Betsy Bird's Blog, page 326
October 18, 2012
Press Release Fun – The Making of a Young Adult Bestseller: From Acquisition to Reader
I moderate a fair number of panels in a given year, but I really think this one looks like one of the best. It’s coming to you via the New York Chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, Inc. Observe and sign up to attend here:
The Making of a Young Adult Bestseller:
From Acquisition to Reader
Wednesday, November 14, 6:00PM – 8:00PM
The Wix Lounge
10 West 18th Street, 2nd Floor
WNBA-NYC members attend free of charge.
Non-Members must pay $10 online via PayPal.
All attendees much register/pay by November 13
Please join us for an exciting evening of discussion, when we speak with a panel of experts representing the entire process of publishing YA books, moderated by Betsy Bird, NYPL Youth Materials Specialist.
Each of the panelists will share their experiences and insights about what it takes to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace. Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to hear from an incredible group of publishing professionals and industry leaders!
Jenny Bent, Literary Agent
Jenny founded the Bent Agency in 2009, after 15 years of experience
in the industry, most recently as a Vice President at Trident Media Group.
Since opening its doors, the agency has represented over 25 NYT bestsellers, added four new agents and started a London office. Her agency website can be found
at www.thebentagency.com.
Betsy Bird, Youth Materials Specialist for the New York Public Library
Betsy is the author of Children’s Literature Gems: Choosing and Using Them in Your Library Career and runs the Fuse #8 Production blog at School Library Journal’s website. Betsy reviews for Kirkus and The New York Times and her picture book Giant Dance Party will be published with Greenwillow, an imprint of Harper Collins, Spring 2013. Her other book Wild Things: The True and Untold Stories Behind Children’s Books will be published by Candlewick in the Fall of 2013 and was co-written with Jules Danielson and the late great Peter Sieruta.
Susan Katz, President and Publisher, HarperCollins Children’s Books
Susan joined Harper and Row in 1987 as Publisher of the College Division and a member of the Executive Committee. In 1993 Katz became Group Vice President of Education, managing the School and College Divisions of the Company and shortly thereafter she also added the responsibility of overseeing the Corporate Interactive Group. In 1996, Katz became President of the Children’s Division, which is her current
position. She has more than doubled the revenues of the Division and has published more children’s bestsellers than any other publisher. She has had the honor of working with such authors as Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Neil Gaiman, John Grogan, Clive Barker, Eric Carle, Jamie Lee Curtis, Daniel Handler, Jane O’Connor, and Melissa Marr.
Hannah Moskowitz, Author
Hannah is the author of several books for young adult and middle-grade audiences, including Zombie Tag, Gone, Gone, Gone and Break, a 2010 YALSA Popular Paperback for Young Adults that came out five days before she started her freshman year of college. When she’s not writing, she’s a student and Rocky Horror Picture Show performer at the University of Maryland. Her next book, Teeth, comes out January 1, 2013.
Joy Peskin, Editorial Director, Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
Joy was the associate publisher of Viking Children’s Books, and an editor at Scholastic before joining Farrar Straus Giroux in January of 2012, . Joy has edited books for children of all ages. Her favorite type of books, both to read and to edit, are stories about real (or realistic) people facing real-life challenges. Authors with whom she has worked include Laurie Halse Anderson, Madeleine George, Amy Efaw, and Paul Volponi. Joy has also taught writing to aspiring authors, homeless youth, and incarcerated women.
Marisa Russell, Publicity Manager, Penquin Young Readers Group
Marisa worked at HarperCollins Children’s Books and A. Lavin Communications Group prior to joining Penguin in 2012. She has worked with bestselling authors such as Richelle Mead, Mike Lupica, Marie Lu, Sara Shepard, and Kevin Henkes.
Located steps from Union Square, the Wix Lounge is a completely free co-working and event space for creative professionals. Grab your laptop, pop into the Lounge and enjoy a productive workday, great networking opportunities, and amazing events. Active since 2010, the Wix Lounge is run by Wix.com, a free website publishing platform providing user friendly tools for building beautiful, easy-to-make desktop, mobile, and Facebook sites. The Wix Lounge provides free support to Wix.com users, giving them help and advice for making the ideal website. To learn more about the Wix Lounge, please visit www.wixlounge.com.
October 17, 2012
Radio Silence Explained: It’s J.K. Rowling’s Fault
In brief – I was a matron of honor at my sister’s wedding and then, after I returned to New York, I met J.K. Rowling.
