August 3 – National Watermelon Day

Happy Watermelon Day!

One of the joys of summer is watermelon. Ice-cold, on the rind or cubed, seeded or seedless… Yum! Yum! Enjoy yours with a picture book.

The Watermelon Seed written and illustrated by Greg Pizzoli (2013)

CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! uh-oh… read more about it HERE.

Watermelon Day written by Kathi Appelt and illustrated by Dale Gottlieb (1996)

Jessie finds one watermelon growing in the patch that looks just a little bit bigger, rounder, and prettier than all the other melons. She can’t wait for it to grow all summer long. And she can’t wait for Watermelon Day when all her cousins come to visit and play games and eat ice-cold watermelon. Every day, Jessie sat beside her watermelon and patted it. Her watermelon had the sweetest song. Her watermelon grew and grew. Soon it had zig-zag stripes and it was the prettiest, biggest watermelon in the patch. Finally it was Watermelon Day and Pappy cut it off the vine and set it in the cold, cold lake to float. It floated all day until Jessie couldn’t stand it any longer. Pappy took it to the porch and cracked it open with his fist. Jessie got a huge piece. Red juice ran down her chin, between her fingers, and onto her toes. It was as sweet as the summer rain and as cold as the deep blue lake. Jessie danced, and spit watermelon seeds into the sky, and sang her watermelon song.

Happiness is a Watermelon on Your Head written by Daniel Hahn and illustrated by Stella Dreis (2013)

This funny, rhyming story is about three very grumpy women, Miss Whimper, Miss Grouch, and Miss Stern who want to find out the secret to Miss Jolly and Melvin’s happiness. They tried wearing hats made of fruit, then clocks, pots, and thingamajigs. but none of it worked. They tried climbing a tree and getting a pet, but none of that worked either. Then one day a watermelon sailed through the air and came down with a SPLAT! Miss Jolly was attacking the whole town with watermelon. Pretty soon everyone joined in the food fight and the sadness passed. Laughing and dancing, they were finally happy.

Peter Spit a Seed at Sue written by Jackie French Koller and illustrated by John Manders (2008)

Funny, rhyming tale about four bored kids who chase away the boring blues with watermelons. A watermelon seed spitting battle begins with one little black seed and turned into a ruckus of seeds flying everywhere. Seeds got stuck on faces, clothing and inside underwear. Then the laundry had polka dots. One even hit the traffic cop. Pretty soon the whole town is munching and crunching and spitting seeds on everyone. The mayor put a stop to all the merriment… until the baker came by with his pie cart… pie fight!