Betsy Bird's Blog, page 237

Stranger Things Booklist: This One’s for the Kids

It’s a booklist kind of week.

Like many children of the 80s I’ve been just delighted by the Netflix 8-part horror fest Stranger Things. I may not get most of the Stephen King and John Carpenter references but the E.T., Aliens, and Akira stuff hits home hard. For work I decided to put up a Stranger Things recommended book display for adult type folks. When I looked online I could only find about two or three such lists already in existence. Odd. But of course, then I started thinking about ch...

The Hamilton Reading List: For Those Kids That Just Can’t Get Enough

This summer I was walking about the Printer’s Row Book Festival in lovely Chicago, IL, passing a group of about twelve 16-year-old girls. All of whom were singing “Satisfied” from the musical Hamilton. It reminded me of similar past experiences walking by large groups of 8-year-olds singing Frozen two years ago. Now Hamilton is slated to open in Chicago in November and I’ve been putting together various booklists for my adult library patrons. And that’s when it hit me. I know 6-year-olds who...

Fusenews: My Weirdest Childhood Mystery Is Solved

A little nepotism to go with your coffee this morning? Don’t mind if I do! As you may know, my husband Matt Bird has a book coming out this spring that is a culmination of his blog’s breakdown of what makes a good story. Called The Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers (Writers’ Digest, 2017), Matt takes his Ultimate Story Checklist and makes it easy, accessible, and invaluable. I’ve mentioned all this before. What’s new is that he’s now doing...

Talking Tinyville: Roping Brian Biggs Into Conversation

I have a two-year-old son. He is very cute. He is also the most stereotypical boy reader I’ve ever encountered in my life. Trucks, trains, construction equipment, you name it. Unsurprisingly he’s also keen on community workers so every other day we read through Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. Or, when we’re feeling a bit jaunty, we’ll reach for Everything Goes On Land by Brian Biggs. Combine that with his other relatively new obsession with the Brownie and Pearl books (a...

Review of the Day: Ghost by Jason Reynolds

Ghost
By Jason Reynolds
Atheneum (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-4814-5015-7
Ages 9-12
On shelves August 30th

This is a generalization, but in my experience librarians really enjoy reading within their comfort zones. They’ll travel outside of them from time to time but always they return to the books that they like the most. Children’s librarians are just the same. The fantasy readers stick to fantasy. The realism fans go with realism. Graphic novel readers with comi...

Pimp My Nursery (Kidlit Style)

So I’m sitting at the reader’s advisory desk today (it’s a small library so I do 2-4 hours a week) with a co-worker and we get to talking about nurseries. She has a friend who turned theirs into a paean to hunting. We’re talking arrow theme, faux bearskin rug, and antlers antlers antlers. This leads to a discussion of nurseries that are based on pop culture themes (for your daily shot of wonder/horror see the Buzzfeed post 20 DIY Pop Culture Themes For Your Baby’s Nursery).

My babies, for the...

Beyond a Snowy Day: Out-of-Print African-American Children’s Book Classics

Recently Slate decided to create a “pop-up blog” of sorts with a concentration on children’s literature. They’ve called it nightlight. A good name. We would have also accepted “flashlight under the sheets”. In any case, I was initially worried that this would be another case of writers who have just found themselves to be parents writing the same articles we’ve seen a million times before about the usual. And while their writers aren’t children’s literature experts, they’ve surprised me with...

Review of the Day: Leave Me Alone! by Vera Brosgol

Leave Me Alone!
By Vera Brosgol
Roaring Brook Press (an imprint of Macmillan)
$17.99
ISBN: 9781626724419
Ages 4-7
On shelves September 13th

Knitting. It shouldn’t be so hard. I say this as the grown daughter of a chronic knitterer (not a word). I grew up neck deep in roving. I know the difference between a gossip wheel and a walking wheel (these are different spinning wheels). I know that if you want a permanent non-toxic dye for wool you use Kool-aid, that wool straight from the sheep...

Some of the Best Picture Books of 2016 Thus Far (Mid-Year Summary)

Thusly is the deal. Since taking a job in Evanston, I’m not the big time reader I used to be. I just don’t devour the books as quickly as I once did, nor do I have access to a committee that would discuss a wide range of children’s literature. As such, I’ve decided that the only area where I can reasonably concentrate my efforts is on picture books. So every day at lunchtime I dutifully grab 5-7 picture books and read through them. Even at this rate, this is my To Be Read shelf:

Yet I’ve been...

Fusenews: Though I See The Pigeon as More of a King George Type

Here’s the thing about Minh Lê. He doesn’t blog terribly often, but when it does it just sort of explodes like an atom bomb on the scene. His Hamilton starring Elephant and Piggie . . . sheer brilliance. I’m just mad I didn’t think of it myself (not that I could ever have paired the text and art as well as he has). The best thing you’ll read today.

Translation? An art. I once heard that the reason the French are as crazy as they are about Edgar Allan Poe is that his translator (Stéphane Mall...