You want proof?
Fuzzy lady with brown hair on the left is me. Fuzzy lady with the blond hair on the right is Ms. Rowling. And so you may have to forgive my inability to make coherent words for a day or so. I be floored. A million thanks to Dan Blank for the opportunity and the photo itself!
October 11, 2012
Two heads are better than one: Duplicate Biographies for Kids in 2012
When asked to cite the most popular up-and-coming trend in books for children and teens my answer for 2012 is always the same: Keep an eye on the twins and clones. Walk into any children’s room this year, throw a dart, and you’ll hit about twenty new books for kids that feature boy/girl twins, girl/girl twins, boy/boy twins, you name it. Walk into any teen room and it’s all about the cloning. Clearly kids today are being shown that two is always way more fun than one. Such an attitude also applies quite well to the picture book biographies I’ve seen this year. The duplication between disparate publishers happens from time to time, but 2012 has turned out to be a particularly clone heavy year. Observe the following:
Queen of the Track: Alice Coachman Olympic High-Jump Champion by Heather Lang, ill. Floyd Cooper
Touch the Sky: Alice Coachman Olympic High Jumper by Ann Malaspina, ill. Eric Velasquez
An interesting choice all around. There’s no doubt in my mind that the simultaneous release of these two bios caught Boyds Mills Press and Albert Whitman completely by surprise. They’re both smaller independent publishers. Considering that 2012 was the year of the Olympics, it makes sense that these two authors would have looked about for a too little lauded admirable figure from the past. It’s just their own bad luck (or good, considering how you market them) that they hit on the same idea.
Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child by Jesse Hartland
Minette’s Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat by Susanna Reich, ill. Amy Bates
With 2012 being Julia Child’s 100th birthday, it’s more surprising that we ONLY see two biographies of her this year rather than it is only seeing just one. Two bios that are significantly different, I might add. While Harland takes an innovative stand, portraying the sheer detritus of the great woman’s life, Reich chose to follow in the footsteps of bios like Bambino and Mr. Twain by P.I. Maltbie and Daniel Miyares and concentrate on the woman via her feline. Approaching great figures through their pets isn’t unheard of, but it can pose problems unless there’s a story. Fortunately, Reich figured it out.
Baby Flo by Alan Schroeder, ill. Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu
Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills by Renee Watson, ill. by Christian Robinson
Alice Coachman came out because of the Olympics and Julia Child because of her birthday. That I understand. What I can’t quite figure is why there were two Florence Mills books this year. Whence the impetus? While Schroeder concentrates squarely on Mills as a kid, Watson takes a more encompassing (and less cheery but more realistic) view in her title. These two bios look as different as different can be too.
Annie and Helen by Deborah Hopkinson, ill. Raul Colon
Helen’s Big World: The Life of Helen Keller by Doreen Rappaport
Of course there’s never any reason to wonder why two bios of Helen Keller are out in a given year. Talk about a popular subject! Helen, I dare say, was (aside from Anne Frank) the number one request I would get from kids when it came to biographies. They just could NOT get enough of Helen. Kids would read bios about her for pleasure. These two are also particularly strong, differing in terms of how much of her life they show.
That’s it for the duplicate bios I’ve seen (though you are free to tell me what I missed, if you like). There are dupes in the picture book and fiction world as well, but I’ll just leave you with the strangest of all of them. Here are two books so similar that you know their dual appearance could only be chalked up to bad luck. Bad, really really odd, luck.
Z is for Moose by Kelly Bingham, ill. Paul O. Zelinsky
A Is for Musk Ox by Erin Cabatingan and Matthew Myers
October 9, 2012
The 2012 Carle Honors: The Sweet and Low Down
Photo: Johnny Wolf
I’m sure that by now you’ve already ready the PW recap of the 2012 Carle Honors called, so fittingly, Wit, Wisdom and One Very Drunk Puppet. Steeped as I am in edits for a book, I have not been as timely with my posts as I would like. As a result, the darn “drunk puppet” line has already been taken. Shazbot! That is okay. I make do.
Now this would be the seventh Eric Carle Honors to take place and if I’m doing the math correctly then I have been to six of them. As you may recall they are held once a year and are bestowed by the Eric Carle Museum. I was there in the early days when Mo Willems had to take a freight elevator to the Honors because he was wearing jeans. I was there when they made a ginormous cake in the shape of a caterpillar . . . and then did not proceed to chop him into delicious bits (I would’ve killed to gnaw on one of his eyes). I was there when it moved to Guastavino’s for the very first time, which also happened to be the very DAY I discovered I was pregnant with my first child, and I was there this time around in the same location.
