Betsy Bird's Blog, page 169

This Memorial Day, Create a Military History Book Club

What I love about the world of books for youth is that I am consistently amazed and impressed by the sheer variety of topics out there. For this Memorial Day, I was approached by Marc Aronson, author and professor, about an idea that he and some of his students can been cooking up. He said:

In the fall of 2018 I taught a small class on Young Adults Reading and Literacy to Master’s student in the library program at Rutgers University. I learned that, by coincidence, four out of the seven wome...

Review of the Day: Maximillian Fly by Angie Sage

Maximillian FlyBy Angie SageKatherine Tegen Books (an imprint of Harper Collins)$16.99ISBN: 978-0-06-257116-8Ages 10 and upOn shelves June 11th

If you are going to make up a world, be it good or be it bad, I sincerely hope you commit to the bit. Think things through. Work out the details. Plan out the plumbing (so to speak). A poorly realized fictional world can either be painful or a bore (or painfully boring, I suppose). Most are middling. They’ll sport perfectly serviceable locations but...

Book Chat: LeUyen Pham on Bear Came Along

I’m trying something new this year. Every time I read a book for kids I immediately put down my thoughts and a summary of it, for future use. Some books you read and you have to use such notes to even recall what they were about. Not today’s book. Here’s how I summarized the plot in my notes:

“Until… the bear fell in the water,

until…. the froggy met new friends,

until… you read this book, you’ll never see how sometimes navigating the unexpected can yield great and wonderful things.”

A bit on...

Off-Handed Art: Collecting the Sketches of Visiting Children’s Book Creators

The other day I wrote a post about those books so beloved by librarians that they’d rather lock them away in a cabinet or a drawer than weed them. As a result, I received countless comments from people confessing to me what their locked up books were. Then I got this comment from Meg. It read:

“I haven’t been able to keep them in the system, but I’ve rescued them from the discard pile: Marguerite de Angeli’s books including Skippack School, Thee, Hannah, and Henner’s Lydia. Yup, I’m in Penns...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty

“It’s like the Where’s Waldo of literature!”

This week we’re celebrating another cult classic picture book (the last one we did, I’d argue, was The Lonely Doll). There aren’t a ton of them out there, but this one certainly earns the designation. The timing of this podcast has much to do with the fact that Mr. Stamaty has just released MacDoodle Street, a collection of his adult strips. In the course of things we discover that this book has 27 pipes, we discuss whether or not Mr. Stamaty real...

Review of the Day: Maybe Tomorrow? by Charlotte Agell, ill. Ana Ramírez González

Maybe Tomorrow? By Charlotte AgellIllustrated by Ana Ramírez GonzálezScholastic PressISBN: 9781338214888$17.99Ages 4-7On shelves now.Sometimes what a picture book doesn’t say to the reader bears as much importance as what it does say. Or maybe it’s what a book doesn’t do. The books that people write for children reflect the times in which they are written. And for all that the world is a dark and gloomy place, I’ve been very cheered by the ways in which Americans have been willing to confron...

What We Keep Hidden Away

This post begins with a tweet.

When I read Sharon’s message here, I wanted two things simultaneously. First, I wanted that Jack Kent book for myself. In a world where the most Kent you can hope for is The Caterpillar and the Polliwog or Joey Runs Away, I wanted this robin in all his roly-poly glory. Second, Shannon said something key there: “… we still have this one which we keep in a special cabinet to extend its life.”

Lord howdy, I thought I was the only one with that cabinet. Or, in my...

Book Trailer Reveal: My Name is Wakawakaloch by Chana Stiefel and Mary Sullivan

On the one hand, whenever I post a book jacket reveal or a book trailer reveal, I feel inordinately lazy. I mean, there goes another blog post I didn’t have to write. On the other hand, sometimes these things go above and beyond the call of duty. Today’s trailer is for the picture book My Name is Wakawakaloch by Chana Stiefel, illustrated by Mary Sullivan. And wrack my brain though I have, I couldn’t think of a picture book that specifically discussed the mispronunciation of the protagonist’...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Perez and Martina by Pura Belpre, ill. Carlos Sanchez

“Folktales! They don’t end the way you expect ’em to . . . if they’re authentic.”

If you are familiar with #ownvoices children’s books, then you know that these are titles where a book is written by someone with learned experience from the culture they are representing. We might have quite a debate over what the oldest #ownvoices picture book published in America is, that is arguably famous to this day, and that also is written by someone who wasn’t white and European. My vote goes to today’...

Review of the Day: The Crayon Man by Natascha Biebow and Steven Salerno

The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola CrayonsBy Natascha BiebowIllustrated by Steven SalernoHoughton Mifflin Harcourt$17.99ISBN: 9781328866844Ages 4-7On shelves now

Someone once pointed out to me that a good 30% of my reviews start out with me saying, in one form or another, something along the lines of “I didn’t think I’d like this book but then I read it blah blah blah amazing blah blah blah original blah blah blah go read it.” And the jury finds me . . . guilty as cha...