Betsy Bird's Blog, page 179

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Older Funny Books

I’m not telling you anything new when I say that 2018 was not a particularly hilarious year for a lot of us. All the more reason to give our kids something to laugh about. Today’s crop of books is for the 9-12 year old crowd, but that’s flexible. You might know an 8-year-old that finds P.G. Wodehouse sublime or a 16-year-old that sneaks Captain Underpants books at night. Whatever the case, no matter how badly things go, there is room for humor in our world. Sometimes, we need it more desperat...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Comics for Kids

Ever wondered why we librarians call our comics “graphic novels” all the time?

Behold. The book that started it all:

This is my own personal copy. It represents, to me, the long storied tradition of librarians looking down their noses at comics. A tendency that continues to this day, actually. And it all began with this book.

You see, back in the 1950s, mainstream comics were often gross, disturbing, violent, sexist, hugely racist, and any other number of awful things. Not all of them were,...

31 Days, 31 Books: 2018 Early Chapter Books

At my library I run the children’s book list committee. We meet every month to discuss the books that we’ve been reading and to recommend titles to one another. And every year, when it is time for us to discuss the early chapter books, I have to make a little caveat. “Folks,” I’ll say, “I have to warn you about something. I like strange early chapter books. Imports and translations. Books that don’t fit into any category really, so I tend to throw them in with the Early Chapter Books. You hav...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

When Kate said to me in a previous episode that I couldn’t name a classic Christmas children’s book the challenge was ON! But what to do? There are a lot of different choices, so why not start at the top? The last time we saw Dr. Seuss we were reading If I Ran the Zoo. Not an auspicious beginning for the usually good doctor. Now Kate had seen the animated special of the Grinch, but she had never seen the book. A shocker! In the course of things she manages to locate a case where Seuss got laz...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Easy Books

When I make these lists, I normally do so to recommend all the books on them. But once in a while I’ll use the lists for a different purpose. The most controversial children’s book of 2018 didn’t come from the areas you might usually expect. One of them was, as it turns out, an easy book.

As for the other easy books, I think you’ve heard me say before that in many ways they’re the most difficult titles to write. They are most perfect when they are most simple. And they are most simple, when t...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Poetry Books

I think I need to revisit how I review books. Going through the list of today’s books, I was consistently finding titles I’d loved throughout the year. Yet when I tried to determine how many I’d actually reviewed on this blog in 2018, it was all of two. Two!  That’s it? I reviewed more folktales this year than poetry? Well, something’s gotta give because I’ve seen a really lovely amount of time and attention spent on works of poetry lately. It used to be they were the sole property of April a...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Oddest Children’s Books of 2018

Bit of a judgement call, today’s title, don’t you think? What one person might consider “odd” could easily be another’s cup of tea.  It’s important, then, to clarify that I don’t see “odd” as a bad thing at all. Every year peculiar books for kids sneak into the publishing cycle. You see, in general lot of children’s literature is pushed to be familiar. After all, the safe and recognizable has been proven to sell very well with parents. But if, like me, you have to read the same stories over a...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Fairy Tales, Folktales, and Religious Tales

You may have noticed that I re-named this particular list this year. In the past I was content to call it “Folk and Fairytales” and leave it at that. But white folks like myself have a nasty tendency to call another culture’s religious story a “folktale”. Happens all the time. So I decided to open it up a bit and let in the “Religious Tales” part. The advantage to this is that now I can include a slew of other books that might not have made it otherwise. And, if you know me, then you’ll know...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Fabulous Photography Books for Kids

In college I double majored. At the time, I was rejecting my librarian destiny, and got it into my head that photography was the way to go. Librarianship was dull and dusty. Photography was sexy and adventurous. Too adventurous it turned out. That, combined with my inability to figure out what an F-Stop was, put an end to the whole endeavor, but I never lost my love of the form. Every year I try to keep an eye out for any children’s book that gives ample attention to photographs in some way....

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Books with a Message

Lest we forget, the entire reason children’s books even exist is that they were meant to provide some form of moral instruction for the young and impressionable. Want to write a book for kids that’s silly and doesn’t really mean anything? It can be done but it’s actually pretty darn hard. Publishers know that those books that sell well are those that instill the values that parents with pocketbooks want in their offspring. But there’s a danger to what I deem “Message Books”. Mainly, that a g...