18th February Pluto Day

Pluto Day is celebrated on the 18th February because this is the date on which it was first observed in 1930 by American astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh. Then it was considered to be the ninth planet from the Sun. It enjoyed the status of planet until 2006 when it was relabelled as a dwarf planet. For us 'older folk' this was a shock because it messed up our mnemonic for remembering the names of the planets... My Very Eager Mother Just Served Up Nine Pizzas which has apparently become My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos. What do the planets really have to do with food?

This aside many people felt sorry for Pluto and he has since become the subject of picture books that are not only about its discovery, naming and change of status, but they often include a theme about inclusion, exclusion, feelings etc which personifies Pluto.

Look for these books:

An empowering, inspiring--and accessible!--nonfiction picture book about the eleven-year-old girl who actually named the newly discovered Pluto in 1930. When Venetia Burney's grandfather reads aloud from the newspaper about a new discovery--a "ninth major planet" that has yet to be named--her eleven-year-old mind starts whirring. She is studying the planets in school and loves Roman mythology. "It might be called Pluto," she says, thinking of the dark underworld. Grandfather loves the idea and contacts his friend at London's Royal Astronomical Society, who writes to scientists at the Lowell Observatory in Massachusetts, where Pluto was discovered. After a vote, the scientists agree unanimously: Pluto is the perfect name for the dark, cold planet. 









Pluto is not pleased when he learns that astronomers have downgraded him from planet to dwarf planet. He embarks on a fun and out-of-this-world adventure across the solar system to visit Earth and reclaim his planetary status. It's a boy on Earth who makes him realise that, big or small, planet or not, he's still special! 















Pluto loves being a planet. That is, until the day he gets a call from some Earth scientists telling him he isn’t a planet anymore! You probably wanted to meet a real planet, huh? So, Pluto takes the reader on a hilarious and informative journey through the solar system to introduce the other planets and commiserate about his situation along the way.









Providing a history of the small, icy world from its discovery and naming to its recent reclassification, this book presents a fascinating look at how scientists organize and classify our solar system as they gain new insights into how it works and what types of things exist within it.

Pluto got the shock of his life when he was kicked out of the famous nine. His planet status was stripped away, leaving him lost and confused. Poor Pluto! On his quest to find a place where he belongs, he talks to comets, asteroids, and meteoroids. He doesn't fit in anywhere! But when Pluto is about to give up, he runs into a dwarf planet and finally finds his place in the solar system.







And if you haven't got time to celebrate Pluto now, wait till Pluto Demoted Day on August 24 which commemorates the day in 2006 when Pluto's status was downgraded from a full sized planet to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

15th February Hippopotamus Day

Coming up is Hippo Day! A great day to celebrate in a library because  -
1. Hippos are in danger, and humans are their biggest enemy. So we need to know more about these 'water horses'.
2. Some of the best 'reads' for children  feature hippos.

One of my all time favourite serial reads with a class is The Twentyseventh Annual African Hippopotamus Race by Morris Lurie. It is such fun and yet at the same time has so much to discuss with students. Can hippos really swim? What should Edward do about Sebastian? What makes Edward a good friend? a good grandchild? a good swimmer and competitor? What does 'gosh' really mean? Great to read before a sports day, swimming carnival, when you want to discuss bullying or even just hippos and Africa.

A wonderful pourquoi story, Hot Hippo  by Mwenye Hadithi and Adrienne Kennaway explains for students why hippos don't actually swim, but spend a large part of their day in the water.

Another book that students love is Hippos are Huge! by Jonathan London and Matthew Trueman. This illustrated information book tells students about just how big and dangerous hippos are.

Hippos have even made it to the realm of 'true animal stories' since the December tsunami that swept baby hippo, Owen into the sea. Kenyan villagers worked to rescue Owen and he has now become best friend with Mzee, an elderly giant tortoise. Many books feature these two. See Owen and Mzee and its sequel by Isabella Hatkoff et al; A Mama for Owen by Marion Dane Bauer and Mama by Jeanette Winter.

