and for Chanticleer and the Fox. My favourite of her books is The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree which was written by Gloria Houston and illustrated by Barbara. This book expresses the true sentiments of Christmas and puts it in a context quite foreign to the children I teach, but this does not matter, as the children sit spellbound through the reading, in awe of Ruthie's courage and quest to honour her family tradition. It is in the same must-read Christmas category as Susan Wojciechowski and P.J. Lynch's The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.

Frank Asch is 'famous' in my library for his series of books about Moonbear. (See Happy Birthday Moon among others). They are perfect for 3 to 6 year olds. He has big ideas, adventures and a friend, all the things children of that age want. Of course he has written and illustrated other books, but it is hard to go past these beauties. The stories are on Youtube and his website has activities to keep children busy. Once you have exhausted Moonbear, read his books about the sun, water and wind: The Sun is my Favourite Star; Water; and Like a Windy Day.