Betsy Bird's Blog, page 82

Speaking Up and Unreliable Vocal Chords: A Talk With Maulik Pancholy About NIKHIL OUT LOUD

Here’s how the typical celebrity writes a children’s book for kids:

They don’t. They just don’t. They hire someone to do it for them. Or, if they’re feeling spunky, they’ll whip up a 32-page picture book in 20 minutes and reap the subsequent rewards.

I am not interested in those people. Far more interesting is the celebrity that thinks to themselves, “I’d like to write something for kids that might actually be pretty good and is something that could help them out a lot with some of the is...

Speaking Up and Faithless Vocal Chords: A Talk With Maulik Pancholy About NIKHIL OUT LOUD

Here’s how the typical celebrity writes a children’s book for kids:

They don’t. They just don’t. They hire someone to do it for them. Or, if they’re feeling spunky, they’ll whip up a 32-page picture book in 20 minutes and reap the subsequent rewards.

I am not interested in those people. Far more interesting is the celebrity that thinks to themselves, “I’d like to write something for kids that might actually be pretty good and is something that could help them out a lot with some of the is...

The Busload of Books Takes Off: Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr Tell All

It seems to me that after having experienced a rather extreme form of forced homeschooling in 2020, few would opt to take the whole process to the next level. And by “next level” I mean helping public schools as much as humanly possible.

Meet author/illustrator duo Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr. Just your average, everyday couple, who decided to pack their children and irrational dog into a bus full o’ books and engage in the The Busload of Books Tour. Described as a yearlong project bu...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly Bang

“It’s Catch Me If You Can only with an old woman and a weird blue creature.”

I have found a doozy!!

Full credit today to Lisa Straubinger for today’s suggestion. Though we’d done the better known Molly Bang title When Sophie Gets Angry… Really, Really Angry on this podcast, we’d not done any other Molly Bang books. This was Molly’s first book that she’d written and illustrated herself and it’s . . . I already said “doozy” didn’t I? This is very much like nothing you’ve ever seen bef...

Review of the Day: NO! Said Custard the Squirrel by Sergio Ruzzier

NO! said Custard the Squirrel
By Sergio Ruzzier
Abrams Appleseed (an imprint of Abrams)
ISBN: 9781419755248
$15.99
Ages 3-6
On shelves September 6th

It’s all gotta mean something, doesn’t it? That’s the unofficial motto of the American reader. We don’t do so well with uncertainty. It makes us queasy. This is particularly true of the books we read to our children. Now in that case there’s a whole history of how children’s books began as instructional readers packed full of moral lessons. Alphabet ...

Guest Post: Sally Battle Discusses Library Programs That Aid Conversations Around Race and Culture

I am a public librarian. I work in a library for a city entity, am a city employee, and serve the residents of Evanston, Illinois. And, like many librarians, over the past few years my library has been working hard to make strides in addressing the inequalities that are inherent in every library setting. My personal focus is primarily on collections, so I’ve tried a variety of different methods to make my collection represent a range of historically marginalized voices over the years (and I’ll b...

Meanwhile . . . A Leviathan-Sized Jason Shiga Interview

Faithful readers, you know that I interview folks all the time on this site. I’m fond of quite a few of the people I speak with, but I get a special thrill when I connect with someone I’ve been following distantly for years. Today, I get to check the box next to, “Interview Jason Shiga”. It’s a box that’s been empty for far too long.

You see, back in 2010 I reviewed a truly loopy book called Meanwhile. Utterly brilliant, it took the concept of choosing your own adventure and applied not simp...

Publisher Preview: Ellen Myrick Presents Small Presses of Fall 2022 (Part Seven!)

This preview of a host of relatively publishers at last finishes! If you missed the first part of this multi-pronged publisher preview, you can catch Part One here, Part Two here, Part Three, Part Four here, Part Five, and Part Six here.

Swimmers by Maria Jose Ferrada, ill. Mariana Alcantara

I like an author to show a bit of range. And can you think of any range greater than presenting a book about the children of Chile lost to a cruel dictatorship one year (niños: Poems for the L...

The Return of Danbi! An Interview with Anna Kim and the Cover Reveal of Danbi’s Favorite Day

I remember the first time I saw Danbi.

Each year my library (Evanston Public Library) organizes a 101 Great Books for Kids list of some of the top children’s books of the year. I see a fair number sent to me as PDFs, galleys and ARCS, but my librarians tend to see those that come in just as circulating materials. So I wasn’t the first one to discover Danbi Leads the School Parade. That credit goes to my librarians, and I was so very glad that they did. A glance at the cover and I was in dang...

Review of the Day: Seen and Unseen by Elizabeth Partridge, ill. Lauren Tamaki

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration
By Elizabeth Partridge
Illustrated by Lauren Tamaki
Candlewick Press
$21.99
ISBN: 9781452165103
Ages 9-12
On shelves October 25th

My son is very into asking hard questions these days. He’s eight and has discovered the beauty of putting adults on the spot with a hard-hitting query. “What’s your greatest regret?” he might ask one day. Or “What was the best day of your l...