April Fools Day!

It's April Fool's Day! Have you ever played an April Fool's Day joke on someone? Or had one played on you? When I was a kid, I made a snake out of silly putty and used it to try to scare my mom as she was coming out of the bathroom. And once, in first grade, my best friend talked to me, in detail, about how she was moving in a month... and I believed her!

Sometimes called All Fools' Day, the origins of this day are uncertain. Some people say it's a celebration related to the turn of the seasons, while others believe it stemmed from the adoption of a new calendar in some ancient cultures (before the Gregorian Calendar).

DiscoveryNews has an article on its history here.

April Fool's Day is observed throughout the Western world.  In the USA, practices include playing pranks and trying to get people to believe ridiculous and untrue things. In France and Italy the day is called "April Fish" (or "Poisson d'Avril" in French and "Pesce d'Aprile" in Italian.) For "April Fish" French and Italian children sometimes tape a picture of a fish on the back of their schoolmates, crying "April Fish!" when the prank is discovered.

Want to learn more? Reserve one of these books:

April Foolishness by Teresa Bateman

April Fool's Day by Melissa Schiller

Look Out, It's April Fools' Day by Frank Modell

April Fools! by Else Holmelund Minarik