Betsy Bird's Blog, page 35

Publisher Spotlight Preview: Fall/Winter 2024 – Sweet Cherry, Albatros, & Barefoot Books

Publisher Spotlight and Ellen Myrick once more inform this slew of books slated to come out later this year (and I think I should get extra points for using both “slew” and “slated” in a sentence together, but that’s neither here nor there). If you’re curious about the first of these round-ups, you can find #1 here. And now, more of them!

Boy Under Ground by Isabelle Marinov

ISBN: 9780998047775

Publishing Date: September 2024

Take a trip with this new British publisher to P...

Trucky Roads Take Me Home: A Talk with Lulu Miller About Some Serious Truck-Related Fare

I have this thing where, given the large number of the children’s books I read in a given year, I find myself wanting to sing many of their titles to pre-existing songs. For example, I have already started humming the following:

Title: Heatwave by Lauren Redniss. Song: Heat Wave, sung by Martha and the VandellasTitle: Kadooboo! by Shruthi Rao, ill. Darshika Varma. Song: Shipoopi from The Music ManTitle: K Is In Trouble by Gary Clement. Song: C Is for Cookie, sung by Cookie Monster...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Mysterious Tadpole by Steven Kellogg

Oh ho! We haven’t done a Steven Kellogg re-illustration title since Pinkereton, Behave! back in 2021! This is particularly strange to me as The Mysterious Tadpole was always, without a doubt, my favorite Kellogg picture book when I was a child. For various reasons we were never able to discuss it on Fuse 8 n’ Kate… until today! We consider the original 1977 edition of this book versus the 2004 update. Now I must warn you that this episode sort of jumps into me and Kate talking about cicadas ...

Review of the Day: Benji Zeb is a Ravenous Werewolf by Deke Moulton

Benji Zeb Is a Ravenous Werewolf
By Deke Moulton
Tundra Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
$17.99
ISBN: 9781774880524
Ages 9-12
On shelves July 2nd

Fun Game to Play: List all the werewolves in children���s literature that you can. The obvious first thought, for better or for worse, goes to Remus Lupin the Harry Potter books, sure. And there are approximately 1.5 billion adult and YA romances that involve werewolves (with a mere 50% of them also incorporating vampires in some way). B...

Highlighting Ancestral Veneration and Hoodoo: A Q&A with Nyasha Williams About Saturday Magic

The thing we don’t talk about when we talk about children’s literature, and the thing that maybe I like best about it as a grown adult, is the fact that because we live in such a great era of books for kids right now, we, the adults, are often learning right alongside our children. Hoodoo, the set of religious beliefs and practices that center on ancestor veneration, justice, and a botanical practice of healing and harm known as rootwork, was first introduced to me in the middle grade novel Root...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Joy Cowley, ill. Nic Bishop

Here in Illinois the cicadas are truly beginning to emerge en masse. As such, I was kind of hoping I might be able to find a book that speaks to this. Alas, Cicada Symphony by Sue Fleiss (illustrated by Gareth Lucas) is just barely a year old. So what’s the next best course of action? Locate some other red-eyed creature found in trees, of course! Now finding old nonfiction picture books with the potential to be called “classic” are few and far between, thanks to our twenty year rule. Fortuna...

Review of the Day: The Spaceman by Randy Cecil

The Spaceman
By Randy Cecil
Candlewick Press
$17.99
ISBN: 9781536226164
Ages 4-6
On shelves now

It is downright alarming to realize that your new favorite picture book author/illustrator has been creating books since at least 1996. It is worse if you���re a children���s book specialist who prides herself on her picture book memory, and you���ve come to crushing realization that you���ve been reading said ���new��� author/illustrator for literally years and years and year. Run through the li...

Publisher Spotlight Preview: Fall/Winter 2024 (Walker Books Australia, Black Sands, and Kalaniot

All right, everybody. Who wants to hear about more and more and more future books coming out? I guarantee you’re going to see titles on today’s list that you’ve never heard of before. Some will be strange. Some will be wild. All of them sound interesting to me (if they didn’t, I wouldn’t discuss them). Thanks to Ellen Myrick, I’ve gotten a peek at a slew of children’s books slated to come to our American shores in the not-so-distant future. So buckle up and enjoy the ride!

I know it looks ...

Visual Storytelling Meets the Wet Side of Pet Ownership: A Walkies Interview with Estrela Louren��o

STOP!

Before we go any further today, I need you to look at a picture book cover. This one, in fact:

Is not that grand?

Is not that glorious?

Can you not just FEEL the misery emanating off of this child? It’s just as palpable as the joy radiating from the nearby dog.

It seems to me that if a picture book author/illustrator is capable of accurately depicting such conflicting emotions on a single cover, then the book itself must be worth exploring. So imagine my delight when I ...

Elsewhere We Go to Bid: Talking with Elsewhere Editions About Their Singular Auction

It’s tough out there for a little press. News, attention, and maybe even publicity has a tendency to center on the big guys. Your Macmillans and Scholastics. Your Penguin Random Houses and Simon and Schusters. Your Harper Collins and Hachettes. If you’re small, select, beautiful, and unique, getting librarians and booksellers to notice you can be a smidge on the tricky side of things. So how do you go about raising money for your crucial funds? It’s not like you can auction off your office f...