Betsy Bird's Blog, page 147

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Oliver Button Is a Sissy by Tomie dePaola

In honor of Tomie dePaola, who left us last week, I wanted to do one of his possible classics. We had already done Strega Nona on the show, but one other book might qualify for classic status. Trouble was, my library is closed and I couldnt get a physical copy of this book. Happily, Overdrive offered this ebook for borrowing. The title totally threw Kate off, and I couched it by saying that it is considered one of the original GLBTQIA+ books created for kids in America. It is by NO means as...

Timeless: Tom’s Midnight Garden. Guest Post by Fred Guida

Its guest post time again, and Fred Guida has returned with another classic in mind. Remember Toms Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce? Then take it away, Fred!

 

Original book cover. Illustration by Susan Einzig.

SPOILER ALERT: This article assumes that the reader has already read Toms Midnight Garden. If you have not, then do not read this article. Let nothing spoil or influence your initial experience of Philippa Pearces masterpiece.

What is it about Philippa Pearces Toms Midnight Garden...

Review of the Day: Ways to Make Sunshine by Renée Watson

Ways to Make Sunshine
By Renée Watson
Illustrated by Nina Mata
Bloomsbury Childrens Books
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0056-4
Ages 6-10
On shelves April 28th

I am the Lou Grant of childrens literary reviewers. I hate spunk. Thats kind of a blanket statement for what often turns out to be a fairly nuanced issue, so Ill scale it back a bit. I hate unearned spunk. Childrens books are just rife with the stuff, overflowing with cheery aphorisms and chipper jolts of self-esteem. Spunk, as far as I can tell,...

A Good Old-Fashioned Nonfiction / Informational Fiction Debate

Todays post is mighty interesting. It is both debate and guest post all at once. Amy Alznauer (who recently received a starred review in PW for her new book The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity: A Tale of the Genius Ramanujan) and I sat down and realized we were coming at common type of childrens book from two entirely different angles. But here . . . Ill let Amy explain it instead . . .

Over coffee recently, Betsy and I began discussing the fraught but fascinating topic of picture book...

A Nicer Guy You Couldn’t Hope to Meet: Saying Goodbye to Thomas Anthony “Tomie” dePaola

Jonathan Fickies/Getty Images

In 2013 I was in a bit of a bind. I was working on a book with two other authors (Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta) and one of the chapters I had assigned myself was an encapsulation of the truly great GLBTQIA+ creators of childrens books of the past, many of whom had had to keep their sexuality a secret due to the nature of the state of the world at the time. Turns out, I was unable to find any books on this topic and so I had to run around gathering together...

Beth Ferry Q&A on Fox & Rabbit

I dont know about you guys but during this pandemic Ive been doing very poorly at reading through my piles and piles of books. The price of parenthood, eh?

Actually, thats not strictly true. One kind of book Ive been doing VERY well with are comics and graphic novels. Because my kids adore them, weve just been ripping through scads of 2020 titles. They could be in danger of all running together, but todays book was so memorable that I still cant quite get it out of my mind. Fox & Rabbit by...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis, ill. Laura Cornell

For WEEKS Kate has been bugging me to find her a celebrity picture book. The catch was that I was insisting that the book be considered a classic. So I asked the listeners what the most classicky classic was and we managed to come up with todays book. Published in 1996 this definitely falls within our 20 year rule (we wont read anything thats younger . in theory) so we went for it. I figured it would be a particularly innocuous book to do with Kate. I had no idea shed take issue with tons of...

Review of the Day: Outside In by Deborah Underwood, ill. Cindy Derby

Outside In
By Deborah Underwood
Illustrated by Cindy Derby
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
$17.99
ISBN: 9781328866820
Ages 4-7
On shelves April 14th.

Under normal circumstances I like the reviews I write to be timeless. To the best of my ability I do not root them in a specific time or place, so that when they are discovered ten, twenty, thirty years down the road theyll be as pertinent as ever. But as I write this I am living through a historical event. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the United States...

Hey, Whatever Happened With the Rabbit hOle? The Future of the World’s First Explor-a-Storium

It was a while ago so its okay if you dont remember, but back in May of 2016 I wrote a piece on this blog called The Rabbit hOle or It doesnt have to be perfect, but it cant suck. Here is how it started:

This is big. Maybe the biggest idea in the realm of childrens literature Ive seen in years. Possibly my entire career. I dont like using the term gamechanger but I cant think of a better word in this particular case.

Hyperbole? Im prone to it, but in this particular case I was right on the...

Report from China from an International School Librarian: Making Sense of School Closures

I am firmly of the opinion that there is a great deal of benefit in remembering that, even as our world shuts down thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, this kind of thing has happened to other people before. There are school librarians throughout the world that have faced school closures for a variety of different reasons. Think of the schools that were closed during the SARS outbreak, Arab Spring, the onset of H1N1, swine flu, the ouster of President Morsi, and even Ebola. School librarians were...