Betsy Bird's Blog, page 56

Interviews and Excerpts: Wendy Mass & Rebecca Stead Discuss Their Lost Library

So this is a bit of a trip. Today, at 7 p.m. ET, I will actually be virtually interviewing the authors Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead for the Cincinnati bookstore Joseph-Beth. Why not join us? The info is here:

Now if you can’t make the talk, have no fears. I’m actually ALSO asking Rebecca and Wendy some interview questions here on the blog today. This is all in celebration of their newest collaboration, the book The Lost Library (out in bookstores and libraries, yep, TODAY!). They’ve collab...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: John Henry by Julius Lester, ill. Jerry Pinkney

“Dying ain’t important. Everybody does that. What matters is how well you do your living.”

I’m a child of the Generation X movement and, as such, at some point in my early education, the song “Gonna Die With a Hammer in My Hand”, adapted by the folksingers of the 60s, was something I was well and truly familiar with. That said, at no point in my childhood did I ever encounter a single picture book retelling of the legend of John Henry. Though he’s one of the great American Tall Tale char...

Hey There, Lonely Bird: A Book Trailer Reveal

I don’t know that I’ve ever described a book trailer on this site as “oddly ethereal” but I can think of no better phrase to describe the video you’re about to see today.

Today it is my very great pleasure to introduce to you the trailer for Lonely Bird, coming to us via Candlewick Press on October 10th. Created by artist/author Ruth Whiting, this may be the best way to describe it:

“A tiny paper bird shares a home with humans in this wondrously illustrated debut, introducing a sensitive...

Hey There, Lonely Bird: A Book Trailer Reveal and Studio Tour

I don’t know that I’ve ever described a book trailer on this site as “oddly ethereal” but I can think of no better phrase to describe the video you’re about to see today.

Today it is my very great pleasure to introduce to you the trailer for Lonely Bird, coming to us via Candlewick Press on October 10th. Created by artist/author Ruth Whiting, this may be the best way to describe it:

“A tiny paper bird shares a home with humans in this wondrously illustrated debut, introducing a sensitive...

Review of the Day: Evergreen by Matthew Cordell

Evergreen
By Matthew Cordell
Feiwel and Friends (an imprint of Macmillan)
$18.99
ISBN: 9781250317179
Ages 3-6
On shelves now

Years ago, Kate DiCamillo wrote a Newbery Award winning book by the name of Flora & Ulysses. I was quite fond of that chapter book for young readers (and considering the awards it won, I wasn’t alone). In it, a squirrel is unexpectedly sucked into a vacuum and ends up with some superpowers (like ya do). At the time, I commented how strange it was that we have so few squirre...

Conservation and Children’s Literature: An Interview with Haley & John Rocco About the CBCC

Generally when folks ask to do something with my blog they’ll work through a publicist of some sort. That’s why I was a little surprised with author Hayley Rocco reached out to me directly. Then again, I’d heard of the group she and her husband, artist John Rocco, had created. The CBCC or “Children’s Book Creators for Conservation”. Maybe you saw a mention of them here or there too. They were all over Publisher’s Weekly for a while, but even so I only had the vaguest sense of who the group was a...

Water is Life: A Deep Dive Interview with Carole Lindstrom On Her Upcoming Dual Biography

I grew up not far from Lake Michigan, so it did not seem strange to me that a lake could stretch so far that it resembled an ocean. Now I live close beside it at a time when abundant fresh water is much on the minds of people everywhere. And I think that no picture book author has done more to talk of water, Water Rights, and the Indigenous activists fighting for it, more than author Carole Lindstrom. No doubt you remember her work on the Caldecott Award winning title We Are Water Protectors...

Science Fiction Double Feature: A Dual Interview with Laini Taylor and Jim Di Bartolo About BILLIE BLASTER, the New Comic

Folks, there are power couples you are fans of and then there are power couples you follow relentlessly over the years, through projects and children and even decades. I can recall, back in 2007 when I was in New York City, falling absolutely in love with Laini Taylor and Jim Di Bartolo’s magnificent middle grade novel Faeries of Dreamdark: Blackbringer. This was even before my blog moved to its current home at School Library Journal. Even back then, at the time, I wrote that, “Laini Taylor’s ba...

If You Could Cast Anyone . . .

You’ve been handed the chance of a lifetime. A movie production company has come to you. They have access to a time machine and they are now allowing you the chance to cast any actor, from any moment in history, in the cinematic adaptation of any children’s book you can name. You can do anything you want.

Who do you cast?

Some suggestions to get you started:

Jodie Foster Is . . . . Harriet the Spy

Slap a pair of glasses on that girl and hand her a notebook. We all recall that Fost...

Review of the Day: My Head Has a Bellyache by Chris Harris, ill. Andrea Tsurumi

My Head Has a Bellyache and More Nonsense for Mischievous Kids and Immature Grown-Ups
By Chris Harris
Illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi
Little, Brown and Company
$19.99
ISBN: 978-1-316-59259-8
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

A bold statement. Unprovable too. Strictly a matter of personal opinion. And, considering the fact that my generation was raised on a healthy diet of Silverstein (with just a smattering of Jack Prelutsky as a palate cleanser) one might even go so far as to call it a dangerous opinion. Af...