Betsy Bird's Blog, page 228

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day 19 – 2016 Early Chapter Books

Alongside yesterday’s easy book list, this is the other list that could have been a little beefier this year. Not a lot of racial diversity to be found, to be frank. That fault lies with me, not the books published in 2016. Still, with that in mind, this list is a collection of great books I read this year but should NOT be taken as the best of the year by any means.

2016 Early Chapter Books

Armstrong: The Adventurous Journey of a Mouse to the Moon by Torben Kuhlmann

It’s difficult to know...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day 18 – 2016 Easy Books

I first came up with the idea for a 31 Days, 31 Lists series in late September. Having kept track of a number of books over the year, it made a logical kind of sense. But as we got closer to the actual lists I realized that in some categories I’m going to be seriously lacking. Not having planned to do this series earlier in the year, I neglected certain areas.

All this is to say (slash, give lame excuses) that today’s list is a bit on the skimpy side. I have no doubt that the Geisel committte...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day 17 – 2016 Older Picture Books

Time to define my terms again!

This is undoubtedly the most subjective of all my lists. Basically, what I’m saying with it, is that picture books are far more wide-ranging than many people suspect. If you say “picture book” they’ll imagine something for a 4-year-old. Nothing wrong with picture books for 4-year-olds, of course, but picture books hit a great swath of ages and intellects. Some really aren’t for little kids.

This timing on this one is pretty interesting as well. Just yesterday on...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day 16 – Oddest Children’s Books of 2016

Back in August of this year Travis Jonker wrote a great post on 100 Scope Notes called The Most Astonishingly Unconventional Children’s Books of 2016. It was an excellent post, really getting into the nitty gritty of what it is that makes a book “unconventional”. My list is a little different from Travis’s, though there’s definitely some overlap. Regardless, here are the books that just strike me as so unique and strange and wild and wonderful that they could only be published in the 21st cen...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day 15 – 2016 Fairy Tales / Folktales

Credit where credit is due, there’s no way I could keep up this 31 Days, 31 Lists series if I hadn’t put in my time with New York Public Library. It was there that I learned precisely how to read, track, remember, and call forth the books I read in a single year. The 100 Books List the library puts out every year proved to be my training grounds. I loved working on that list committee. I also loved how that list was separated. One section was always dedicated to Fairy Tales and Folktales, and...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day 14 – Fabulous 2016 Photography Books for Kids

When I was in college I temporarily rejected my natural inclinations to be a librarian (an occupation I dismissed as boring and nightmarishly appealing) and decided I would become a photographer. So got a B.A. with a concentration in Fine Arts – Photography. And what I learned from my stint as an architectural/portrait/sports photographer was simple: I’m awful that job. Shutter speeds are not my friends and f-stops cause me to break out in hives. So I caved and became a librarian after all,...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day 13 – 2016 Books with a Message

Hm.

Awkward title on today’s post. “Books With a Message”. Be a lot cleaner if I just said “Didactic Books” or “Books That Try to Teach You Something.” No . . . no . . . that’s worse. I think you get the general gist of what I’m going for, though. Today we’re highlighting books that do something inordinately difficult, and do it well. There are few things worse to read than preachy children’s books that thwap young readers over the heads with whatever message it is that they’re trying to impa...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2016 International Imports for Kids

I know it gets confusing but this list is a bit different from the Calde-not list from a couple days ago. The reason is simple. While the Calde-not list looks primarily at books with illustrations so distinguished they could easily win major illustration awards if given half a chance, this is list is more for those books that may not blow you away on a first glance, but that make our publishing landscape richer for their very existence. I was inordinately pleased after I read each and every o...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2013 International Imports for Kids

I know it gets confusing but this list is a bit different from the Calde-not list from a couple days ago. The reason is simple. While the Calde-not list looks primarily at books with illustrations so distinguished they could easily win major illustration awards if given half a chance, this is list is more for those books that may not blow you away on a first glance, but that make our publishing landscape richer for their very existence. I was inordinately pleased after I read each and every o...

31 Days, 31 Lists: Day Eleven – 2016 Bilingual Books for Kids

I wish I had the numbers in front of me. I wish I could tell you how many bilingual books for kids have been published in the past and how that number compares to today. If we’re going to speak to my experience as a children’s librarian over the past decade, all I can say with any certainty is that while I don’t know if the number of bilingual books has increased, I do feel as if I’m seeing a wider range of languages. That is a wholly unscientific speculation, of course. In any case, enjoy th...