Monica Edinger's Blog, page 54

Rewind: A Great Kids’ Book on the Creation of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons

Melissa’s Sweetis on a glorious roll this year getting a lot of well deserved attention for her illustrations for A Splash of Red, Brave Girl, and Little Red Writing. So I thought I’d republish this interview from a couple of years back about her delightful book about Tony Sarg and the Macy’s Parade balloons.

Just in time for the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade comes Melissa Sweet‘s picture book biography, Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade. That pup...

Philip Pullman’s Jeffrey

@PhilipPullmanJeffrey our resident fly is the most polite insect I’ve ever met. He leaves our food alone but sits on my shoulder to read the Oxford Times.

Philip Pullman is now tweeting and mixed in among his remarks on various issues are occasional reports about Jeffrey. This gentlemanly insect seems to have mixed feelings about others of his sort — he reacted poorly to a spider, but has fallen headlong in love with a ladybird. Highly literate it seems in multiple languages, he has already ex...

My NCTE 2013

Wow. It was amazing to be at NCTE as a children’s book author. As I wrote in my previous post I’ve been a member of the organization and attending conventions (at one time there was a second spring conference as well) for many years, but always as an educator. So this was a very special NCTE for me.

First of all, on Thursday, I visited my publisher, Candlewick Press. They are housed in a beautiful building and it was so kind for the executive director of school and library marketing, Sharon Ha...

NCTE and Me

I’m off to Boston tomorrow for the National Council of Teachers of English convention. With rare exceptions I’ve been attending yearly since I joined the organization way back in the 1990s. This year will be markedly different from all my previous times as I will be attending in a new and different capacity: as a trade book author. And so, in addition to attending sessions, visiting exhibits, and talking to like-minded educators as a teacher, I will also be attending events as an author. Hope...

Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore’s Parrots over Puerto Rico

One of my perpetual concerns is how we help children understand the complicated interrelated waysof wildlife and people, especially when it comes to endangered animals. My longtime experience in a school is that too often animals in places where lives are significantly different from those of my students are attended to at the expense of the people. That is, I fear that they will inadvertently develop a negative view of the people native to an area where animals are in danger rather than deve...

Coming Soon: Karen Foxlee’s Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy

Poking around Netgalley not long ago, I came across Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy and, intrigued by the description, began reading and was quickly hooked.It is a lovely, moody contemporary reworking of Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” set in a museum, no less. I find books set in museum to be tricky things — sometimes the setting seems more important than the rest of it. Fortunately, in this case, it totally works. Our heroine, Ophelia, has arrived in the never-identified city with her older siste...

Africa is My Home: Speaking and Signing in Farmington

Yesterday I had a splendid time speaking and signing at an event organized by the Farmington Historical Society and the First Church. It was held in the church’s Amistad Hall and the attendees were so well-informed about the Amistad affair and Sierra Leone that it was very special experience indeed. My great thanks to all those who organized this so beautifully.

Speaking with an attendee who was originally from Sierra Leone.

They brought a Mende Bunde Mask that looks very similar to the one on...

Africa is My Home in the New York Times Book Review

So cool to seeAfrica is My Home in an Africa Bookshelfin this week’s NYTBRcomplete with slide show.Even cooler to be there along with the latest Anna Hibiscus and some other very beautiful books.

Africa is My Home: Speaking and Signing in Farmington, CT

After the Amistad captives won their case and were freed, they had a long wait until sufficient funds were raised for a ship to take them back to Africa. Happily, there were people in Farmington, CT, who took them in. As part of my research for Africa is My Home I visited Farmington and I’m thrilled to be returning to speak and sign books this Sunday. The details are all here.

EW Does a Bracket Voting Contest for “Best YA Novel Of All Time.”

Now, of course, “best of all time” is hyperbole, but EW realizes that and still is going forward with their bracket game, pitting 64 titles against each other for the “best of all time” title. Now I tend to get my back up the minute I see another list, but I have to say this is a good one. The titles are mostly recognizably YA (the main one I’d argue with is Hugo Cabret as I see it as solidly juvenile and there are a few that were originally published for adults) and a great bunch indeed. And...