Betsy Bird's Blog, page 21

31 Days, 31 Lists: Best Picture Books of 2024

And just like that . . . it was over.

I always end with picture books when I do my 31 Days, 31 Lists series because in many ways I feel that they’re the backbone of the children’s book publishing industry. People connect to them in visceral, deeply emotional ways. They have ties to our own youth. The picture book you loved as a child cannot really be replaced by any other book in your lifetime. Now I cannot say I read every picture book this year, but I am far more confident with saying t...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Middle Grade Novels

Now I really really REALLY didn’t get to read all the middle grade fiction I wanted to this year. As a result, consider today’s list not to be a “Best Of” but rather a “What I Read and Legitimately Thought Was Splendid” since I missed a whole slew of titles. Feel free to mention in the comments what I should have also have read. Next year I vow to try to get more books in.

If you���d like a PDF of today���s list, you may find it here.

Curious about past middle grade lists? Then check ...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Where Is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox, ill. Judy Horacek

I confess to you today that I am inordinately delighted to finally be doing this particular Mem Fox book on our podcast today. I have been waiting YEARS to finally get to do today’s book. Literally! But it took Kate announcing her very first pregnancy for me to remember it again. I read this book over and over and over and over to my small children, and I have every intention of doing the same to Kate’s incipient child. Today we get to talk about sheep! Sheep of every type and stripe! We als...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Nonfiction Books for Older Readers

As with any list of longer titles, I have to say right off the bat that what you’ll find here is more of a representative sample of the great older fiction of 2024 than what was actually the “best”. After all, I’m just one person and I wasn’t able to read all the older informational titles available in 2024. Would that I could! I leave that job to ALA’s Sibert Committee. In any case, I was able to scrounge up some truly magnificent books. You’ll have seen a number of these on other lists, bu...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Nonfiction Picture Books

We’re down to the big final lists of the year now. If you’ve been following this series this month then you’ve seen me me talk about a lot of nonfiction picture books until now. This list takes the best of them, as well as a couple titles that don’t slot neatly into categories. I consider these the best of the best. The ones you cannot miss. See if you can find one you missed before now.

Would you like a PDF of today���s list? You can find one here!

Interested in previous years��� Non...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Blueberry Award Contenders (Celebrating A Love of Nature and the Environment)

Is today’s list a shameless plug for an award produced by Evanston Public Library each year? Tis! Is it also a necessary list of books in this day in age. Simply put, the Blueberry Awards are given to, “honor children���s literature that strengthens kids��� connections with nature and fosters action for the planet.” Essentially these are nature and climate books with an eye to instilling a love of the natural world, as well as a celebration of those books that give kids an eye to a path forw...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Biographies for Kids

The picture book biography is an art that I enjoy in great part thanks to the elasticity of the form. There are myriad ways to approach them. You can tell a life from birth to death. You can focus on a single event in childhood. You can discuss their life around the context of what they invented, wrote, drew, sang, etc. And thanks to innovations in the field, they don’t have to be famous people anymore. You can introduce the world to someone they should have known all along. This year, the b...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Science and Nature Books for Kids

My kids wonder why I do this particular list on Christmas, and I don’t really have a good answer for that. There’s no direct correlation between the holiday and the subject matter. Maybe you could consider it my present to all those nonfiction and informational book fans out there. In any case, I love this massive little list. It’s just FULL of titles that won’t really get their day in the sun unless we promote the bloody heck out them. Consider this the first shot across the bow!

Now yo...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Gross Books for Kids

You know, I wasn’t going to do this category this year. Seriously, I wasn’t! I had this big plan to make a couple new categories and this one, which has really only been around for a year or two. Then I looked at what I had and realized… I just can’t give you up, baby. Gross is too important to me. And gross, for what it’s worth, is something that kids actually enjoy. Now a lot of my lists are made for the gatekeepers, right? Not this one. Consider this one for the kiddos. If it’s gross, it’...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2024 Informational Fiction for Kids

Because I am normally such a nonfiction stickler, I sometimes get a little flack from folks when it comes to works of history or science or biography. You see, I hate the mixing and melding of fact and fiction, but only in cases where the work pretends to be entirely informational. I have no problem with mixing literary techniques with nonfiction, just so long as we acknowledge that that is what’s going on. This is why I was so grateful years ago when Melissa Sweet came up with the term “inf...