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Hello and welcome to the National Writing for Children Center, a showcase for children’s authors and illustrators.

Did you know that today is the day for 2 big events?

Today is the 38th annual World Hello Day. To participate in this event, all you need to do today is greet ten people! You can start here by leaving a comment as your first greeting.

Today is also Blog Jog Day! This event is a way for bloggers from all over the planet to get to know one another and to drive traffic to all of their blogs. Maybe you are here because you found out that this site is one of the blogs participating in Blog Jog Day! But no matter how you got here, we thank you for stopping by and we hope you will explore all this Blog has to offer.

This month we are showcasing some wonderful children’s books and their authors. You can listen to interviews with these authors, read reviews of their books, watch their book trailers, and register for our weekly Book Giveaway just by leaving a comment!

When you’ve finished exploring here, please jog on over to Author Charmaine Gordon.

If you would like to visit a different Blog in the jog, go to http://blogjogday.blogspot.com.

Thanks to The Book Chook, I found out today that Saturday was World Hello Day. It’s hard to keep track of all the different special days now commemorated throughout the year but this is one I will stick on the calendar and try and remember for next year: and I shall probably go back and read The Book Chook’s excellent post too!

So how many languages can you say hello in? One book immediately springs to mind that might help, and that is Hello World by Manja Stojic (Boxer Books, 2009), which presents 43 different children saying hello in their language. It’s a vibrant book that we’ll be reviewing soon on the PaperTigers website; I’ll link to the review when we do. In the meantime, just looking at the cover certainly gives a taste of the joys in store… And I’ve just noticed that Rosemary at Rosemary’s Reading Circle has included it as her reading choice too.

The other book that popped into my mind is Michele and Richard Steckel’s photographic feast, The Milestones Project: Celebrating Childhood Around the World (Random House, 2004), with images taken from the staggering 23,000+ in the Milestones Project’s collection. I am also one of the lucky 124 million people who has come across the Milestone Project’s traveling exhibit, which is certainly a joy to behold at a noisy, crowded airport…

Both these books bear testimony to World Hello Day’s tenets for diversity, tolerance and peace; and even if the day is already past, those are values that we aspire to every day of the year: so I hope you will also tell us of any recommendations you might have too.