Hippos can also be something that authors use for humour. Look at the popularity of the very long lasting series that started with There's a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake by Hazel Edwards and Deborah Niland. And more recently, Hippospotamus by Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross,  The Hippo-not-amus  by Tony and Jan Payne and Hippobottymus by Steve Smallman and Ada Grey.

And maybe because hippos can be cantankerous they often feature in children's books about feelings and behaviour. See  Greedy Grumpy Hippo; Big Bully Hippo; Hurty Feelings; and  The Hippo who was Happy. 

For even more hippo books for your display, look at these.

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5th February Pondering Holes

I've just finished Week 2 of term1 at school and it has been both busy and interesting. In the library we catalogued a new book, Holes by Jonathan Litton. Here's the blurb

Delve into this fascinating book of holes to discover a world of 
burrows and boreholes, subways and sinkholes. From the 
mythical and mysterious to household and human holes,  
find out what makes a hole a hole and how they shape our world. 

It is quite a thick tome for our age group, but it is full of fascinating information, including a section about the philosophy of holes. This led to quite a lot of conversation and  laughter among the library staff and of course it led us off on to all sorts of tangents. Is there a day to celebrate 'holes'? Well, no not really. There is a 'My Bucket's Got a Hole Day' on 30th May, but not one that covers all sorts of holes. Maybe because the phrase 'whole day' is a common one.

There is an amazing number of picture books that feature the word 'hole' in their title though. Of course that started us off on a display. See here for the books the library has. You'll notice these books don't all have the word in the title because we then started thinking about what 'hole' means...'an opening through something' and other words for 'hole'...gap; aperture; cavity; dent; void; pit; cranny; burrow; crater; and even tunnel.

Some picture books for young children are about physical holes, things to  dig, carrying on from Ruth Krauss' classic A Hole is to Dig. Julia Donaldson's One Mole Digging a Hole and Mac Barnett's  Sam and Dave Dig a Hole do this, but books such as Kelly Canby's The Hole Story and Paul Bright's The Hole Story start to play with the meaning of the word 'hole'. Then books such as the very special The Hole  by Oyvind Torseter really start to get at the philosophy of holes.

I grew up besotted with stories about smuggling and caves, probably because of Enid Blyton and stories such as The Secret of Spiggy Holes. My own children grew up being readers who kept revisiting  Louis Sachar's novel, Holes, so obviously holes and their many incantations provide copious ideas for stories. And of course any display has to include books such as Alice in Wonderland which has a hole as a pivotal part of the plot.

Collect a whole lot of hole stories and go make a hole in your reading time!

16th December A Donkey's Christmas

This morning when I checked in at my friend's blog: Momo Celebrating Time to Read, I saw that she has written about the donkey's view of Christmas because of this lovely book The Little Donkey. This reminded me of the year at school where one of the Year 1 teacher's favourite Christmas book was that version of the nativity told from the point of view of the donkey. It started the library staff on a mission to find other donkey books and other nativity stories told in first person from an animal's point of view. We were surprised to find that we had quite a lot of both, so the Christmas display that year ended up being about the animals at the birth of Jesus. It looked wonderful with all the books and soft animal toys out to accompany them. As well as the many donkeys  there were cows, sheep,  a dog, (Room for a Little One),  a cat (Cat in the Manger), a camel (The Last Straw), a hare (Hare's Christmas Gift), and even birds (The Birds of Bethlehem) and spiders (Spider's Gift: A Christmas Story).

Today I had a catch up with the donkey-mad teacher and her two small girls and we talked about Christmas books as she is doing the 25 days till Christmas with her girls, unwrapping a book to read each night. She said that she had tried to buy the donkey book but it was out of print and then she wanted to know the name of a book to buy about the origin of tinsel and we had a chat about Cobweb Christmas  and the other versions of this story. There are just so many wonderful picture books about Christmas and it does seem such a shame that they only really get an airing (reading) at Christmas. Our school year finishes so early in December that for some books that means they're only read once.

