28th May World Dhole Day

What is a dhole, I hear you say. I'd never heard of one when I read about this day. 

A dhole is a medium-sized canine that lives in most of southern Asia. This species is more endangered than tigers, leopards, or Asian elephants. Yet, this elusive canine is unheard of! At present, there are less than fifty zoos that house dholes in the world. These animals are misunderstood and often seen as a pest. The occurrence aims to make people care about these creatures for their intelligence, uniqueness, and their own language as they whine, whoop, and whistle! The Dhole is listed as CITES II, meaning their trade is banned worldwide.

Dholes are only about the size of a border collie. Depending on their habitat, these wild dogs vary in colour from charcoal grey to rust red to sandy beige. They have a long, brushy, fox-like tail that often has a black tip. They usually have a white belly, chest, and feet. Adults have rounded ears and a pointed snout.

And as you can guess this is not a topic to read about in books. Books about them are hard to find. Here's two that might be in your library.

A fun activity might be to give students books about animals, mammals or wild dogs and get them to see if 'dhole' appears in the index.

Seeing how similar they are to other members of the canid family, I began to wonder, do the other canines have days of their own. Although commonly referred to as a "wild dog," the dhole is not a true dog. Its closest relatives are the painted dogs of Africa and the bush dogs of South America.The different types of wild dogs are generally divided into  coyotes, foxes, wolves, jackals, dingoes, and other canids. 

Coyote Day is on the 23rd March.

Fox Day is on the 17th September.

International Wolf Day is on 13th August.

World Jackal Day is 19th April.

And, the poor dingo doesn't have an 'official' day. What a shame!

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