13th June National Jane Day

National Jane Day recognises the enduring popularity and charm of the name Jane every June 13. This day is a perfect opportunity to appreciate a Jane in your life, explore the name’s origins, and celebrate the unique personalities behind it. Share your stories and spread some kindness. Little secret...Jane is my middle name.

I just read this! A day to celebrate Jane. How fitting as two days ago children's author Jane Yolen died. She wrote so many of my favourite books and although she was 87 it is sad to think that there will not be any more. Perhaps then it is time to make sure some that are out of print are republished. These are all worth looking for in the library.

And while you are at the library check out some other Janes who make great children's books.

• Jane Cabrera

• Jane Chapman

• Jane Clarke

• Jane Godwin

• Jane Goodall

• Jane Hissey

• Jane Jolly

• Jane McGuinness

• Jane O'Connor

• Jane Porter

• Jane Ray

• Jane Simmons

• Jane Tanner

I'm sure I will have missed someone.

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.

19th April Melissa Sweet

It is Melissa Sweet's birthday and as she is a favourite illustrator of mine I have written about her on this blog many times before. Recently I discovered that I had incorrectly celebrated her birthday on the 18th April so I need to write about her birthday again in order to correct my mistake.

Seeing this illustration from Google images which is in fact from Melissa's blog, you can understand why she would be a favourite with any librarian. Her kind of art, some of which, makes extensive use of collage appeals immensely. I first discovered her books when Jane Yolen's Baby Bear books became so popular with the children in my library, but then I went looking for more books by her and discovered that there were a large number of other titles in the library, such as Moonlight,  Love and Kisses, all the Charlotte books and the wonderful Carmine.

More recently when I began a unit of work using picture book biographies with my Year 2 Book Club I discovered more Melissa Sweet titles such as The Boy Who Drew Birds,  Balloons Over Broadway, and Girls Think of Everything and more recently I purchased two new books to add  to this unit Brave Girl  and Mrs Harkness and the Panda.

The best way to learn more about Melissa is to read her own writing on her website and her facebook page because you will see there all the things she is involved in. I was so envious when I read that she had recently done a workshop at the Eric Carle Museum. I wish she had been there the day I visited. I would even have forgone the blue sky, long green grass and heavily fruit-laden apple trees I saw, for the snow and kite flying!

Now I  need to order Spike  (so I can use those wonderful bookmarks) and A Splash of Red to add to the biography unit. And I need to hound the publisher to get Baby Bear's Books  back in print. It is one of the few books that has 'walked' from my library, so you know it is good. Must dash, off to go bike riding or walking by the beach with my librarian friend. see bikes and librarians are important!

13th March Multiple Birth Week starts

Multiple Birth Awareness Week is a national event held annually to celebrate the joy of parenting multiples, but also to educate communities and professionals about the challenges and joys of parenting twins, triplets and more. In the library I couldn't find any books about triplets or more, but I put together a display using quite a few books about twins that I found. There are three sets of twins at school at the moment, one of each of the possible combinations so it is good to show them, if not everyone that there are books written about twins. There seemed to be more novels than picture books, but the newest title, Take Two! is a lovely poetry book by J.Patrick Lewis and Jane Yolen and it certainly made a lovely centrepiece. It is illustrated by the Australian, but US-based illustrator Sophie Blackall. Look also for these picture books

• Hello Twins by Charlotte Voake

• The Holy Twins the historical story of Scholastica and Benedict, twins who both became saints and played a large part in Catholic education. It is written by Kathleen Norris and beautifully illustrated by Tomie dePaola.

• Meet the Barkers and other titles in the series about twins Morgan and Moffatt. These are written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola.

• Double Trouble by Deborah Niland and

• Twinnies by Eve Bunting

Then there are these novels:

• Twin Trouble and Connie and the Waterbabies by Jacqueline Wilson. These two come in one book under the title Twin Tales.

• Double Act another novel by Jacqueline Wilson also has twins, but they are older than Connie's siblings. They are ten and dealing with bigger family issues than Connie.

18th April Leigh Hobbs (1953) Melissa Sweet (1956)

Leigh Hobbs is an Australian author, artist, cartoonist and the creator of the Old Tom series of books and yes, I did write about him last year, but since then he has brought out a new series of books and they are such a hit in the library with Year 2 that I need to tell you about them. They are about Mr Badger who is the Special Events Manager at the Boubles Grand Hotel in London. He is in charge of parties, weddings, balls and special guests. He solves mysteries and so far there are four books in the series.

It is also the American illustrator, Melissa Sweet's birthday. Her style is very different from the cartoons of Hobbs. Her illustrations in the series about Baby Bear written by Jane Yolen (see Baby Bear's Books; Baby Bear's Big Dreams and Baby Bear's Chairs) are sweet, warm and comforting, but she has other styles such as the one used to illustrate the Charlotte books by Joan Knight. See Charlotte in Giverny; Charlotte in Paris; Charlotte in New York and Charlotte in London and the beautiful biography about John James Audubon, The Boy Who Drew Birds by Jacqueline Davies. And to follow up on yesterday's celebration of bats, you can dig out Bat Jamboree and Bats Around the Clock both written by Kathi Appelt and illustrated by Melissa!

11th February Holly Keller (1942) National Inventors Day

Of course it is Jane Yolen and Mo Willems birthday, but I wrote about them last year and they are very well known. Today I want to focus on Holly Keller. She is an American author and a prolific illustrator, having illustrated so many books for other authors, especially science titles. When she also does the writing she tends to choose to have animal protagonists who deal with family issues such as sibling rivalry, adoption, fitting in and coping with a change like the death of a pet. There's a series of stories about each of these, Geraldine, a piglet, Henry, a possum, and Horace, a leopard who is adopted by tigers. But, my favourite of her books is Grandfather's Dream, a story set in the ricefields of a river delta in Vietnam. Nam's grandfather has told her stories about the cranes who frequented the area before the war and they would like them to return. This beautiful story has many layers of meaning and an important message which is accessible to a large age range. The book could be used with children from four to twelve, whereas many of Holly's other books are for a much younger audience.

National Inventors Day commemorates the birth of Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931). While there are many information books which feature him such as Marcia Williams's Three Cheers for Inventors! I thought it would be fun to read a book to younger children that features an inventor. Louise Yates has a new book Frank and Teddy Make Friends in which Frank, a mouse is always inventing things including a new friend, Teddy.

11th February Jane Yolen (1939) Mo Willems (1968)

Years ago when I was a new teacher I came upon the picture book, Greyling by Jane Yolen. It was the story of a selchie, an element of folktales that I knew nothing about. I loved the writing, the concept and the book. I was besotted with Jane Yolen and went in search of more. Unfortunately this book is now out of print, but there are still a myriad of her titles that aren't. Her book Owl Moon won the Caldecott Medal for John Schoenherr and even though I have never lived with snow or owls when I read it to children we can all 'feel' what it is like to be there.

Recently I bought Yolen's story The Seeing Stick for the library. It is newly illustrated by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini. Daniela's pictures are magical. They are done on glossy paper, which in places is almost translucent. The pages are textured and beg to be touched. The angle that the viewer is positioned at in the beautiful double-page spreads makes for an involvement that renders you transfixed. The text is small and feels secondary to the illustrations but this is part of the metaphor as the main character Hwei Ming, the Emperor's daughter is blind. As her world is transformed the pictures lighten and her world shows promise. Terrazzini’s magical gift here, will now send me in search of other works illustrated by her.

Jane Yolen's website is a fountain of information. See www.janeyolen.com/

Now to the younger person's birthday. So much has been written about Mo Willems, the author/ illustrator of all the Pigeon books, Knuffle Bunny and Gerald and Piggie books. His books are such hits with children that as a librarian I need to do little more than put them on display. I certainly do not need to sell them. I have boys lying on the floor finding 'pigeon' in the non-pigeon titles and then when they find him rushing off to advertise to everyone else in the library that they have found him. Far more exciting than finding Wally! We have the accompanying toys and they always arrive back at the library needing to be washed because they have been so loved and have been included in every activity. Rather than say more here, if you haven't had the pleasure of Mo's books check out his website: www.pigeonpresents.com/