The Fourth Owl

With the upcoming NYPL exhibit Lunch Hour NYC on the horizon, we can look forward to an in-depth look at the world of cafeterias, Automats, workers' lunches, lunch at home (including tenements), school and charity lunches, and power lunches too. Kids will get a glimpse of lunch in all its myriad forms, and we've whipped together a booklist of lunch-related titles they'll really enjoy. Today, let's examine one of those books and we may as well begin with that most horrorific of all lunch-related themes: school cafeteria food! [insert dramatic music here]

How quickly 100 years pass. Seems like only yesterday the children's librarians of The New York Public Library (newly formed as of 1911) were putting together a list of the best children's books of the year. At that time they were guided by the steady hand of that most powerful of librarians, Anne Carroll Moore.

Children's literary trends extend far beyond the sparkly vampires and dystopian futures that gain so much fame and notoriety.  Most of them are subtle.  Sneaky.  There was one year, for example, when no less than three entirely different chapter books all involved sentient cheese in some way.  This is true.  Another year four independent butt-related picture books (Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo, The Tushy Book, Chicken Butt, and Chicken Cheeks) all came out at about the same time.  There is no predicting what will cause such trends to appear.  This year we're seeing two independent and interesting picture book biographies of