Here's what the library has about donkeys that were present at Christmas:
• The Little Donkey by Gerda Scheidl and Bernadette Watts
• The Lion, the Unicorn and Me by Jeanette Winterson and Rosalind MacCurrach
• Ruby the Christmas Donkey by Mirabel Cecil and Christina Gascoigne
• Father Christmas and the Donkey by Elizabeth Clark and Jan Ormerod
• The Donkey's First Christmas by Susanne T. Schroder
• The Ox and the Donkey by Gunter Spang and Loek Koopmans
• Little Donkey's Wish by Udo Weigelt and Pirkko Vainio
• The Donkey's Dream by Barbara Helen Berger
and some newer ones still available to purchase
• Father Christmas and the Donkey by Elizabeth Clark and Ari Jokinen
(the same story as above but with new illustrations instead of Jan Ormerod's)
• The Christmas Story as Told by Assellus the Christmas Donkey by Janet Duggan and Catherine Robertson
• Mary's Little Donkey by Gunhild Sehlin and Helene Muller

And stories about the spider and the origins of tinsel
• Cobweb Christmas by Shirley Climo and Jane Manning
• The Christmas Spider's Miracle by Trinka Hakes Noble and Stephen Constanza
• The Spider's Gift: A Ukranian Christmas Story by Eric A. Kimmel and Katya Krenina

22nd October Nut Day

On 22nd October it is Nut Day, a day to celebrate nuts and all they have to offer animals, including us, nutritionally. This is not easy to do in schools as so many students have nut allergies. Some students are allergic to peanuts only, Peanut Day is the 13th September, but there are lots of other nuts. How many can your students list? Read April Pulley Sayre's Let's Go Nuts! and make a list.

Looking through the library catalogue for books about 'nuts' I realised that if I exclude the peanut books and the peanut butter books then what I was left with are mainly about nuts and squirrels and the nuts are acorns.

I love oak trees and acorns. I spent many hours as a child collecting acorns and making acorn people and boats and I would have dearly loved to see a squirrel run down the branches of the oak trees, but I live in Australia so no squirrels. That doesn't mean though that there cannot be a 'nut' book display and a cuddly toy squirrel set amongst the books.



Start with the classic Chicken Licken, Chicken Little or Henny Penny, where an acorn falls on a chicken's head and he runs off to tell the king that the sky is falling. Silly, but good fun with all that poultry following him without questioning the initial premise. Then there is a lovely new book by Lou Peacock and Yasmeen Ismail simply called Nuts! which takes sharing and quarrelling to a new level.


If you still want others with squirrels:
• We Need More Nuts! and Please, No More Nuts! by Jonathan Fenske
• Aw, Nuts!  by Rob McClurkan
• The Nut Stayed Shut by Mike Henson
• The Nutty Nut Chase by Kathryn White and Vanessa Cabban
• Scruffle-Nut by Corinne Fenton and Owen Swan
• Nuts to You!  by Lois Ehlert
• Nuts to You  by Lynne Rae Perkins (illustrated novel)

Without squirrels:
• I Want that Nut! by Madeline Valentine ( mouse and a chipmunk)
• Oh, Nuts! by Tammi Sauer and Dan Krall (chipmunks)
• Nuts in Space by Elys Dolan (an elite crew of furry animals)
• a series by Eric Litwin (of Pete the Cat fame)and Scott Magoon
The Nuts: Bedtime at the Nut House (Hazel and Wally Nut and family)
The Nuts:Sing and Dance in Your Polka Dot Pants
The Nuts:Keep Rolling!

11th October International Day of the Girl

It is school holidays here, but I wish it was a school day because today is International Day of the Girl and my students and parents who are wealthy and educated still seem to need to be convinced at times that there is a gender gap. I have mothers saying to me, "Please don't let my boy borrow a pink book"; "Please don't let my girl borrow anymore building books"; "Do you have books that are boys' books?"; " My daughter loves Princess in Black,  what pink princess books could I borrow for her?"

This is in a country where women are more highly educated than men at the moment, but fewer of them are in leadership roles. This is at a coeducational school where the students have amazing opportunities and choices.

I am constantly putting together displays to counteract intrenched views. The library has an amazing collection of picture book biographies and picture books that feature girls and science, but today I would have put together a small display of books that encourage girls to be themselves, befitting this year's theme - GirlForce: Unscripted and Unstoppable.