There’s a trick to getting to Guastavino’s looking your best. You can either take a cab and arrived looking coiffed and composed and like a million bucks. Or, you can slip on your sneakers, listen to Gangnam Style on the radio, walk all the way over to the bridge the restaurant resides beneath, and then change from your sneakers into cute shoes at the outdoor seating area half a block away. Guess which one I opted for. The nice folks working the door didn’t even blink as I whipped out what must be the world grossest hairbrush (seriously, it could win its own not-under-a-bridge awards) to tap down the frizziest of frizzy hair for the scant 15 seconds before it would make its sterling recovery.
I had an ulterior motive to my visit to the honors this year. Not that I didn’t want to see the honorees. Each one was a delight. And not that I didn’t want to eat copious amounts of tiny food (it’s the only time I get to remember what caviar actually tastes like). And not that I don’t enjoy the fellow attendees and the art on auction and the ambiance and all of that. But my real intent this time around was to break in my matron of honor outfit. You see, this upcoming weekend I’ll be in the bridal party (my first) for my l’il sis (she of the previously mentioned mohawk). And l’il sis requested that her ladies wear 40s style black dresses and red shoes. Hence the black dress seen here:
Hence the red shoes, captured for posterity, by the quick pen of Paul O. Zelinsky (who drew them, if I’m going to be honest, because someone asked him about them and he was trying to show them what they were like).
Fun Fact: Standing for several hours in these shoes is less than entirely fun. The more you know.
The mingling that occurred before the Honors was much with the fun. I usually like to meet at least one new author or illustrator when I attend, but it’s tricky because you never quite know how to approach. Usually the best method is to get someone to say, “Oh, you don’t know [blank]? Come on over and I’ll introduce you!” That’s how I got Lois Ehlert last year. Imagine my life as a large unending Bingo card that will never be finished. That’s what it’s like trying to meet everyone. This year I met Kate Feiffer officially and then managed to have a singularly awkward talk with Lane Smith that was entirely my own fault. Sweet man that he is, he saw me peering at the auctioned art and struck up a conversation. Reader, I blanked. I almost never do this but he caught me off-guard and somehow I managed to do an utter talk-fail. You should have seen me. My lips, they were two pieces of fried baloney just jibber-jabbering away about nothing at all. The minute he turned to other folks with his lovely wife (with whom I was also equally mum) I realized that I should have complimented his new Abraham Lincoln picture book, which I actually like very much. I could have also brought up that subversive children’s literature blog he did with Bob Staake and which Roger Sutton had been asking me about a day or two before. ARG!! I went to drown my sorrows in very very tiny hamburgers. Seriously, it would take four of those things to make even a slider.
The art auction where I lost my composure was, as ever, a stunner. I am but a poor humble librarian. I have no money. So like most folks I stare in silent awe and envy at works of art that would look damned BRILLIANT on the walls of my home. I mean, just look at this Gabi Swiatkowska piece.
Photo: Johnny Wolf
And then there was this Lucy Cousins:
Photo: Johnny Wolf
If you listened very closely you could actually hear her squeak, “Betsy! Why won’t you put me on your child’s bedroom walls? Why?”
I’m also a big fan of seeing who DOES actually bid on the works. This year I saw Suzanne Collins’ name (though I think it was by proxy since the woman herself was not in evidence) and a guy by the name of Christopher B. Milne. I’ve seen Mr. Milne’s name before (I should considering he’s the museum’s chair) and like every other time I’ve seen it I couldn’t help but wonder . . . any relation to Christopher Robin Milne? Any at all?
Then we were all persuaded to go upstairs, sit in a room bathed in cool green light, and watch smart people bestow awards on smart people. The Carle Honors are very fulfilling awards in this way. There’s never a time someone receives an award and you think to yourself, “Why did they get an honor?” They know how to pick ‘em. Can’t help but think it would be a fun award to help select folks for.
Photo: Johnny Wolf
To introduce Mr. Eric Carle himself, up to the stage came Jules Feiffer and Norton Juster. Jules was smart, Norton acerbic. The location of Guastavino’s provided last year’s honoree David Macaulay to wax rhapsodic about the very structure above us. This year Mr. Juster noted that this event meant that at least one dire prediction his parents proclaimed when he became an author had come true: They knew he’d end up under a bridge someday.
