Do you need a book recommendation for Australia Day (January 26)? Editor and publisher Anita Silvey offers John Flanagan’s epic adventure Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan.

Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac How about for Squirrel Appreciation Day (January 21)? Anita suggests Mélanie Watt’s picture book Scaredy Squirrel.

And for what would have been the 101st birthday of painter Jackson Pollock (January 28)? Try Action Jackson, the biography by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan and illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker.

So says Anita. And nobody knows or loves children’s literature more than she does.

That fact is evident on every page of her recently released Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac. The almanac offers an essay on a beloved book for young readers for every day of the year (including my own Shark Vs. Train for May 2), along with a satisfying dose of historical and literary trivia.

Though you can also access the essays through Anita’s website, the print edition is so simply and thoughtfully organized — it indexes books by type (biography, fantasy, mystery/thriller, etc.) as well as by age (from babies and toddlers all the way up through high school) — that nothing could make it any easier to find the right book for the right child.