11th October World Egg Day

This year’s World Egg Day theme ‘United by eggs’ celebrates how the incredible egg can connect and unite people from all corners of the globe.

Eggs can be found in cuisines across our planet’s cultures and countries, showcasing their universal appeal and essential role in global nutrition.

As well as being an environmentally friendly animal protein source and their abundance of nutritional benefits, eggs have the power to bring people together. They can play a crucial role in fostering cross cultural understanding and promoting solidarity within communities across the world.

On this website there are key messages about eggs, most of which I knew, but this one made me sit up and take notice:

• Choosing eggs helps contribute to a healthier planet for all of us. Eggs require few resources and produce few greenhouse gas emissions.

There are so many wonderful books about eggs, but often the egg is chocolate, green or golden, or falls off a wall and is not a 'real egg' at all. The  books featured here treat eggs as food. Start with this beauty:

Then explore other books which show children various views of chickens and eggs before the eggs become food.

4th May International Respect for Chickens Day

I read about this day online and thought how appropriate as it is a subject I have needed to source books on over the years. The preschoolers and Year 2 at school often have eggs in incubators as part of project based learning or a unit of inquiry that studies life cycles.  see my pinterest page for some of the myriad of books on this topic. Year 1 does a unit on fairy tales and to accompany this in the library we look at chicken and fox stereotypes in narratives.

Chickens are common characters in children's stories and they usually behave in common ways so they are easy to study and make generalisations about. The classic Rosie's Walk is well known to most children and because it is humorous they are very willing to come up with adjectives to describe the hen and the fox. It is the perfect book to start with. Then we look at the traditional story Chicken Licken, (also known as Henny Penny and Chicken Little). You must look at the Emberley's Chicken Little. The illustrations and language will make you smile all day. Which adjectives on our lists apply to the chicken and fox here? Then we compare this chicken with the chicken in The Cock the Mouse and the Little Red Hen. The illustrations and language in this story make the stereotypes very obvious and tap into how fairytales are about good versus evil. These stories also allow for discussion of why sometimes the hen dies and sometimes it doesn't and the same with the fox in the second story. The rich vocabulary allows for discussion of why sometimes the fox lives in a den, sometimes a lair or even a cave. Next I look at the story of Chaunticleer from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales by using Helen Ward's beautiful The Cockerel and the Fox. From here there are so many other stories where a gullible or enterprising chicken takes on a cunning fox.

See:

 


• Henry and the Fox by Chris Wormell
• Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox
• Albert and Lila  by Rafik Schami
• A Very Proper Fox by Jan Fearnley
• The Chicken Thief by Beatrice Rodriguez

16th October Chooks in Space

On the 13th October Speech Pathology Australia announced their winning books of the year. The books relevant to the age groups I teach are the winner for 3 to 5 year olds, Something Wonderful and the winner for 5 to 8 year olds, Funky Chicken: Chooks in Space. When I read this I thought to myself why are chickens in picture books so much lately? Are they fashionable? We've had a lot of books about sloths, lemurs and skunks but somehow chickens don't seem to have the same 'cutesy' appeal. Nevertheless these five books are worth a look. Each has a message about creativity, determination, perseverance and problem solving. Four are Australian and they are FUN.

This year I have purchased three books about adventurous chickens going into space!
• Chooks in Space by Chris Colin and Megan Kitchin. Funky Chicken is back and this time wants to go into space. There is a bonus CD with this one.

• Chicken in Space by Adam Lehrhaupt and Shahar Kober.
Zoey, the chicken is determined to make it into space. Together with her friend, Sam, a pig she plans her adventure.

• Zelda's Big Adventure by Marie Alafaci and Shane McG. Just like the other two, there is a plucky chicken determined to get into space.


Something Wonderful by Raewyn Caisley and Karen Blair is not about a chook although there is one on the front cover. It is a bout a daydreaming boy called Sam who loves to make things. He makes a machine that will do his chores for him. That is the something wonderful. This book is quite inspirational for children and parents as it shows how children can be effective problem solvers and fill in their time without technology.

It is technology that is part of the message in Nick Bland's new chicken picture book too. In The Fabulous Friend Machine, Popcorn, the chicken finds a new friend in the barn and wants to be friends with the pictures on the screen. Can she?