So it was that Eric Carle took to the stage and was his usual charming self. He’s Eric Carle. He is not going to breathe fire or lambast the attendees. He is going to be a sweet and good presence in this cold cruel world. That is who is is. That is what he does. Nuff said.
Photo: Johnny Wolf
Which brings us to the drunk puppet. I had glanced at the program that evening but had not registered the special guest, one Joey Mazzarino. Even if I had I don’t think his resume would have stood out to me. So up onto the stage leaped Mo Willems to present Bridge (“individuals who have found inspired ways to bring the art of the picture book to larger audiences through work in other fields”) award recipient Christopher Cerf. I met Mr. Cerf years ago when I attended a Street Gang book signing. Nice fella. Since Mo used to do work for Sesame Street before he went the picture book route he was a natural presenter for Mr. Cerf. Alas, he was interrupted midway through by a sock puppet named (and spellings vary on this but I think I’m correct in calling him) Saki. The minute Saki opened his big sock mouth I could tell we had a professional puppeteer on our hands. You can just sorta tell. A guy doesn’t spend his entire life with his arm above his head without coming across as better than the average sock puppeteer. This was the Joey Mazzarino I referred to earlier and I enjoyed him very much. Though, truth be told, I like any awards event that involves Muppeteers at some point (National Books Awards, etc.).
Photo: Johnny Wolf
After Mr. Cerf spoke it was Floyd Cooper who stepped up to introduce Angel (“whose generous financial support is crucial to making picture book art exhibitions, education programs, and related projects a reality”) Kent L. Brown, Jr. Now Cooper is definitely a guy I should have taken time to speak to since his work on this year’s Brick by Brick by Charles L. Smith is superb. Some of his finest stuff. Alas, no Cooper time did I receive, though I would be seeing quite a lot of Mr. Kent L. Brown in a couple weeks. You see, he’s the executive director of the Highlights Foundation and I had the pleasure of speaking at one of their events just this past weekend with the likes of Leonard Marcus, Linda Sue Park, Deborah Heiligman, and Patti Lee Gauch. So I am very pleased to see the man get big awards. Though, to be frank, I’d be pleased even if his Highlights folks didn’t ask me to come and talk.
Photo: Johnny Wolf
It was an evening of buddies when Barbara McClintock and Natalie Merchant (yup, THAT Natalie Merchant) took the stage to sing the praises (not literally) of legendary editor Frances Foster. Frances was receiving the Mentor (“editors, designers, and educators who champion the art form”) award and the two were downright giggly as they quoted extensive quotes from Frances lovers the world over. She was, as you might imagine, class incarnate. It’s not like I’m even an editor, but I still want to be her someday. When I grow up anyway.
It was Anita Silvey who introduced the Artist (I’m not going to quote the description on this one . . . it’s fairly obvious, no?) of the evening. Yup. Mr. Lane Smith. Having survived my onslaught of awkwardness he gave a lovely talk. One might have been a bit surprised that Ms. Silvey was introducing Mr. Smith and not . . . *sigh* Ah well.
Then it was time to go downstairs and attempt to eat lots and lots of tiny desserts without appearing to be a complete and total barbarian. Tiny puddings. Tiny slices of cake. Tiny little fudgey brownie things. After stumbling out of the place with my comfy shoes reattached and Gangham Style still, inexplicably, blaring from the radio, it was time to go on home. Another year, another great event.
Special thanks to the Carle folks for allowing me to lurk amongst the heavies. And mighty congrats to those honorees. Even those I do my darndest to baffle. Thanks too to Sandy Soderberg, Jane Curley, and all the good folks at The Eric Carle Museum for yet another wonderful year.
October 7, 2012
Video Sunday: That cake’s my most bestest creation
Who says you need to be Ed Emerley to make fingerprints dance? A canny bit of book promotion, this title is out this year but I certainly hadn’t heard of it until now (Laurence King Publishers, anyone?). Now I’ll need to see it for myself. It’s Let’s Make Some Great Fingerprint Art by Marion Deuchars. Thanks to Julian Hector for the link!
Altogether now . . . awwwwwwwwww.
