Betsy Bird's Blog, page 225
February 1, 2017
Art in the Children’s Room: Elisha Cooper Style – Part Two!
In 2012 I wrote a piece for this blog entitled Art in the Children’s Room: Elisha Cooper Style. In it, I wrote the following:
Here at New York Public Library you might think that the branches are filled to brimming with the art of local authors and illustrators. While it may be true that we have some lovely pieces by Ezra Jack Keats and Faith Ringgold here and there, it doesn’t come up all that often. So I need not tell you how excited I was when I heard that Elisha Cooper had volunteered...
January 31, 2017
Steam Trains and Fire Poles: Outdated Tropes in Picture Books
I’m sure you heard the news. After more than 100 years Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey have closed. Their final performances will be in May of this year due to declining ticket sales. Now I’m sure that there are small time circus operations out there in the world, but for a lot of places in America Ringling and B&B was it. You got your circus kicks through them and no one else. So when I was sitting in a Little, Brown & Co. preview breakfast at this past ALA Mid-Winter Conference in Atlant...
January 29, 2017
Review of the Day: The Secret Project by Jonah Winter, ill. Jeanette Winter
The Secret Project
By Jonah Winter
Illustrated by Jeanette Winter
Beach Lane Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6913-5
Ages 4 and up
On shelves February 7th
Writing history for kids used to be a simple affair. I remember from my own youth the deadly dull books that somehow seemed to always cover the same subjects over and over again. You’d have the major wars. The occasional biography of one of the ten usual subjects for kids (Earhart, Edison, King, etc.). M...
January 28, 2017
Video Sunday: Sure hope you like music . . .
The news, man. It’s overwhelming. I look on my Facebook and my Twitter and it’s all I can see. The days when I could stroll along in blissful ignorance are long gone. This past week was particularly bad so . . . let’s watch Chance the Rapper sing the Arthur theme song with Ziggy Marley, Jon Batiste, and Stephen Colbert.
That’s better. But just to make myself completely happy I should probably watch Migos freestyle to Llama Llama Red Pajama.
Thanks to Shannon Ozirny for the first video and J...
January 25, 2017
I Spy With My Little Eye . . . Treasures at the 2017 ALA Midwinter Conference
Today is a nicely visual little post! We’re going to take a gander at what I saw when I attended the ALA Midwinter Conference this past weekend. The large publishers can only highlight a small selection from their list. The little publishers can highlight everything coming out in a given season. Bearing that in mind, I’m going to run through the images of the books I saw that for one reason or another caught my eye. With sparse commentary on the side . . .
Well, lookie there! Could that be m...
January 23, 2017
Post-Game Wrap-Up: The ALA Youth Media Awards
Photo courtesy of the American Library Association website.
Now THAT is how you do an award season, my friends. Boy oh boy, I was mighty pleased MIGHTY PLEASED by a good 98% of the winners (and of that 2% that didn’t please me, I’ll never tell).
I fully intend to do a post about all the neat stuff I saw on the conference floor but just for today let’s do a quickie recap of some of the award winners and what they say about the state of the world today. A couple folks asked if I’d be doing my u...
January 21, 2017
The Women’s March: Artists Bring Their Talents
Normally on a Sunday I like to do a light little Video Sunday piece, just highlighting the vids of the week. Not today. In light of yesterday’s record breaking marches worldwide, I’d like to pay homage to the children’s book illustrators that used their considerable talents to support the march, marchers, and more. In case you missed them, here are the artists who deserve a fair tip of the hat.
By the way, I’m going to include not just posters at the march in this post but any art that seemed...
January 19, 2017
Review of the Day: Princess Cora and the Crocodile by Laura Amy Schlitz, ill. Brian Floca
Princess Cora and the Crocodile
By Laura Amy Schlitz
Illustrated by Brian Floca
Candlewick Press
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-7636-4822-0
Early Chapter Book
On shelves March 28th
What if.
What if Good Night Moon had been illustrated by someone other than Clement Hurd?
What if.
What if Charlotte’s Web had had an artist who wasn’t Garth Williams?
What if.
What if Princess Cora and the Crocodile by Laura Amy Schlitz hadn’t been illustrated by Brian Floca?
That’s a lot of “what ifs” to contend with....
January 17, 2017
Award Season Speculation: How Has the Process of Discussion Changed Over the Years?
Are you excited? I’m excited. Who wouldn’t be? Very soon, almost too soon, it will be Monday morning and all around the world we’ll be able to tune into the live feed of ALA’s Youth Media Awards to hear the winners of the Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, etc. Not like in the old days when you had to either be there or have a friend there near a pay phone. News travels far faster these days, and it’s not just news. If the internet era has given us anything it’s been the ability for these major awar...
January 16, 2017
Exclusive Deleted Scene: Steve Sheinkin’s Undefeated
This past Sunday you might have seen a review in the New York Times for Steve Sheinkin’s latest book Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team. In the event that it piqued your interest, you were familiar with the Radiolab episode on the same subject, or you simply like Steve Sheinkin (or all of the above), it is with the greatest of pleasure that I present to you today a cut scene from the book, on sale today.
The description of the book puts it this way:
Jim Thorpe...