                      

I give every baby girl born to friends, a copy of Global Baby's Girls  and  a copy of one of Dream Big  by Joyce Wan or Baby Feminists  by Libby Babbott-Klein.













The display in the library would include these books:

      

Go girls!

16th June World Smell Day

World Smell Day is actually celebrated on the 16th June each year and it is not a day I knew existed until last week. While doing the bulk loans for next term I was surprised by how many books had the word 'smelly' in their title and I began to think about pulling them off the shelf and putting together a 'smelly' display. Having done this I then went looking to see if such a day existed and it does.

World Smell Day was first celebrated in 1988 and founded by Dr George Dodds. This year the hope of World Smell Day was 'to introduce you to the world of scents, aromas, odours and miasmas and encourage you to take a special interest in the many pleasurable smell sensations which come our way - and, perhaps, in actually training your nosing ability!'

Most of the books I have found for my display, however do not celebrate pleasurable smells, but rather the more unpleasant ones, that the children love to read about. There's the smelly

• the old favourite  The Smelly Book  by Babette Cole
• any book about Judy Moody's brother Stink, but start with Stink It Up! A Guide to the Gross, the Bad and the Smelly  by Megan McDonald
• the three picture books by Mark Chambers about Brian the Smelly Bear
• Dirty Bertie by Alan MacDonald and David Roberts, but start with the two picture books by David Roberts and then look for Pong.
• then there's the dog stories Smelly Louie by Catherine Rayner; My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks  by Hanoch Piven; Smelly Bill  and Smelly Bill Stinks Again by Daniel Postgate; and  The Great Smelly, Slobbery, Small-Tooth Dog by Margaret Read MacDonald
• Smelly Socks by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko
• Smelly Peter the Great Pea Eater by Steve Smallman
• Mo's Smelly Jumper  by David Bedford
• Big Smelly Bear by Britta Teckentrup
• What's That Awful Smell?  by Heather Tekavec
• The Day the Smells Went Wrong by Catherine Sefton
• Mr Tripp Smells a Rat by Sandy McKay and Ruth Paul
• The Children Who Smelled a Rat by Allan Ahlberg
• You Smell and so does everything else by Clive Gifford

Then there's the stinky
• My Stinky Dog by Christine Roussey
• Stinky! or how the beautiful smelly warthog found a friend  by Ian Whybrow
• Stinky by Eleanor Davis, a title from the wonderful Toon series.
• all the Sir Charlie Stinky Socks series of books by Kristina Stephenson
• all the Stinky Cecil series by Paige Braddock. Start with Stinky Cecil in Operation Pond Rescue
• one title in  the Sir Scallywag series Sir Scallywag and the Battle of Stinky Bottom by Giles Andreae and Korky Paul
• one title in the Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast series The Case of the Stinky Stench by Josh Funk and Brendan Kearney
• one title from the Pig and Fox series  A Pig, A Fox and Stinky Socks by Jonathan Fenske 

• introduce yourself to the Cosmic Colin by Tim Collins series by reading the first book Stinky Space Race
• introduce yourself to the Hound Hotel series by Shelley Swanson Sateren  by reading Stinky Stanley.
• introduce yourself to the Stinky and Jinks series which features Benjamin Jinks and his grumpy hamster Jasper Stinkybottom by David Lowe by reading book one My Hamster is a Genius
• do some science experiments with Stinky Science: Why the smelliest smells smell so smelly by Edward Kay
• Stinky Skunks and Other Animal Adaptations by Barbara Taylor
• Stinkiest! : 20 Smelly Animals  by Steve Jenkins

and the whiffy!
• A Whiff of Pine, a Hint of Skunk: A Forest of Poems by Joan Rankin
• Hey, What's that Nasty Whiff? by Julia Jarman and Garry Parsons
• and there's the three wonderful stories about Whiffy Wilson by Caryl Hart. Start with Whiffy Wilson the Wolf Who Wouldn't Wash.

I told you there were a lot of books! If you want one that has some less unpleasant smells, read Anna Fienberg's gem, The Magnificent Nose. Think of all the wonderful aromatic words that will be added to a child's vocabulary while exploring these books.