National Humor Month (starts with April Fool’s Day!)
“He who laughs, lasts.”
– Mary Pettibone Poole
“Laughter is an instant vacation.” – Milton Berle
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
– Charlie Chaplin
“When does a joke become a ‘dad’ joke? When it becomes apparent.”
– parade.com
“I entered ten puns in a contest to see which would win. None in ten did.”
– parade.com
Easter – April 2
“It’s not about the bunny, it’s about the lamb.”
– Unknown
“Easter egg hunts are proof that your children can find things when they really want.” – Unknown
“Let everything you do be done in love.”
1 Corinthians 16:14
International Children’s Book Day – April 2
“Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”
– Charlotte’s Web
by E.B. White
“I knew who I was this morning but I’ve changed a few times since then.”
– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?”
– Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K Rowling
Some interesting facts about some of our favorite children’s authors from Media Connect:
The Oxford English Dictionary lists 21 words as having been introduced into the language by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice In Wonderland. Examples include snark, chortle, jabberwocky, and mimsy.
H.A. Rey built two bicycles out of spare parts, and he and his wife escaped Paris on them, taking the manuscript for Curious George with them, hours before the city fell to the Nazis.
Shel Silverstein was a cartoonist and writer for Playboy when the magazine first started. He also lived in the Playboy mansion off and on and wrote the song ‘A Boy Named Sue,’ which was famously recorded by Johnny Cash.
Where The Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak realized he did not know how to draw horses and, at the suggestion of his editor, changed the wild horses to the more ambiguous “Wild Things,” a term inspired by the Yiddish expression vilde chaya (wild animals), used to indicate boisterous children.
No Housework Day
April 7
“I hate housework. You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.” – Joan Rivers
“Housework is something you do that nobody notices until you don’t do it.”
– picturequotes.com
“I think I have an urge to get up and clean the house. Wait… no. False alarm.”
– pinterest.com
National Library Week – second week in April
“Literacy is the most basic currency of the knowledge economy.”
– Barack Obama
“Libraries are a cornerstone of democracy – where information is free and equally available to everyone. People tend to take that for granted, and they don’t realize what is at stake when that is put at risk.”
– Carla Hayden
“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.”
– T.S. Eliot
“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
– Albert Einstein
“Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul.”
– Library at Thebes,
inscription over the door
Encourage a Young Writer Day – April 10
“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
– Stephen King
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
– Maya Angelou
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
– Richard Bach
President Johnson Signs the Civil Rights Act
April 11, 1964
“Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.” – John Lewis
“It is an extraordinary achievement to be trapped in the dungeon of color and to dare to shake down its walls and to step out of it, leaving the jailhouse keeper in the rubble”
– James Baldwin