Why an Octopus with an Ice Cream Cone?

How much do you love my new logo design? Isn’t that little octopus with an ice cream cone and books just absolutely adorable? I bet you’re wondering why I’d choose an octopus holding an ice cream cone and books as my logo and that’s what I’m here to tell you!

I’ve recently seen a number of articles, tweets and videos about octopuses and have learned so much about them! I find them absolutely fascinating and wanted to incorporate these adorable cephalopods into my new design.

The balance of having eight arms allows me to reimagine this blog in a number of different ways as my vision for the blog changes over time. As of right now, I’m really focusing on creating more content for families, not just specifically librarians or teachers as the book suggestions and extension activities can be for anyone who’s interested.

As for the ice cream cone – ice cream is probably of my greatest weaknesses – I absolutely LOVE it! My favorite ice cream flavor has to be chocolate chip cookie dough and if I’m really going all out – a brownie sundae with ice cream, hot fudge and three cherries! Living down the street from a farm (with a ice cream shop) is extremely dangerous for me and becomes a staple of my diet during the summer months! Thankfully it closes for the winter or I’d be in real trouble.

And the books? well, this is a book blog, so there’s got to be books! I don’t think this blog will ever stray too far away from books even if I do reach out to other interests with one (or more) of those eight arms.

If you want to know more about octopuses, check out these fun facts!

10 Fun Facts about Octopuses:

1. There are around 300 species of octopuses.
   They range in size from less than an inch to giant Pacific octopus that can stretch 20 feet from arm tip to arm tip.
2. Yes, octopuses is the correct plural word for octopus.
   Many people assume the plural word for octopus is octopi, but in fact octopuses is the correct plural of octopus.
3. Octopuses have three hearts
   One is called a systemic heart that pumps oxygenated blood throughout the body and the other two are called brachial hearts that takes the deoxygenated blood and pumps it back to the systemic heart
4. Octopus have eight arms, not tentacles
   The easiest way to tell the difference is that arms have suckers the whole way down them, while tentacles only have suckers at the end
5. 2/3 of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms
   An octopus may only have 1/20 of the neurons that a human brain has, but the majority of their neurons are actually found in their arms, and not in their brain.
6. Octopus have blue blood
   Rather than the iron based blood that is found in humans and is red, octopus have copper-based blood that makes their blood blue when oxygenated and when deoxygenated becomes almost clear.
7. Some octopuses can change color and texture to match their surroundings
   Some octopuses have color-changing cells called chromatophores near the surface of their skin that can change color, while other cephalopods “also have iridophores and leucophores. Iridophores create iridescent colors, while leucophores mirror back the colors of the environment, making the animal less conspicuous.” (Smithsonian Ocean)
8. Octopuses are smarter than people first realized
   Some have escaped from their tanks in aquariums, others have squeezed through the smallest of holes, others have opened childproof bottles and others can recognize individual human faces!
9. Octopuses are really, really old
   The oldest fossil of an octopus dates back 296 million years ago and can be seen on display at the Field Museum in Chicago.
10. Octopuses have ink clouds made mostly out of melanin
    Octopuses use ink clouds to escape predators, the ink not only clouds the vision, but can also dull the smell and taste sensors to prevent predators from finding the octopus.