Betsy Bird's Blog, page 181

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Wordless Picture Books

Its use is universal but its respect, nil.  Consider the multiple uses of the wordless picture book and its capabilities. How else can you make all children love reading, regardless of their comfort with words? Wordless picture books are pooh-poohed in the same way as comic books. Sequential art is considered, by some, a lower form of literature. Yet as defined by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics, comics (and in many ways, wordless picture books) could be defined as “Juxtaposed pictorial...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg

Truly a book for our times. Is there any other picture book out there that causes kids to question what they’ve been told right from the start, more than this one? I make the argument in the podcast that this book is timely. It prepares children, in an era of news that is not always reliable, to not take everything at face value.  Kate does initially believe what the book tells her at the beginning. Later, when reading it, she tries to tie all the stories into a single tale. If you know of an...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Board Book Reprints & Adaptations

What’s even better than a board book the first time around? A board book a second or third or forty-fifth time around!! Just take a gander at some of the books that saw new life in 2018, and you’ll be forced to agree that 2018 really was a banner year for board books.

2018 Board Book Reprints & Adaptations

Baby Says by John Steptoe

The good news is that a longstanding crime has been corrected. I’ve been waiting, not so patiently, for more than a decade for this book to be republished. To my...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Great Board Books & Pop-Up Books

I love that we always kick off the 31 lists with board books. What could be cheerier or more inspiring? This year, I’m adding in a selection of pop-up books for spice. And, since board books don’t always skew young, I split this list into two separate categories; one for babies and one for toddler.

Now I’ve taken a little snapshot of a recent issue of Publishers Weekly. Each issue contains a look at how print sales did nationwide. See if you can find the outlier here:

You may feel that this b...

It Starts Tomorrow! The Return of 31 Days, 31 Lists

I’ve done it once. I’ve done it twice. I’ve done it . . . thrice? Not yet, but that changes tomorrow. All year long I read children’s books. My co-workers joke that I’m never in the lunch room without a big stack of titles appropriate for 5-year-olds. And you know what? They’re completely correct. What to do with all that information? Why, put it into list-form, of course. Once again we’re doing the 31 Days, 31 Lists in December. A list for every day of the week. The line-up isn’t really cha...

Book Trailer Premiere: It’s Not Hansel and Gretel by Josh Funk

It’s a little crazy but do you know how hard it is to find a decent edition of Jack and the Beanstalk these days? The Galdone version is, I’m sorry, really weird and the E. Nesbit too long. Honestly, one of the best versions I’ve run across is Josh Funk’s It’s Not Jack and the Beanstalk which my son really adores. It’s not just the fact that the book breaks down the fourth wall (though that doesn’t hurt). It’s the beauty that comes when any fairytale character points out the innately ridiculo...

Walking and Talking with . . . Kenneth Oppel

The holidays came early this year. Author and cartoonist Steve Sheinkin is back with another interview in his “Walking and Talking” series. Today’s subject is none other than Kenneth Oppel. How is a first draft like a sine wave? Let the cartoon do the explaining on this one.

Don’t forget to catch up with the whole series!

Walking and Talking with John Corey Whaley Walking and Talking with Jenni Holm Walking and Talking with Gene Luen Yang Walking and Talking with Laura Vaccaro Seeger Walkin...

Book Trailer Reveal: Lily & Kosmo in Outer Outer Space by Johnathan Ashey

The book trailer. It’s a weird invention. When publishers started to create them, the librarians, booksellers, and educators sat back and tried to figure out their ultimate purpose. It’s been a little more than a decade since their emergence and I don’t think we’re any closer to determining their final purpose. I’m working on a theory right now that the longer a trailer exists, the better its chances of continually guaranteeing a book stays in print. Consider some of the most popular book tra...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Arrow to the Sun by Gerald McDermott

Let’s see. We did Tikki Tikki Tembo and Little Black Sambo. Seems like Arrow to the Sun is the natural complement to those two, don’t you think? Kate and I haven’t dug deep into a book with racist issues in a while, and we’ve never done any books where white folks told the stories of American Indians. In this post-Thanksgiving episode we give as much of the history of this book as possible, all thanks to the work of K.T. Horning and Debbie Reese. Meanwhile, Kate gets confused about the actual...

The Kidlit Stuffed Animals You’d Most Like to See

The subgenre. A marvelous method of uncovering the obsessions of your fellow human beings. I’ll give you an example. I like children’s literature, a subgenre of literature as a whole, but a broad one. There are a lot of different directions you can go with it. Subgenres within this subgenre, so to speak. I might be into collecting old children’s books. I might be into cosplaying Ms. Frizzle at comic conventions. I might wallpaper my home in f&gs. Or I might be into literary stuffed animals. T...