Betsy Bird's Blog, page 244

Fusenews: In my next life I’m coming back as a “Rotraut”

A lot to say and so little time to say it. Let’s get started!

Today, if you are at all feeling blue, I suggest you read The Toast piece Jaya Catches Up: A Little Princess which is a killer breakdown of what is inarguably a problematic book. The Marie Antoinette portions are particularly choice.

Next, the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award Winners were announced. What does that mean for you? It means you should be boning up on your international children’s book knowledge, of course. Commit...

Video Sunday: Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend

Today we begin with something depressing (happy Sunday, everybody!). On April 4th, all of five days ago, the lovely blog Geekmom (which appears to be an offshoot of Geekdad) premiered the new Adam Rex / Mac Barnett book trailer for their upcoming picture book How This Book Was Made. When you see this trailer you will think to yourself, “Dang. I wish I could make book trailers like this.” Then you’ll look at how many views it’s gotten so far and it’s a mere (as of this post) 567. Citizens of t...

Trailer Premiere: The Ugly Dumpling by Stephanie Campisi

Let play a game. I’ll write out a bit of a professional review from here at School Library Journal and you guess the book. Here goes:

“A unique take on the classic tale ‘The Ugly Duckling,’ this is a humorous story of friendship and self-acceptance, set in a dim sum restaurant. … This narrative movesquickly, and the cheerful visuals do as much to tell the story as the text does. An amusing and fun addition for most collections.”

It’s about this point that you say to me, “Uh, Betsy? You just s...

Fan Art: From Sheinkin to Wicks

Here’s an idea for a series on this blog: Authors and illustrators paying tribute to other authors and illustrators in the form of fan art. Oh, it could work. Why do I think it could work? Because that’s what we’re doing today, folks.

Consider the author Steve Sheinkin. You may know him from his award winning nonfiction books (with the occasional Newbery Honor tossed in for spice) or you may know him from his Walking and Talking series here on the blog. What you may NOT know is that he is cap...

Book Trailer Premiere: Fluffy Strikes Back by Ashley Spires

My daughter is four going on five at the moment. And though she still reads her fair share of picture books, recently she has become enamored of graphic novels. Particularly those with “bad guys” in them. For this reason, I give great good thanks for Ashley Spires. Granted, in her Binky the Space Cat series the “bad guys” my daughter seeks are bugs . . . but what bugs they are! Now a new addition comes to the Binky canon. And it is fluffy. Ladies and gentlemen, our book trailer reveal of the...

Eight Recent Children’s & YA Books Collectors Should Grab

The other day I had lunch with a lovely collector of children’s books. Children’s book collectors have always struck me as a the last great unknowable group of people with an active interest in children’s literature out there. Where educators or librarians or even scholars have blogs and annual meetings and newsletters, collectors remain mysterious and unknowable. There are just so many things I want to learn about them. What makes a children’s book valuable in some way? How do you determine...

Review of the Day: Don’t Call Me Grandma by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Don’t Call Me Grandma
By Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
Illustrated by Elizabeth Zunon
Carolrhoda Books (a division of Lerner)
$19.99
ISBN: 978-1-4677-4208-5
Ages 4-7
On shelves now.

In 2016 a picture book won a Newbery Award. Which is to say, a picture book was declared the best-written work for children between the ages of 0-14. After its win there was a fair amount of speculation about what precisely the Newbery committee was trying to say with their award. For that matter, there was a fair...

Ethics in Nonfiction for Kids

I’m not quite sure what it says about me that whenever I need to have a go-to Children’s Literary Salon I inevitably make it about ethics in nonfiction for kids. I think, technically, I’ve done this topic three times and each time it just gets more and more interesting. Case in point, this past Saturday’s Children’s Literary Salon in beautiful Evanston, IL. I hosted Barbara Rosenstock, Sally M. Walker, Candace Fleming, and Judith Fradin. And baby, we covered everything. Faux dialogue, what ha...

What Was the First YA Novel?

Things are ah-brewing and ah-hopping on the child_lit listserv this week! And though my blog is primarily a conduit through which one learns about children’s book news, I couldn’t help but get utterly fascinated by a discussion of origin. Particularly, the origin of the YA novel.

Fun with semantics! So what do we mean when we say that something is a YA novel? Couldn’t you say that any novel read voraciously by teens (during the dawn of a book’s publication) is YA? So wouldn’t that mean that c...

Politics and Mainstream Children’s Literature in 2016

You may have seen the Guardian article the other day ‘Oh, what a big gun you have': NRA rewrites fairytales to include firearms. The title pretty much is the whole story, except that these are tales posted on the NRA’s website and not (at this time) actual published books. I was looking at the post and the books themselves and for whatever reason it made me think about the current crop of picture books for kids today about the candidate for president. Candidate singular, you see, because of t...