Friends of Montclair Library

Pi Pie. Photo by Paul Smith via Flickr.

Since March 14th is 3/14, and the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is pi (which starts out 3.14), March 14th is celebrated as Pi Day.

Founded at the Exploratorium by physicist Larry Shaw, Pi Day has become an international holiday celebrating the number and its edible homophone. The Exploratorium will be celebrating Pi Day and Einstein’s birthday with events on the 14th; their website has all the info plus links to activities and pi info to help you celebrate on your own.

To help get you in the spirit of the day, here are some pie books at the Montclair library:

In Apple Pie: An American Story (641.8652 EDGE), John T. Edge travels around America, tracing the history of apple pie and theorizing about what its regional variations reveal about their bakers.

For kids, How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A. by Marjorie Priceman takes readers on a cross-country journey to find the natural resources (clay, wood, sand for glass) needed to make pie-baking tools. And Pie in the Sky by Lois Ehlert tells the story of a father and child waiting for the cherries on their backyard tree to ripen so they can bake a pie. Both books include recipes for cherry pie. (Look for Priceman’s other book, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, elsewhere in OPL.)

The Montclair branch doesn’t have any cookbooks devoted solely to pie, but elsewhere in OPL you’ll find everything from James McNair’s Pie Cookbook and Farm Journal’s Complete Pie Cookbook (featuring 700 dessert and main-dish pie recipes) to Vegan Pie in the Sky: 75 Out-of-this-World Recipes for Pies, Tarts, Cobblers & More. The Main library even has a book called Pie: A Global History by Janet Clarkson.