17th October Pasta Day

 
Let's celebrate pasta, a food that children love and a popular topic for picture books!

 

6th October Noodle Day

October is Pasta Month! Today is Noodle Day! I haven't written about this before because I have written about pasta and dumplings on their celebratory day. Spaghetti has a day of its own too, on 4th January, but as it's in the school holidays, I thought today might be a good time to revisit noodles and spaghetti.

Can you believe that noodles have been around for over 4,000 years? Noodles are popular all over the world and range in shape from flat, to round, to twisted, to sheets, to tubes, and many more. The oldest historical mention of noodles appears in a dictionary from the third century A.D. in China. 

Regardless of where the noodle originated one of the most alluring things about noodles is how varied they are. In China, you have chefs that pull the thinnest of noodles called la mian, while in Italy, you have broad flat pasta layered with bolognese and béchamel sauce, better known as lasagna. And both are noodles!

It is very easy to put together a display of picture books for this topic. Use key words such as noodles, pasta, spaghetti and dumplings in your library catalogue search and you'll be surprised. 

Start with some newer ones such as:

• The Story of Pasta  by Steven Guarnaccia

• Pasta!  by Felice Arena and Beatrice Cerocchi

• The Great Pasta Escape by Miranda Paul and Javier Joaquin

• Rigatoni the Pasta Cat  by Michael Rosen and Tony Ross

• Spaghetti Hunters  by Morag Hood

• My Spaghetti ABC  by Deborah Niland

• Spaghetti! An Interactive Recipe Book by  Lotta Nieminen

• I Want to Be Spaghetti by Keira Wright-Ruiz

Then for fun search out

• Spaghetti With the Yeti  by Adam and Charlotte Guillain and Lee Wildish 

• Noodle Bear  by Mark Gravas

• Noodlephant  by Jacob Kramer and K-Fai Steele

And my favourite:

• Noodle Magic  by Roseanne Greenfield Thong and Meilo So

25th October World Pasta Day

World Pasta Day, another good excuse to pull out lots of books in the library and make a display. Nearly all the bird books went this week for Bird Week so I have an empty space. It was Noodle Day on the 6th October and National Pasta Day  on the 17th October and I did nothing for these so I'm going to combine pasta and noodles this week. I was a bit perplexed as to what the difference between noodles and pasta actually was so I went looking. Here tells me that basically pasta is of Italian origin and noodles are of Chinese origin although they are made similarly, but another website summarises it in this way 
1. Egg noodles are typically long flat strips of dough, while pasta comes in a variety of shapes
2. Egg noodles originated in China, while the origin of pasta is not certain.  There is also lots of mention about inclusion of eggs and the type of wheat used in the noodle.

Oh well differences aside, the library has plenty of books to display, without even resorting to cookbooks. Among them these below. and if you don't have many why not revisit all the Strega Nona books and enjoy some Tomie dePaola.

17th October National Pasta Day

I don't think we have a Pasta Day in Australia but what a good excuse to get out all the great kids cookbooks and cook up a feast. I love Ready, Steady Spaghetti by Lucy Broadhurst and then you can work your way through all the pasta recipes in the back of Everyone Brings Noodles by Norah Dooley. And while you are cooking and eating you can have fun reading from this list:

• Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola. Who can resist the concept of a magic pasta pot?

• More Spaghetti, I Say by Rita Golden Gelman

• Basghetti Spaghetti by Susanne Vettiger

• Spaghetti for Suzy by Peter Coplans

• The Spaghetti Tangle by Alexander McCall Smith

• Pino and the Signora's Pasta by Janet Pedersen

Make sure you do it on Wednesday because of

• Wednesday is Spaghetti Day by Maryann Cocca-Leffler!