Monica Edinger's Blog, page 9

Thoughts on Newbery: My Wishes for This Year

Before anything else I must say — I will admire and honor and applaud the winners, whether they were my personal favorites or not. For all awards are given subjectively. That is, every group of people will have their own tastes and orientations that are bound to affect their decisions, however hard they try for impartiality. As a reminder, here is a post I wrote a few years ago for the Nerdy Book Club giving a sense of how things happen: Top Ten Things You May Not Know About the Newbery Award...

In the Classroom: Teaching About Slavery Redux

I’ve written about the teaching of slavery before and will again. It is a topic I feel is urgently important for us to grapple with in the classroom.  A couple of years ago I wrote the blog post, “In the Classroom: Teaching About Slavery” in which I described my unit with my fourth graders on this challenging yet critical topic. Since then I’ve learned more and adjusted my teaching accordingly, especially after spending a week this past summer at the National Museum of African American Histor...

Thoughts on Newbery: Ten Years On

[image error]

 [image error]       [image error]      [image error]

It is the tenth anniversary of my Newbery.  Of course, it is really Laura Amy Schlitz’s and  honor-winners Christopher Paul Curtis, Gary M. Schmidt, and Jackie Woodson’s, but serving on that 2008 Committee was so very special that I do feel it is also mine somehow. What an  experience. That intense time of reading and thinking and reading and thinking. The tragic death of one of our original committee members, the wonderful Mikki Nevett. Our deliberations in a hidden-away room...

R.I.P Julius Lester

The great Julius Lester died yesterday, peacefully and surrounded by family.

I first met Julius in the mid-1990s in  rec.arts.books.children — an Internet space similar to Reddit where all manner of groups formed. Not long thereafter we both joined the child_lit discussion group and became online friends. Julius was the sage amongst us, willing to ponder, engage, and smooth ruffled feathers in an intelligent, elegant, and remarkable way. Those wise posts were lost with the end of child_lit, b...

WNYC, Apollo Theater Commemorate the Legacy of MLK

I spent a very moving afternoon yesterday at Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theater for a commemoration of Dr. King jointly presented by WNYC radio and the Apollo. First of all, there is something very special about being at such event in such a space. The audience was diverse and committed. Listening to them was as important to me as to those on the state. Of all the speakers the most electrifying was Dr. Clarence Jones, attorney, speech writer, and confident of Dr. King. There was prayer, calls...

Revisiting Philip Pullman’s I Was a Rat!

[image error]

Regular readers of this blog will know of my appreciation for the work of Philip Pullman. Most recently I raved about his latest, the first volume of The Book of Dust, La Belle Sauvage. After reading and listening to this I went back to the full-cast audio production of His Dark Materials and was happy to find that it was as good as ever. But there are others he is written outside Lyra’s world, among them the charming middle grade fairy tale, I Was a Rat!.  Here’s the publisher’s description...

The 6th National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, 2018-2019 is….

Jacqueline Woodson — Congratulations!!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
National Book Award Winner and four-time Newbery Honor Medalist encourages readers to embrace the impact reading can have on creating a more hopeful world with her platform, READING = HOPE x CHANGE

New York, NY, January 4, 2018 – The Children’s Book Council, Every Child a Reader, and the Library of Congress today announced the appointment of Jacqueline Woodson, four-time Newbery Honor Medalist, Coretta Scott King Book Award-winner...

Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down

[image error]

This was a book I knew I needed to be in the right place emotionally to read. Which I did, at last, yesterday.

And I thought it magnificent.

While I’ve read and admired other works by Reynolds, this may well be my favorite to date. The man has a way with language that is remarkable. Structured as a series of experiences/encounters/events for fifteen year old Will as he heads down in an elevator to take revenge on his brother’s killer, Long Way Down is powerful, gut-wrenching, and, all and al...

Action Words for 2018

Ironically, 2017 was both challenging and good for me. The challenges came in politics, in world events, in grappling with my privilege, in recognizing my need to change, in tense conversations, in pain global and personal. The good was because I was on sabbatical for seven of the twelve months, a happy and productive time that brought me back to school this fall refreshed. I don’t have resolutions as such, but here are some words I’m living by these days and will do so all the more deliberat...

Patrick McDonnell’s Little Red Cat and George Herriman’s Krazy Kat — Relatives?

Reading Roger’s Sutton’s post about Patrick McDonnell’s Caldecott chances for his delightful The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC’s (the Hard Way)*, made me think fondly McDonnell’s  illustrations for the Mac Barnett-penned The Skunk which I, along with my follow jurors Marjorie Ingall and Frank Viva, honored with a New York Times Best Illustrated nod back in 2015. Both these books and other work by McDonnell have always felt to me full of sly homages to the George Herriman com...