Okay, book trailer time. Full discloser, Mr. Eliot Schrefer is in my writing group and I read this book, Endangered, in manuscript form. The man can write. I mean, really write. I don’t see much YA in a given year, but I saw this and it was glorious. But, in the words of the immortal LeVar Burton, you don’t have to take my word for it.
Or, if you’d just rather watch Eliot get covered in apes:
Then there’s Mr. Jarrett Krosoczka. Or, as I like to think of him, the hardest working man in show business. Now I only assume this, but surely he teaches other authors how to use social networking and technology to connect with fans, yes? I only wonder since he’s sort of really good at it. Example A: a recap of a webcast his did with kids recently. Theme song and all:
Example B: The comics that were made during the workshop. I rest my case.
Finally, my off-topic video that isn’t very off-topic. If I’m going to be honest, I almost opened the post today with this bad lip-reading of Twilight. What can I say? It made me laugh very very hard (on the second segment anyway). Forgive me if there’s a political ad before it.
October 6, 2012
Art in the Children’s Room: Elisha Cooper Style
In that alternate universe where I am independently wealthy and spend all my days reporting on children’s literature (isn’t that what you would do if you were independently wealthy?) I spend certain days of the year traveling to different children’s rooms in libraries throughout the country to check out their original art by fantastic children’s illustrators. Murals, paintings, stained glass windows, the works. As of right now I think the only time I’ve ever actually reported on this blog on the art in a children’s room was when I went to the Kalamazoo Public Library’s back in 2009 (note how this was written before my blog was switched to its new format and thus *sob* I lost ALL the images).
Here at New York Public Library you might think that the branches are filled to brimming with the art of local authors and illustrators. While it may be true that we have some lovely pieces by Ezra Jack Keats and Faith Ringgold here and there, it doesn’t come up all that often. So I need not tell you how excited I was when I heard that Elisha Cooper had volunteered out of the goodness of his golden glorious heart to paint art for the children’s room in Greenwich Village’s Jefferson Market Branch.
A little background. When I first got my bright and shiny library degree and moved to New York City I was under the distinct impression that the only available positions with NYPL were on Staten Island. As I came in for my final interview, however, the nice recruiter who changed my life offered me the chance to be in Greenwich Village instead. Hence I came to the most gorgeous branch in the system. Built in the 1860s with a clocktower that holds a giant spider puppet year round (this is true), converted jail cells in the basement, and more stained glass than many a church, it’s a beauty. It had a huge children’s room on the first floor with these massive white blank walls. And there was nothing on a single one of those walls either, long after I left. Not for years and years and years.
Enter Elisha Cooper. You may know him best from his numerous amazing picture books. My personal favorite is Farm followed by Beach, but I understand the love many hold for Magic Thinks Big or Beaver Is Lost or even this year’s Homer. Long story short, the man has this beautiful, distinctive style that somehow turns the merest of outlines into works of beauty. He’s also a Greenwich Village resident and he saw the great gaping walls of the Jefferson Market children’s room and thought he should do something about it.
What did he do? Ladies and gentlemen he brought, from his own home, six empty white canvasses into the branch. Then he got permission to paint on them in the programming room next to the children’s room. His process looked something like this:
Those images were taken by Christopher “Flash” Smith. That is why they were good. These next images are from my camera phone. That is why they are less good. Each canvass, as you can see, contains a variety of different animals. Elisha did think to possibly make each one represent a different continent, but I’m not sure whether or not he proceeded with that plan until the end.
(I love that he worked in that honey badger)
I’m sorry I don’t have a close-up shot of these three canvasses since those are the ones that contain the most children’s literature homages. You can find the ducklings from Make Way for Ducklings (apropos since that book was created in a tiny Greenwich Village apartment), Kitten from Kitten’s First Full Moon, Ferdinand, and a bunch of other folks in these paintings.
Big thanks to Elisha for showing me his art and for passing along some of these photos. So for any of you passing through Greenwich Village, be sure to stop by the Jefferson Market Library at 6th Avenue and 10th Street and admire what’s on display.
October 3, 2012
Review of the Day: National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry, edited by J. Patrick Lewis
Animals make for good poetry. That’s just common sense. When humans get misty eyed and start thinking their great grand thoughts, they tend to be inspired by some form of nature. Naturally, some animals in particular are replete with awe-inspiring tendencies. Bald eagles, say. So where does that put your average hamster or flamingo? Not all animals are built to accompany great grand thoughts after all. Some of them are best suited to small, sly, clever verses instead. Taken as a whole, there are probably more animal poems in the world than a person could imagine. That’s why it’s rather clever of J. Patrick Lewis to pair with National Geographic’s talented photography department to bring us a gorgeously designed book of animal poems. You name the animal, the man has found (or perhaps solicited?) a poem to fit. Containing everything from limericks to haiku, this collection of two hundred poems and who knows how many photos is a visual feast for eye and ear alike.
