Monica Edinger's Blog, page 70

The New York Times Gets that Children’s and YA Books Are Not the Same

My recent rant “Stop Calling Books for Kids ‘Young Adult‘”got a lot of attention. Both from adults who read books for younger readers and weren’t understanding my frustration and others who work with children and did. Happily, the New York Times sees it as I do and starting December 16th* will be splitting their children’s chapter book list into two categories, middle grade and young adult. They are defining middle grade readers as being between 8 and 12 years old. As for young adult, they ar...

A Remarkable Young Inventor

I just heard about Kelvin Doe, a 15 year-old Sierra Leonean who is featured on the following video, part of an intriguing series about prodigies.

Bookish Gift Giving: Peter Sis’ The Conference of the Birds

Wondering what to give that dreamy child you know or an adult relative with a taste for beautiful books? Might I make a suggestion? Consider one ofPeter Sis’unique and beautiful books, say his latest,The Conference of the Birds.

An artist who works far and wide, the Czech Sís has received many honors including multiple Caldecott Honors, aMacarthur Fellowshipand most recentlythe Hans Christian Andersen Medal(you can see his acceptance speechhere). He is well-known for drawing on his personal hi...

Coming Soon: Jerry Spinelli’s Hokey Pokey

The border year for me was 6th grade. The idea of adulthood was anathema, but it was coming. Ten going on eleven, I veered back and forth, sometimes playing longstanding fantasy games with my younger sister and other times meanly and harshly dismissing them and her. One day I was happily playing with dolls and the next I couldn’t imagine ever doing so again and was out chasing and being chased by boys. Whether I liked it or not I was growing up.

It is this complicated time in life that Jerry S...

Accurate History— Who Decides?

There is a fascinating article in today’s New York Times that really gets to the heart of one of the struggles we, who are not trained historians, deal with when evaluating historical books for children. The article addresses the controversy going on regarding Henry Wieneck’s new book, Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves.According to the article, the book is getting rave reviews from “nonspecialists.”

But the Jefferson scholars who have weighed in have subjected “Master of...

Happy First Birthday, Nerdy Book Club!

I have found a happy place in the children’s book world where I’m often misidentified as a librarian. But I am very much a classroom teacher and have been delighted to discover others online who are equally involved with children and their books. Say 5th and 4th grade teachers Mary Lee Hahn and Franki Sibberson who write the blogA Year of ReadingandDonalyn Millerthe highly lauded author of The Book Whisperer and also a 4th grade teacher like myself. And now she, 4th grade teacher (what is it...

Philip Pullman’s Twice-Told Tales: “Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm”

Pullman’s investment in fairy tales is both intellectual and moral. From fiction, he tells us, we learn about good and evil, cruelty and kindness, but in ways that are always elliptical, as the text works on us in its own silent, secret way. “‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart,” he once observed. Fairy tales began as adult entertainment—stories told just for the fun of it. But with their exacting distribution of rewards and punishments, t...

Philip Pullman’s Twice-Told Tales: “Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm” : The New Yorker

Pullman’s investment in fairy tales is both intellectual and moral. From fiction, he tells us, we learn about good and evil, cruelty and kindness, but in ways that are always elliptical, as the text works on us in its own silent, secret way. “‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart,” he once observed. Fairy tales began as adult entertainment—stories told just for the fun of it. But with their exacting distribution of rewards and punishments, t...

Interview: Philip Pullman on his Retelling the Grimm Fairy Tales

Philip Pullman is one of the most thoughtful and creative writers of our day. Best know for the brilliant trilogy His Dark Materials, the former middle school teacher is also a longtime reteller and creator of fairy tales. While I’m partial to his lively online version of “Mossycoat” (first published as a picture book) and the original storyI Was a Rat! because of my work with Cinderella, I’ve found all his fairy tales whether retellings or original to be utterly delightful. And so when he to...

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons

Melissa Sweet’sBalloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Paradehas happily picked up some well deserved awards since its publication a year ago, sayNCTE’s Orbis Pictus awardandALA’s Sibert award. It is a fabulous book and worth checking out as we head into this year’s Thanksgiving celebrations. To learn more about it see my review and interviewwith Melissa along with video and a slide show here.