Betsy Bird's Blog, page 46

Press Release Fun: Building Stories – A Major New Exhibition Inspired by Beloved Children’s Books

Haven’t done a press release in a while, and you know what? I was just waiting for the best of the best. Check this out, you lucky ducks in the D.C. vicinity:

NATIONAL BUILDING MUSEUM ANNOUNCES OPENING DATE FOR

BUILDING STORIES ��� MAJOR NEW EXHIBITION INSPIRED BY BELOVED CHILDREN���S BOOKS

Multigenerational exhibition will be on display for ten years and opens with a FREE community celebration on Sunday, January 21, 2024

In the ���Building Readers��� gallery, visitors explore th...

Cover Reveal and Interview with Victor D.O. Santos: What Makes Us Human

“I make you human”.

Here is the gist of the matter. In Germany there is a library. Not simply any library either. An International Youth Library. One of the finest in the whole wide world. And from this library, every year like clockwork, there is a booklist. Not just any booklist. A list of literature from around the world. It’s called the White Ravens List and it’s worth looking into if you truly believe in finding the best children’s books of a given year. When books from Americans ma...

Ellen Myrick Publisher Preview: Spring 2024 ��� Little Island,Marble Press & Neem Tree (Part Four)

Ah ha!! Ah ha ha ha! I’m back! A full month of constant lists coming out every single day and something has to fall by the wayside for a bit. For me, it’s my publisher previews. For those of you just joining us, on a regular basis Ellen Myrick of Myrick Marketing will run me through a SLEW of small, often international, children’s book publishers, letting me know what titles they have coming out on the horizon. I then select the choicest looking bits, and present them in turn to you. It’s a goo...

In Memoriam: Remembering Those Lost in 2023

As we enter into a new year, let us not forget those incredible talents lost in the previous. To those authors, illustrator and, occasionally, librarians, I doff my cap and offer my salute. Here are the people we lost in 2023:

Istvan Banyai

27 February 1949 ��� 15 December 2022

“In his smartly constructed visual world, people move fluidly through time and space, eerily disconnected from one another, and shadows seem to have a mind of their own. Pointed in its commentary, Ist...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, ill. Mary Azarin

Here we are in a great glorious new year, and what am I doing? I’m directing your attention backwards in time to 1998. Heck, technically I’m going even farther back in time with one of our rare nonfiction considerations on this podcast. Travel to the late 19th century and meet a controversial figure. Citizen scientist or man who mucks with the scientific record? Only you can judge when you listen to our latest episode on the Caldecott Award winning title Snowflake Bentley. Today we discuss o...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2023 Picture Books

And with that… we’re done.

For 31 days, my friends, I have worked tirelessly to provide a list a day of books published in 2023. The culmination, appropriately enough, is picture books. They are the most prolific titles published in a given year. They are also some of the best books you could hope to read . Today, I highlight my own personal favorites, knowing full well that there are books that I failed to see, and others that simply didn’t strike me in the right way at the right time. T...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2023 Middle Grade Fiction

And here we deviate from the regular plan.

Under normal circumstances, I have read every single book featured on these 31 Days, 31 Lists recommendations. There is only one single, solitary list where this is not the case. Friends, there is such a plethora of amazing middle grade fiction out there, I cannot even begin to read it all. Neither can my 101 Great Books for Kids committee at Evanston Public Library, but by god we tried. We tried so hard! We tried to read all the starred Kirkus r...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2023 Audiobook for Kids

Every work day I step out of my house, set my Apple watch to an “Outdoor Walk” workout, plug my earbuds into my ears, and indulge in a middle grade novel (or sometimes nonfiction) as I walk to my workplace. In this way, a person can listen to a fair number of books in the course of a single year. That said, I miss stuff. In the course of doing these 31 Days, 31 Lists, I’ve learned that The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity by Nicho...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2023 Nonfiction Books for Older Readers

While serving on various book committees made up of librarians, the subject area that may be the most difficult to get folks to read is, sadly, older nonfiction for kids. For those of my generation (and earlier, certainly) older nonfiction for kids meant one thing: adult nonfiction. We simply didn’t have a well-established system for conveying this kind of info for older readers. All that changed around 15-20 years ago, but old habits die hard. If you grew up reading fiction, it can be hard ...

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2023 Nonfiction Picture Books

I make this list for me.

So far this month you’ve seen an array of different kinds of nonfiction titles. With this list, however, we embark upon my favorites of the favorites. These are the nonfiction picture books closest to my heart. The ones that I truly feel did their jobs the best. A lot of these you’ll have seen before, but there are a couple new inclusions, simply because they didn’t neatly slot into any other categories. Agree! Disagree! Debate! It’s wide open.

Would you like...