Betsy Bird's Blog, page 132

Interview and Cover Reveal of The League of Picky Eaters by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic

The other day I participated in one of those online memes where it will list something like 50 different kinds of food and you report how many of them you would willingly eat. My number was woefully low and after I reported it people started boasting their own numbers loud and proud. In our society it is a badge of honor to have a wide palette. One thing I noticed, though, was that members of my own family would write in and, like myself, they too had low numbers. Picky eating, it would seem, ha...

Exclusive Cover Reveal & Interview with Margarita Engle: A SONG OF FRUTAS

Sun. Warm, delicious sunlight. We’re mid-Autumn but already the sun of summer feels like it was all just a beautiful dream. And trapped as we are by the COVID virus in our homes, it’s not like we can hop a plane to a sunny climate. In lieu of that, we can do the next best thing. We can let author Margarita Engle take us there via her latest picture book A Song of Frutas / Un pregón de frutas.

Today, Ms. Engle joins me as we discuss her latest, take some peeks at interior spreads, and finally ...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Freight Train by Donald Crews

Last week I gave Kate a book so chock full of details that one listener said it was the literary equivalent of The House on the Rock. In other words, just STUFFED full of stuff. This week, I went an entirely different direction. Now I’d been avoiding doing Freight Train by Donald Crews on the podcast for a while. Why? Because it is an exceedingly simple title. Almost pure in its limited elements. And, to be frank, I couldn’t figure out what Kate could possibly think to talk about. But as tim...

Review of the Day – Mr. Invincible: Local Hero by Pascal Jousselin

Mister Invincible: Local Hero
By Pascal Jousselin
Colored by Laurence Croix
Translated by David Bryon, James Hogan, and Ivanka T. Hahnenberger
Magnetic Press
$15.99
ISBN: 978-1-942367-61-1
On shelves now

My 9-year-old has proven herself to be a good judge of a comic book’s character. Thanks to both my current job working in a library and the state of children’s graphic novel publishing at this point in the 21st century, I am now able to come home on a regular basis with comics for my kids. With su...

The Scourge of Skyward Knitting Needles: Pandemic Edition!

Yes! It’s every knitter’s favorite fact finding post, in which we closely examine the knitting needles in a whole host of different children’s books and determine which books get it right and which books get it wrong.

As a refresher, let us remind you that when it comes to knitting there is one particular way that is most common to hold one’s own needles, whether you’re knitting a fair isle sweater in Dublin or purling a scarf in New Zealand.

Here is what a pair of hands knitting look li...

The 101 Great Books for Kids List: 2020 Edition

When I left New York Public Library after 11 years, I took a number of things with me. And one of them, was a tradition. You see, since 1901, New York Public Library has produced a list of its favorite children’s books. In the past, this list has gone by any number of names. Whatever you call it, it takes an entire year to pull it together. But since I moved to the Chicago area, I knew that I wanted that kind of a list for my own library. And so the 101 Great Books for Kids list was born.

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Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Animalia by Graeme Base

My attempts to break Kate go nowhere, even when she is presented with the most detail heavy book of her podcast career. Now Kate starts off this podcast saying that she does NOT want to talk about the presidential race. Indeed, we recorded this on Thursday, and you all know how different the world was then. Quote Kate, she just wanted to do a book about “cute cats and slugs”. And for the first time ever, that is a request I could accommodate. Now I gave her the choice of splitting this into ...

Review of the Day: King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender

By Kacen Callender
Scholastic Press
$17.99
ISBN: 9781338129335
Ages 10-14
On shelves now

I suppose that even if you come late to a party, you should get some kind of credit for showing up at all, right? When I was a younger reviewer I’d get this huge kick out of being one of the first people online to review the newest books. It didn’t matter if they weren’t going to come out for 6 months, I’d still put that review out there into the world. These days, with the sheer number of titles being churn...

Aven Green, Sleuthing Machine: A Dusti Bowling Interview and Cover Reveal

One of the millions of things I’d love to study, and never will, is how regionalism affects children’s taste in books. Why is a book in one part of the country adored beyond measure by kids while in another part they wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot-pole? When I moved to Evanston, Illinois I was very keen to see what these Midwestern kids were reading these days. What separated them from their NYC ilk? And there were some small differences here and there, but generally they liked all the same s...

Cover Reveal and Interview: What’s Catherine Gilbert Murdock Up To These Days?

About all my brain is capable of processing on this, the day after the election, is children’s books. Particularly books by authors I already admire. When Catherine Gilbert Murdock won a Newbery Honor for her title The Book of Boy it was the surprise win I needed. Since its publication she’s been quiet, working on a new book. A book set in the past. A book illustrated by Caldecott Award winner Paul O. Zelinsky. A book . . . with cats.

Here’s the description from the publisher:

Newbery Hono...