Wedding Picture Books and Junior Fiction (and bridesmaids too)

Mr. Slinger has big news.

He’s getting married.

Married!

Lilly has big plans.

She’s going to be the flower girl.

(Lilly has always wanted to be a flower girl.

Even more than a surgeon or a diva or a hairdresser.)

The Podcast "Your Kid's Next Read" (an Australian show) shared a list of books about weddings in a recent episode because one of the presenters has just been married.  This got me thinking. I knew my friend at Kinderbookswitheverything had covered this topic. Also, the tiny granddaughter of another friend is about to be the flower girl at her parent's wedding. I previously gifted her the Kevin Henkes book at the top of this post.

I decided to search out wedding picture books and junior novels and compile them into a Pinterest. Megan Daley mentions Lissie Nonsense by Jan Ormerod. I didn't remember that weddings were a major theme of this book. Here is the Kirkus star review of Lizzie Nonsense. I plan to find this one in a library next week and check out the reference to weddings. I will write a blog post about Lizzie Nonsense over the coming days. 

Here are the covers of some of my own favourites including many that sadly are now long out of print but which could/should be held in many school or public libraries.

The Pig's Wedding is a charming story describing the preparation and celebration of the marriage of two pigs, Porker and Curlytail. As the bride and groom, and the guests, are without proper attire, Porker comes up with the brilliant idea of painting clothing on each and every one of them. Everyone has a wonderful time at the wedding celebration, until it begins to rain.  The rain washes the painted clothing off of all them!  Again, Porker has a brainstorm. He tells his guests to follow him as he runs toward a huge mud puddle.  They all toss their pink pig bodies into the mud and have a glorious time! Finally, with the wedding celebration over, Porker carries his bride into their new home--and paints the furnishings all over the stable walls!  The ingenious pig and his wife live happily ever after.

It was such a hot summer. The sky was deep blue and the sun never faltered. All along Brambly Hedge, the mice did their best to keep cool. Poppy Eyebright sought refuge in the mossy shadows of the mill wheel; Dusty Dogwood took to walking by the banks of the cooling stream. Dusty and Poppy spent more and more time together, so no one was at all surprised when they announced their engagement. They decided on a very unusual setting for the wedding ceremony, but even they didn’t realise just how unusual it was prove to be!

Here is a review

I have previously talked about this terrific book series - Aussie Nibbles - but until I listened to the podcast I had forgotten about this one. You could also look for another older junior series - Solo and the book Make me the Flowergirl by Pamela Freeman.