Betsy Bird's Blog, page 240

Reflections on a Banquet: Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder 2016

While I acknowledge that the logical way to write about the ALA Annual 2016 Conference in Orlando would be to do it chronologically, on the cusp of the banquet and all that it entailed, it makes more sense to me to write that part up first and then circle back to the conference in the coming week. Your patience with my erratic nature is appreciated.

It had been some time. Maybe just little more than a year but too long in any case. The last time I had attended a Newbery/Caldecott Banquet I ha...

Picture Books Bios I’d Like to See (Based Entirely on Hark, A Vagrant Comics)

Okay. So now we’re finally getting some interesting picture book biographies on a regular basis. When I was a kid you had your Helen Keller and your Abraham Lincoln and you were GRATEFUL! These days, people are interested in celebrating more than just the same ten people over and over again. Why this year alone I’ve seen some incredibly interesting picture book biographies of comparatively obscure figures. These include . . .

Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: The First Computer Programmer by Di...

Press Release Fun: Touring with Richard Peck

Photo credit Sonya Sones (who, coincidentally, did my author photo as well)

As I mentioned in my 2016 Day of Dialog round-up, Richard Peck was the kickoff speaker this year, just before Book Expo. I was moderating the middle grade fiction panel that morning, so I got to hang out with Richard in the green room a little before the event. Now I’ve met him in the past, but very briefly indeed (I think I moderated a table for him at a different Book Expo event years ago). A little more recently I...

Tru & Nelle: A Behind-the-Scenes Mini Documentary

Greg Neri. Now there’s a guy with range. If he isn’t writing a picture book bio of Johnny Cash he’s doing a middle grade novel on inner city cowboys or a graphic novel on Chicago’s South Side. Some authors fall into predictable patterns. Not Greg. I honestly never know what the man’s going to come up with next. So when I heard that his next novel was a middle grade about the real-life friendship between Truman Capote and Harper Lee, it just kinda made crazy sense.

Greg actually visited me her...

Newbery/Caldecott 2017: The Summer Prediction Edition

Fickle little me. Titles appear. Titles disappear. Many of the books I placed on my Spring 2017 predictions list are gone by June, and what has changed? Aren’t the books as wonderful now as they were when I originally propped them up? Of course they are, but I’ve done enough book discussions in the intervening months that I feel as if I’ve a better grasp on what’s a contender. Not that my track record is by any means perfect. These are, as ever, just my professional opinion. And I may have go...

Review of the Day: Coyote Moon by Maria Gianferrari

Coyote Moon
By Maria Gianferrari
Illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline
Roaring Brook Press (an imprint of Macmillan)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-1-62672-041-1
Ages 4-7
On shelves July 19th

I feel as if there was less nature out there when I was a kid. Crazy, right? But seriously, as I grew to be an adult I was appalled at the discovery that other people in the United States had to deal with stuff like ticks and chiggers and painful jellyfish and worse. Me? The worst encounter I ever had with somethin...

Fusenews: Trotsky, Harriet the Spy, A.A. Milne and More

You know what’s even better than serving on an award committee? Having someone else write about it. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I was on the judging committee for this year’s Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards alongside Chair Joanna Rudge Long and Roxanne Feldman. It was Roxanne who reported on our discussion, and even took photos of where we met (Joanna’s gorgeous Vermont farmhouse), what we ate, and more. There is also a particularly goofy shot of me that is impressive because even without kn...

Denying Children’s Literature: When Adult Authors Talk About Youthful Indiscretions

A couple weeks ago the June 6/13 edition of The New Yorker was the Fiction issue, and in it were essays by five authors, each subtitled “Childhood Reading.” As you might expect, they were ostensibly memories of books read by these authors when they were young. I approached each one with a bit of trepidation, though. Recently I’ve been noticing a tendency that is by no means new, but has only grabbed my attention since I became the Collection Development Manager of Evanston Public Library. It’...

Interview Talkety Talk: Ben Hatke on Nobody Likes a Goblin

The problem is this: In a given year hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children’s books are published. Of these, a percentage are really extraordinary. Of that percentage, a smidgen get reviewed on this site. Though I began my blogging career doing a review a day (because I WAS CRAAAAAAZY!!!), I’m lucky if I can get one out a week any more. That means that I end up not praising some truly fantastic fare (except possibly in my end of the year 100 Magnificent Books lists).

Now as a general...

Review of the Day: Gabe by Shelley Gill

Gabe: A Story of Me, My Dog, and the 1970s
By Shelley Gill
Illustrated by Marc Scheff
Charlesbridge
$12.95
ISBN: 978-1-57091-354-9
Ages 10 and up
On shelves now

The older I get the more I like children’s books that don’t slot easily into neat little categories. Gone are the days when every book you read was easily cataloged, neat as a pin. It may be a nightmarish wasteland out there for catalogers, but the fluidity of books these days speaks to their abilities to serve different kinds...