Betsy Bird's Blog, page 194
May 22, 2018
Review of the Day: Seeing Into Tomorrow by Richard Wright and Nina Crews
Seeing Into Tomorrow
Haiku by Richard Wright
Biography and illustrations by Nina Crews
Millbrook Press (a division of Lerner)
$19.99
ISBN: 978-1-5124-1865-1
Ages 6-10
On shelves now
I hate that phrase, “A picture’s worth a thousand words”. It’s trite. Simplistic. And horrendously true. Pictures have power. Take the story that’s been handed to us about African-Americans for decades. The images that appear in our news all tell stories of black violence, crime, and poverty. Stories that p...
May 21, 2018
Cover Reveal and Dual Interview: Wings by Cheryl Klein, ill. Tomie dePaola
Okay. So I kinda sorta intensely love this.
First off, remember Cheryl Klein? A.k.a. the continuity editor of Harry Potter? A.k.a. one of the best editors of our age who not too long ago left Scholastic to work for Lee & Low Books? I’ve known Cheryl for years. We used to do Kidlit Drink Nights (the first ones, though they were based off of the David Levithan YA version) back in New York before I started producing offspring. She had a podcast with her husband called The Narrative Breakdown tha...
May 20, 2018
Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith
I’d like to offer a word of warning to my mother with this one. Somehow, this ended up being our longest episode. Mom, if you listen to this on the treadmill, you might do yourself a serious injury. It’s a whopping 48:17 (and that’s edited down!). I guess it’s not surprising when you do a book as long as SCM. And boy howdy do we come up with all kinds of stuff to discuss here.
Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or your preferred m...
May 16, 2018
A “child’s story for adults”: Digging Deep Into James Baldwin’s Only Children’s Book
The other night my husband and I plopped ourselves in front of the old Netflix delivery system (television) and decided amongst ourselves to watch the documentary I Am Not Your Negro featuring author James Baldwin. The book of the same name had been circulating beautifully in my library for quite some time, so I was curious about the doc. In many ways I’ve never explored the works of Baldwin fully. In that film I got a cursory crash course on him with a specific look at how his words carry we...
May 14, 2018
Goofs, Gaffes, and Everything In-Between: Nonfiction Considers Mistakes
About three years ago I reviewed the book Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower by Greg Pizzoli. If you missed it, it was a true crime picture book (a rare beastie) about a man born Robert Miller who turned to a life of conning. Ultimately it ends with him in prison but it was intriguing to me that someone would write a picture book biography of, ostensibly, a “bad guy”.
Fast forward three years and the country is a different place. Different president. Di...
Goofs, Gaffs, and Everything In-Between: Nonfiction Considers Mistakes
About three years ago I reviewed the book Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower by Greg Pizzoli. If you missed it, it was a true crime picture book (a rare beastie) about a man born Robert Miller who turned to a life of conning. Ultimately it ends with him in prison but it was intriguing to me that someone would write a picture book biography of, ostensibly, a “bad guy”.
Fast forward three years and the country is a different place. Different president. Di...
May 13, 2018
Fuse 8 n’ Kate: King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood, ill. Don Wood
When it comes to selecting books for the podcast, I tend towards those books that have lots of details. And this one, as Kate was quick to learn, could go head to head with Where’s Waldo in terms of hidden details. Alas, no clowns this week but we make up for it in other ways. Along the way we manage to identify The Ghost of Christmas Present, Chekov’s plug, and the degree to which this book is like the movie Splash.
Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, S...
May 10, 2018
A Salute to the Reprints: Here’s to Getting A Second Chance in 2018
Last week Publishers Weekly produced the article Forever Young: Backlist Backbones 2018. In the piece, the magazine highlighted a sampling of some books getting cover redesigns, new printings, and other forms of reprinted attention this year. I too have been watching the reprints of older titles with a steady eye. And while I like a lot of the books in the PW piece, there are so many others worth noting! Here’s my own list (with no repeats of the PW article) of other backlist titles getting...
May 8, 2018
Review of the Day: The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty
The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl
By Stacy McAnulty
Random House Books for Young Readers
$16.99
ISBN: 9781524767570
Ages 9-12
On shelves now
The world would have us believe that the left brained and right brained amongst us can never see eye-to-eye. Think about it. How many times have you heard a perfectly intelligent person say with a shrug, “I’m bad at math”? This is considered acceptable behavior amongst the literary. In fact, the sentence might, at most, elicit some sympathetic...
May 7, 2018
Up Lifting: A Talk With Dave Eggers
I’ve been thinking about people I’ve interviewed over the years, both in person and on this blog. Generally, the in-person interviews are where the big names come out to play. Your Neil Patrick Harrises. Your Art Spiegelman / Francoise Moulys. Your Katherine Paterson/Lois Lowry/ Rebecca Stead / R.L. Stine mash-ups (not the mix you were expecting, eh?). On the blog I interview authors and illustrators that dwell almost exclusively in the children’s book publishing world. Good folks. Smart folk...
