Betsy Bird's Blog, page 86
June 28, 2022
Have You Seen the Darkness? A Richard Fairgray, Black Sand Beach Interview
Jaded. I’m jaded. That’s the word for it. Authors? I know ’em. Artists? See ’em all the time. No, I’m one cool customer. Nothing fazes me. I’m not likely to go fangirling over . . . .
… over . . .
Ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh, have you SEEN who I get to interview today????!!! Richard freakin’ Fairgray, THAT is who! The guy behind the Black Sand Beach series! The Cardboardia series! Lots of other books as well!
So yeah. I’m fangirling out. But with my penchant for creepy children’s books, ...
June 27, 2022
Publisher Preview: Ellen Myrick (Part Three!)
If you missed the first part of this multi-pronged publisher preview, you can catch Part One here and Part Two here.
Cat’s Seasons by Airlie Anderson
You may or may not recall the first book in this particular series, going by the name of Cat’s Colors. In that little book, Cat walked through a gray landscape collecting colors along the way. As it turns out, hundreds of libraries turned that book into a “storywalk” (a popular thing to do for families during the height of the pandemi...
June 24, 2022
Shining A Light Cover Reveal: A Talk with Author Veeda Bybee About the Trick With Collected Biographies
There is an art to a collected biography. I mean it truly! Not everyone can pull off a collection of famous folks with some connecting thread in common. Too often I see collected biographies where people appear to have just been thrown in there willy-nilly without much thought or consideration made to either the inclusion or the writing of the biographical information. It’s collective biographies like these that give the genre a bad name. All the more reason to highlight the books that are doing...
June 22, 2022
Dual Interview Special: Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri Dish Dirt on the Dragons Love Tacos 10-Year Anniversary!
It was almost precisely ten years ago. We even know the date:
June 14th, 2012.
Do you know where you were then? I had to wrack my brain a little. Then I realized that I have a blog that’s existed almost 20 years. On June 14, 2012 I was doing my Top 100 Picture Books Poll countdown and we’d just gotten to the Ferdinand post. How was I to know that on the very day that post aired, a future classic was released to the world? The name of the book was Dragons Love Tacos and right now, at this ...
June 21, 2022
How Do You Even Write a Book for Kids About the Holocaust Anymore? An Interview with Danica Davidson
In children’s literature we are caught in a perpetual struggle to figure out what is and isn’t appropriate for child readers. We don’t want to candy coat the past, but at the same time we want to offer hope in some form. And in no subject area is this more keenly discussed than the Holocaust. What do you tell? When? How much?
It’s all about balance. Too much of any one side of one topic or too much on any other side leaves you with one-sided accounts. In the past we suffered from our lib...
June 20, 2022
2022 Board Books: Some Delights So Far
You know, I don’t often get requests for round-ups this early in the year, but I know some of you folks love board books just as much as I do, and 2022 has produced a veritable bumper crop of the little beauties! I’m the kooky lady in the library lunch room with a pile of board books sitting on the table, eating her sandwich, reading literature for folks below the age of 1. That’s me. And while I enjoy summarizing everything during my usual 31 Days, 31 Books: Board Books list (here’s 2021, if yo...
June 19, 2022
Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Black Misery by Langston Hughes, ill. Arouni
It’s our 5-year anniversary of starting this podcast! To celebrate we’re examining something both obscure and of note. Haven’t heard of this particular picture book? You aren’t alone. Originally published in 1969, the book is perhaps best known as being the last book Langston Hughes, its author, ever worked on. I was just meticulously weeding my library’s adult 811s and stumbled upon it. Black Misery is a children’s book marketed as an adult title yet in spite of its copyright date it has a ...
June 16, 2022
Publisher Preview: Ellen Myrick (Part Two!)
If you missed the first part of this multi-pronged publisher preview, you can catch Part One here. As I wrote before:
“The spotlight returns to Ellen Myrick of (you guessed it) Publisher Spotlight/Myrick Marketing & Media, LLC. Ellen represents around 34 publishers and, on occasion, she’ll give me the chance to take a gander at some of the choicest plums.”
So far we’ve covered Albatros & Barefoot Books. Onward to the next batch of books coming out this fall then!
Tiger & Cat by Alli...
June 15, 2022
Review of the Day: Zia Erases the World by Bree Barton
Zia Erases the World
By Bree Barton
Viking (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
$16.99
ISBN: 9780593350997
Ages 9-12
On shelves now
We had less words when I was a kid. It’s true! When I was growing up the same concepts and ideas as today were all around, but so many of their terms were unknown to the general populace. I had a friend with OCD but we didn’t have a name for it. I had a friend who was certainly non-binary, but the idea of personal pronouns had entered few children’s lexicons. We had ...
June 14, 2022
Newbery/Caldecott 2023: Summer Prediction Edition
Spring has sprung and I know we’ve all been reading madly, trying to find the hidden gems, and the books that might have a chance at the upcoming award season. The thing is, this is an impossible game. No one can truly know the mind of a Newbery or Caldecott committee. Each one is as distinct as a snowflake, and often they veer wildly into different directions.
Traditionally on this blog the Spring Prediction Edition tends to be a bit slight. By summer this improves significantly. We’ve seen...
