Betsy Bird's Blog, page 245
March 27, 2016
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...
March 23, 2016
Review of the Day: When Green Becomes Tomatoes by Julie Fogliano
When Green Becomes Tomatoes: Poems for All Seasons
By Julie Fogliano
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
A Neal Porter Book / Roaring Brook Press (Macmillan)
$18.99
ISBN: 9781596438521
Ages 6 and up
On shelves now.
I don’t think I can adequately stress to you the degree to which I did not want to review this book. Not because it isn’t a magnificent title. And not because it isn’t pleasing to both eye and ear alike. No, it probably had more to do with the fact that it’s a work of poetry. I mak...
March 21, 2016
Fusenews: Who are we to say?
Now if you’re one of the lucky ducks living in NYC, or will be there on the date of 4/16, you now have your marching orders. This is an event held at Bank Street College of Education and in wracking my brains I can’t think of anything more timely. You can see the full listing of the events here. Wish I were there. Go in my stead, won’t you?
New Podcast Alert: This one sports a catchy moniker that will strike some of you as famil...Fusenews: “Rich. Famous. That’s all I’ve got”
Now if you’re one of the lucky ducks living in NYC, or will be there on the date of 4/16, you now have your marching orders. This is an event held at Bank Street College of Education and in wracking my brains I can’t think of anything more timely. You can see the full listing of the events here. Wish I were there. Go in my stead, won’t you?
New Podcast Alert: This one sports a catchy moniker that will strike some of you as famil...Press Release Fun: Matt Bird and The Secrets of Story
Reprinting PW deal announcements is not what I tend to do. Today, however, we’ve a rather extraordinary occurrence. Some of you may know that my husband Matt Bird is a bit of a blogger and screenwriter in his own right. Add the term “published author” to that description now. Publishers Weekly has just announced Matt’s latest book deal. In short:
Bird Shares the ‘Story’ With WD
Matt Bird sold world English rights to The Secrets of Story to Phil Sexton at Writers Digest. Bird, who has an M....
March 19, 2016
Video Sunday: “A man sits . . . in a setting . . .”
You know that nightmare you have where you’re up on a stage and you suddenly realize you have to give a TED talk but you have absolutely no idea what the subject is and you’re pretty sure you don’t have the little remote that’ll allow you to flip between slides anyway? That one? You don’t have that one? I sure do. I have that one all the time. Which is weird because public speaking is a large portion of what I do for a living. Nevertheless there is something about the TED Talk format that utt...
March 18, 2016
Spotted! Author Visits
When I moved to Evanston from New York City I guess I thought my life would calm down a bit. New York City’s all about the publisher previews, the author events, the crazy dinners for big name authors and illustrators, and it is clearly party central. And for the most part Evanston is calm. Quiet. There’s a gigantic lake big enough to drown whole states just down the block from my library and bloodthirsty peregrine falcons tearing pigeons to shreds outside my window, but otherwise the action...
March 15, 2016
Newbery / Caldecott 2017: Spring Prediction Edition
What? Who? Now? Yes, if you’re checking the calendar you’ll see that three whole months of 2016 have gone by and you know what that means. Prediction time!
But Betsy, you say, that is quite simply the kookiest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s March, for crying out loud. We’ve ten months until the next award announcement. And all this is true. And it is loopy to the extreme that I’m doing this. Particularly when you consider my track record. To date:
2008 spring predictions: I get one Caldecott rig...
March 13, 2016
Children’s Book Week Bookmark Reveal (psst . . . It’s El Deafo related!)
Books. Kids. This is pretty basic stuff. One should read the other. Preferably requently. And I suppose that for some of us there’s a perception that urging children to read is a recent phenomenon. An outgrowth of the digital age when kids have so many things to distract and entertain them. Gone are the days when books were often the sole source of entertainment in the home.
Perceptions can be misleading. Take Children’s Book Week. It sounds contemporary, but actually it dates back to 1919, m...
Children’s Week Bookmark Reveal (psst . . . It’s El Deafo related!)
Books. Kids. This is pretty basic stuff. One should read the other. Preferable requently. And I suppose that for some of us there’s a perception that urging children to read is a recent phenomenon. An outgrowth of the digital age when kids have so many things to distract and entertain them. Gone are the days when books were often the sole source of entertainment in the home.
Perceptions can be misleading. Take Children’s Book Week. It sounds contemporary, but actually it dates back to 1919, m...
