Betsy Bird's Blog, page 85

Review of the Day: Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone by Tae Keller

Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone
By Tae Keller
Random House Children’s Books
$17.99
ISBN: 9780593310526
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

I don’t like bully books. That’s a tough thing to say when you’re a librarian that reads tons of children’s titles for a living. It’s kind of like saying “I find breathing air annoying” or “I wish water were less inside my cells.” If you work with children’s literature then bully books are ubiquitous. Omnipresent. The lazy writer’s method of conjuring up quick conflict at a m...

Guest Post: Kids and Nature Preschool Teachers Weigh In on the Blueberry Award by Martha Meyer

Happy National Blueberry Day!

Okay, fine. Not today. The official National Blueberry Day was actually last week. Still, that’s close enough to celebrate all things Blueberry including the Evanston Public Library Blueberry Award. Did you ever stop to think about the benefits of your library creating its own literary award? Trust me, they are abundant. And to prove it to you, I’m handing over the reins today to my co-worker at EPL, Martha Meyer. Creator of the remarkable Blueberry Award (li...

Bringing Back the Mean People: Jewell Parker Rhodes Discusses a One-of-a-Kind Toni Morrison Reprint

I want you to look at a book cover for a moment here. Take a good long look:

And before I say anything else, I want you to think for a moment about the role of picture books today vs. the role of picture books in the past. What has changed, and what is the same? And then I want you to think about the picture books that make hard choices. These would be the books that don’t tell happy dappy little stories involving unicorns and farting fish and how special you are. These are the picture bo...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say

Goofy is fun. Goofy is great. But seems to me that sometimes you just gotta slow everything down and do a picture book that’s a little more serious. We had to go meaningful this week and what could be more meaningful than a little drop of Allen Say?. That doesn’t mean we don’t have time to also talk about a yard full of 12-foot-skeletons, of course. We contain multitudes.

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, PlayerFM, ...

Review of the Day: My Parents Won’t Stop Talking! by Emma Hunsinger and Tillie Walden

My Parents Won’t Stop Talking!
By Emma Hunsinger and Tillie Walden
Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan)
$18.99
ISBN: 9781250800275
Ages 3-6
On shelves now

I was at a library conference the other week (the first since the pandemic started!) and got into a conversation with a publisher about a rare but beautiful aspect found in some of the best new picture books being published today. You know when you encounter an idea in a book and the first thing you think is, “How has this never been turned ...

Publisher Preview: Ellen Myrick Presents Small Presses (Part Four!)

This preview of a host of smaller publishers continues! If you missed the first part of this multi-pronged publisher preview, you can catch Part One here, Part Two here, and Part Three here. Today, we’re kicking it off with some new comics!

Everyday Hero Machine Boy by Irma Kniivila, ill. Tri Vuong

Graphic novel time! It’s funny, but somehow I first heard about this book months and months ago. If you get your hands on an Advanced Reading Galley you’ll see that there’s a blurb from ...

Publisher Preview: Ellen Myric Presents Small Presses (Part Four!)

This preview of a host of smaller publishers continues! If you missed the first part of this multi-pronged publisher preview, you can catch Part One here, Part Two here, and Part Three here. Today, we’re kicking it off with some new comics!

Everyday Hero Machine Boy by Irma Kniivila, ill. Tri buong

Graphic novel time! It’s funny, but somehow I first heard about this book months and months ago. If you get your hands on an Advanced Reading Galley you’ll see that there’s a blurb from ...

Press Release: Picture Book Summit Line-Up Confirmed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE      Contact:  Kelli Panique – support@picturebooksummit.com

KATE DICAMILLO, THE FAN BROTHERS HEADLINE PICTURE BOOK SUMMIT 2022A Portion of Proceeds to Benefit the San Juan Community Library in San Juan, Puerto Rico

The lineup for the 8th annual Picture Book Summit, the world’s largest online picture book writing conference, has been announced. The event will stream globally on Saturday, October 8, 2022.

This year’s Summit is headlined by three picture book...

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Amazing Bone by William Steig

We’re back from the ALA Conference, baby! Many thanks to everyone who hung out with us and told us that they liked our podcast. We’ll just start off today with a hat tip to author Eliot Schrefer for suggesting today’s book. It’s one of those rare cases where this is actually a book that I read and reread multiple times as a child. We’ve done all kinds of William Steig books over the years. Shrek. Doctor DeSoto. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Now we tackle one that is very near and dear to m...

Review of the Day: Listen to the Language of the Trees by Tera Kelley, ill. Marie Hermansson

Listen to the Language of the Trees: A Story of How Forests Communicate Underground
By Tera Kelley
Illustrated by Marie Hermansson
Dawn Publications (an imprint of Sourcebooks)
$16.99
ISBN: 9781728232164
Ages 6-12
On shelves now

A couple years ago my family had just purchased our very first home. It had a garden in the front and a nice fenced in backyard for the kids to run about. Not a month after we’d moved in, though, we were all sitting in the living room watching television when we heard a lo...