Betsy Bird's Blog, page 80

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide, ill. Edward Gorey

“I’m Benjamin Buttoning over here!” When we’re not talking about crystal flutes and harmoniums, Kate and I discuss our very first Halloween-seasoned title on this week’s episode of Fuse 8 n’ Kate. I was charged with coming up with another potential classic for the Halloween season, and now I have located an illustrator who may honestly be called “the granddaddy of haunted books”. He didn’t do many picture books . . . for children. But occasionally he did one or two when someone else was doin...

NEARER MY FREEDOM: An Interview and 2023 Cover Reveal with Lesley Younge

When the history of the online world of children’s literature and children’s literary scholarship is recorded decades from now, one hopes that the contributions of my friend Monica Edinger, educator, blogger, teacher, and author, will be mentioned prominently. Those of you familiar with her educating alice blog know that it was always a high point of any reader’s feed.

In late 2021 Monica suffered a stroke. Her last entry on her blog spoke of a new book project. She wrote, “I am working on a...

Newbery/Caldecott 2023: Fall Prediction Edition

We’re at the three quarter mark for the current year and it looks like it’s going to be another boffo year for children’s books. I haven’t seen everything being released quite yet but every week it seems like there’s some new, brilliant book to explore.

As ever I bestow upon you the caveat that today’s selections and predictions are based entirely upon my own observations

2023 Caldecott Predictions

Action!: How Movies Began by Meghan McCarthy

I highly favor nonfiction in some of...

Maybe an Artist? An Interview with Liz Montague, Creator of the Graphic Memoir You Cannot Miss

I don’t truck with YA.

I respect it, mind you. It serves a vital purpose. But for years now I’ve drawn a sharp, delineated line in the sand between myself and the young adult book world. I don’t know if you know this but when I went in for my very first librarian job at the Jefferson Market Branch of New York Public Library I was handed a choice. I walked in the door and my new boss, Frank Collerius (whom you can hear regularly on the NYPL podcast The Librarian Is In) asked if I wanted to wor...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, ill. Henry Cole

Banned Books Week may have happened last week, but sadly that doesn’t mean that the nationwide scourge of banning has ended. Far from it. As such, I felt like consideration of this, “the granddaddy of the book banned”, was long overdue. Interestingly, even though Kate hadn’t seen the book before, she took one look at it and said it was “the gay penguins book”. So it’s clearly in the cultural zeitgeist. We talk Happy Feet, whether or not Tango was actually named after Tango & Cash (“if she’d ...

Review of the Day: Pina by Elif Yemenici, translated by Sydney Wade

Pina
By Elif Yemenici
Translated by Sydney Wade
Tilbury House Publishers
$18.95
ISBN: 9780884489481
Ages 4-7
On shelves now

After 9/11 happened, American publishers were faced with a dilemma. How much to put in book form? How soon? Over the years that followed, a number of titles were released, but none were quite as touching and clever as the Caldecott Award winning The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordecai Gerstein. It succeeded perhaps because it acknowledged the tragedy, but didn’t mak...

Freedom and Glory: An Interview with The Story of Ukraine creators Olena Kharchenko, Michael Sampson and Polina Doroshenko

In March of this year I visited the Bologna Book Fair, an international rights fair of children’s literature. Not long before my arrival, Russia had invaded the Ukraine and I was floored by the number of supportive signs, booths, and remembrances the Fair had made in support of the Ukraine. In the intervening half a year since, Ukraine still finds itself at war. In such times, we often turn to children’s books, in the hopes that they teach our children, but honestly we want to be taught too....

“Provocatively Nuanced”: The Humanizing of Jackie Robinson

Blessed be the children’s book creators that get that kids can comprehend nuance. And alas that so few do.

Photo Credit: Publishers Weekly

If you were skimming through your PW Children’s Bookshelf newsletter yesterday like me then you might have seen an article in there of note. ‘Call Him Jack’: Jackie Robinson Museum Tour it read. Inside it recounted a recent trip that publishing and library professionals took to the Jackie Robinson Museum located in New York’s Hudson Park. The occasion? T...

The Secret of History of Hatteras Island: A Guest Post by Newbery Honor Winning Author Sheila Turnage

Each year, thousands of vacationers visit North Carolina’s Outer Banks, whose shores often top Best Beaches lists. People drive over from the mainland, sail across the Pamlico Sound, or putter over on pug-faced ferries. They come for endless beaches and rolling dunes. For fishing and wild ponies. They come to climb the Hatteras Lighthouse.

Maybe, like me, they also come for Hatteras Island’s World War II history—a story I stumbled onto a half-century ago as I strolled a white sand beach w...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Beautiful Blackbird by Ashley Bryan

I’m a cheat. A dirty cheat, but for Ashley Bryan I will break ALL the rules! Though normally we limit ourselves on the Fuse 8 n’ Kate podcast to books that were published at least 20 years ago, I am going to have us look at a book today that is (restrain your gasps) 19 years old. Worth it. I mean, who could possibly fault me? Ashley Bryan was a living saint of children’s literature. Now, I can tell you that while I was working on this podcast episode I had this picture book out and my son ha...