“If you listen very carefully, you’ll hear the chicken hatching,” reads the first poem in this book. It’s “The Egg” by Jack Prelutsky and it starts off National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry’s “Welcome to the World” section. Split into eight different sections, the book categorizes its contents not by genus or species but by only the grandest of terms. There are “the big ones”, “the little ones”, “the winged ones”, “the water ones”, “the strange ones”, “the noisy ones”, and “the quiet ones”. Each poem is accompanied by a photograph, and sometimes the photograph is accompanied by more than one poem. There are verses poignant and funny, thought provoking and wild. Finally, at the end of the book, there is a section on “writing poems about animals” that aids kids by giving them a range of different forms to try. This is followed by a two-page spread of resources and four indexes at the end, one by title, one by poet, one by first line, and one by subject.
What is unclear to me is the ratio of poems Lewis knew about and found verses the poems he went out and asked for. I noticed quite a few contemporary children’s poets between these pages. Janet S. Wong, Jane Yolen, Tracie Vaughn Zimmer, Michael J. Rosen, Bobbi Katz, Betsy Franco, etc. And I could not help but notice that those contemporary poets tended to write for some of the more difficult animals. The anemone, the blue jay, or the raccoon, for example. Here’s another question for you: Which came first, the photograph or the poem? Did Mr. Lewis plow through untold hundreds of National Geographic photos, old and new, cull the best and then find the poems, or did he find the poems first and then match the photos to fit? Certainly some of the National Geographic’s better known images are in this book (the picture of the flamingoes standing in the shape of a flamingo, for example). Sadly no note exists in this book telling us what Mr. Lewis’s process was.
There is a form to the chapters of this book but not so much form within the chapters. You might wonder at this at first, but since it’s easy enough to locate your favorite critter by using the subject index at the end of the book, it’s understandable why you might want to take the advice Mr. J. Patrick Lewis proffers at the beginning of the collection and know that “This book is not for reading straight through.” You dip in and find old favorites and new with ease. One librarian commented to me her surprise that the tiger poem in this book wasn’t William Blake’s “The Tyger”. True enough, but the anonymous poem with its classic limerick about the lady from Niger is rather well known within its own right. I was also amused in a very fifth grade boy kind of way by Michael J. Rosen’s blue-footed booby poem. You’ll have to see it for yourself to understand why.
There are a couple times when the poem paired to the photo is a bit misleading or confusing. For example, for the picture of a butterfly still within its chrysalis, the poem is instead about a cocoon. I suppose cocoons are significantly less impressive photography-wise than chrysalises, but I’ve little doubt that kids will find the terms interchangeable now. Similarly there’s a poem about a sea horse that is inexplicably paired with an impressive but very different image of a weedy sea dragon. Credit where credit is due, each photograph is accompanied by a very small written description of its subject matter, but nine times out of ten the child reader will be relying on the poem to explain what they’re seeing. Probably because nine times out of ten that would be the right move.
I can only imagine the sheer amounts of blood, sweat and tears that went into the collection and design of the book itself. It has its little quirks here and there, but if you’re seeking a poetry book for kids that children would willingly pick up and flip through, even if they have hitherto professed to not like poetry in the slightest, this is your best bet. A gorgeous little number that has the occasional slip-up, it is nonetheless a magnificent collection and book that is well worth the space it takes up. Add a little natural wonder to your poetry shelves. Because if we’re talking about the best possible compliment to your eyes and ears alike, few have as many perks and grand moments as this.
On shelves now.
Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.
Like This? Then Try:
African Acrostics: A Word in Edgewise by Avis Harley
Poetry for Young People: Animal Poems by John Hollander
Birds of a Feather by Jane Yolen
Other Blog Reviews:
NC Teacher Stuff
Sal’s Fiction Addiction
Writing and Ruminating
Laura Salas
Professional Reviews:
A star from Kirkus
Videos:
Be sure to watch J. Patrick Lewis reading the poem “Make the Earth Your Companion here:
