11th August Son and Daughter Day

I just read... Son and Daughter Day is a great day for parents to connect and reconnect with their children in a meaningful way. It’s also a great way for parents to show their children just how much they love and care for them and to show them just how important they are in their lives.

For many families this will be the case. I am lucky to have both a son and a daughter and while they are very different people I cherish what both mean to my mothering. Like me they both love words and reading and this makes for many good discussions. They both love boats, like their father and I struggle to understand this obsession, but it also makes for many interesting discussions.

Literature is full of stories of fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, starting with the bible stories about Cain and Abel, Moses, Joseph, right up to the parable of the prodigal son. Shakespeare continues this with plays such as Macbeth.  Folktales are full of good and bad sons and daughters. And as Fathers Day approaches your library will be full of stories about fathers and their sons and daughters.

See these for bible stories

• One City Two Brothers  by  Chris Smith and Aurelia Fronty tells how to settle an inheritance dispute between two brothers, King Solomon tells a tale of how Jerusalem came to be founded.

• The Two Sons  by Nick Butterworth and Mick Inkpen is the story of the prodigal son.

A favourite folktale that does this well is

• Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters  by John Steptoe

If you would prefer to just celebrate all that is good about sons and daughters then Ruth Doyle and Ashling Lindsay do this so well in 

• Dreams for Our Daughters

• Songs for Our Sons

Enjoy your sons and daughters today and everyday, read to and with them because before you know it, they will be telling you they are grown up and they will start parenting you!

14th September Eve Sutton (1906 - 1992) Diane Goode(1949) John Steptoe (1950 - 1989)

Eve Sutton is the New Zealand author of My Cat Likes To Hide in Boxes, the book that began Lynley Dodd's career in children's literature. She illustrated it for a cousin by marriage, Eve Sutton. The book was a huge success with very young children because of its repetitive rhyme and rhythm, its topic, cats who like to sleep everywhere, and its fun illustrations.

Diane Goode was born in Brooklyn into a French and Italian family. I first met her through her two books Where's Our Mama? and Mama's Perfect Present which were in my library when I inherited it. They appealed to the parents because they were written in English and French and as French is the foreign language taught at school it meant that they could practise their French too. With the first title they get the added bonus of it being a story where the children who have lost their mother are wandering around a 1920 Paris railway station describing their mother as the best mother ever. The more recent books in the library that are by Diane Goode are ones that she has not written, but illustrated, and they have a much less distinct French or historical feel. She illustrated books for Elise Primavera (Louise the Big Cheese) and Cynthia Rylant (Alligator Boy).

John Steptoe was also born in Brooklyn, one year after Diane Goode, but unfortunately his life was short, as he died when he was only 38. He began his first book (Stevie) when he was only sixteen. All of his published work (which included 15 picture books in 20 years) deals with the African American experience, issues and concerns. Very few authors and illustrators were African Americans at that time and he helped to change the stereotypical view of his people.He used his own family as models for the characters in his best known and Caldecott Honor book Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale. This beautiful book is a retelling of the Cinderella story set in ancient Africa among the ruins of Zimbabwe.