Betsy Bird's Blog, page 44

Review of the Day: Two Together by Brendan Wenzel

Two Together
By Brendan Wenzel
Chronicle Books
$18.99
ISBN: 9781797202778
Ages 3-7
On shelves April 23rd

Name me, if you would be so kind, the greatest examples of cat/dog friendships. I���m dating myself here but the first things that come to mind tend to be Milo and Otis (ask your parents, kids), Rita and Runt (natch), maybe something from Oliver and Company, and that���s it. Essentially my entire frame of reference is stuck in the 80s & 90s. But where television and movies have let me do...

I Do Not Eat Children: An Irreverent Q&A with Marcus Cutler

I’m not here to point fingers. Maybe you eat children. Maybe you do not. Who am I to judge? but if you say that y u don’t eat children then it’s only fair to hold you to your word. Now Marcus Cutler? He has a new picture book out on February 20th that states its eating-children-position far and wide. But what is the book actually about? A quick synopsis:

A big orange creature lurks in a crowded playground…but don’t worry! He would��never eat a child. What do you think he is���a MONSTER? And ...

Alterations: An Interview Q&A and Excerpt with Ray Xu

Sometimes you just feel drawn to a book the moment you see its cover. What was it about Alterations by Ray Xu (out now!) that just felt so familiar? That look of inescapable horror on its hero’s face? The premise? The roller coasters? The egg? Whatever it was, when I got a chance to interview Ray about his comic debut, I jumped all over it. And I get to show some excerpts from the book too? Woohoo!

But first…. a description of the plot! Cause I’m cool like that.

“Kevin Lee is having a rea...

Soren’s Seventh Song: A Q&A with Newly Minted Newbery Award Winner, Dave Eggers

Now to be fair, when I initially agreed to interview Dave Eggers about his brand new picture book Soren’s Seventh Song (out February 6th and illustrated by Mark Hoffman), he hadn’t yet won his brand new Newbery Award for The Eyes and the Impossible. Turns out, I was intrigued when the title was described to me as, “a deadpan take on creativity and persistence”, since that’s kind of my bag. Sure enough, when I read the book it was precisely that. An entire picture book about the process of . . . ...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Yeh-Shen by Ai-Ling Louie, ill. Ed Young

“There are fish literally everywhere in this book!” I meant to do an Ed Young book a little closer to his death last year, but life interfered. As a result I’ve been sitting on this particular copy of Yeh-Shen for a couple months now (sorry, library). Now I hadn’t read this book in probably two decades and I didn’t remember it particularly well, so you can imagine my utter delight as I discovered that, like Lon-Po Po, Ed Young hid one particular animal on these pages. Fish! I have way too mu...

Review of the Day: Shiny Misfits by Maysoon Zayid and Shadia Amin

Shiny Misfits
By Maysoon Zayid
Art by Shadia Amin
Lettering by EK Weaver
Edited by Emily Seife
Graphix (an imprint of Scholastic)
$14.99
ISBN: 9781338752502
Ages 9-12
On shelves April 16, 2024

I always say that you shouldn���t give up on a book until you���ve read twenty pages of it, but I don���t really mean that. Not really. I mean OTHER PEOPLE shouldn���t give up on a book until they���ve read a chunk of it. Me? I am a person filled to the brim with her own self-importance. Surely the rules do no...

Ellen Myrick Publisher Preview: Spring 2024 – Nosy Crow, NubeOcho, and Pajama Press (Part Five)

I’ve no time to do a comparison of which ALA YMA winners this year won from big publishing houses vs. smaller publishing houses, but do I even have to? Most of the time the big boys have the big money to do the big publicity. But for my part, it’s the little guys who often do the most interesting work. Today, we return to our fifth entry in this quickie rundown of some of the smaller companies putting out books for kids in America this year. See if you can find something you like. Odds are, ther...

After Amil? A Veera Hiranandani Interview About Amil and the After, a Sequel to The Night Diary!

It seems fitting that in the same week as the 2024 ALA Youth Media Award announcements, we should be talking to another Newbery Honor winning writer. When THE NIGHT DIARY won its Honor in 2019, it was one of those wins that just felt so right. It had already had multiple starred reviews, after all, with Horn Book saying that author Veera Hiranandani had a, “pitch-perfect tone”, Kirkus saying it was, “A gripping, nuanced story”, PW saying it had a, “striking intimacy and immediacy”, and SLJ sayin...

2024 ALA Youth Media Awards Winner Round-Up!

WELL!!

I’ll be honest. I can’t remember an ALA YMA announcement day that pleased me half as much as the one we had on Monday, January 22, 2024. With very few exceptions I pretty much adored every single book listed (that I knew about). It was humbling to see a couple titles that I didn’t even read in 2024 (my apologies to The Truth About Dragons which currently has LOADS of holds in my library). There were books that won that I didn’t even think had a chance but was delighted to see, and book...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber

It’s rare that we do a picture book from my old Top 100 Picture Books Poll from back in 2012, but today’s the day, I guess. This book came in at #96 and reading it today I was surprised at how well it had aged in spite of its 1972 publication date. You probably know Bernard Waber best as the creator of Lyle, Lyle Crocodile. Today we’re talking about Joe the Button Pusher, the Irish Republican Army, and where folks stand on the whole teddy bear issue.

Listen to the whole show��here on Sou...