Chris Barton's Blog: Bartography, page 34
March 15, 2017
WHOOSH! keeps on going
Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions has been treated kindly by list-makers lately, and I’m beyond grateful. Thank you to all who have shown and shared your appreciation for this book. It’s high time I mirrored that appreciation by rounding up some of that good news in one place — especially since the first […]
March 9, 2017
On segregating author-visit audiences by gender
I’ve never had a school segregate my presentation audiences by gender, but I know of authors who have experienced that. I’m not aware of schools keeping girls out of presentations by male authors, only of hosts keeping boys out of female authors’ sessions. For any author who wants to use it, I’m going to share […]
February 28, 2017
All the college kidlit conferences (as of March 2017)
Or, more formally, “A Comprehensive List of U.S. College- and University-Sponsored or -Hosted Children’s and Young Adult Literature Conferences, Festivals, and Symposia.” (All of them that I could find, anyway). A few years ago, I was looking for such a list, wondered why I couldn’t find one, and decided to just go ahead and make […]
February 20, 2017
Whoosh!, race, and “ALL students”
One day last month (it happened to be Inauguration Day), my friend Alia Jones posted this on Facebook: Something interesting happened today. A school visited our store on a field trip & the teacher read a story to her class (4th graders?). She picked Whoosh! from our shelves. In the story, Lonnie takes his robot […]
February 17, 2017
H.M. Bouwman on writing A Crack in the Sea: “I am adding my words to a giant pile of kindling”
From the February 2017 issue of my Bartography Express email newsletter: I’m delighted this month to feature A Crack in the Sea (G.P. Putnam’s Sons), the magical new middle-grade novel by my friend H.M. Bouwman, with beautiful illustrations by Yuko Shimizu. The starred review the book received from Publishers Weekly began this way: “The Middle […]
February 8, 2017
A book about a girl, a book for a boy
Two exchanges I had with students last week in the booming town of Prosper, Texas, have remained on my mind back at home this week. The first exchange was right before one of my elementary-school presentations, with a girl who handed me a letter that read in part: I wonder if you have a book […]
January 26, 2017
La mejor noticia I’ve had all week
Monday afternoon, right between two school presentations, I checked my phone and received news that I’ve been hoping for for a long time: There’s going to be a Spanish-language translation of Shark Vs. Train! There have been editions of Shark Vs. Train in Korean and Portuguese, as well as two different Chinese translations, but none […]
January 17, 2017
Thank you, POTUS, and thank you, BrainPOP
I’ve been asking librarians and educators for insight into how they teach The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch, and especially how they provide contextual information on the Reconstruction era. One suggestion involves a resource many schools and classrooms already have access to: the duo of Tim and Moby at BrainPOP. thanks @brainpop! Civil war […]
January 6, 2017
John Roy chose to stay
Texas students in grades 3 through 6 will be voting this month for their 2016-17 Texas Bluebonnet Award favorites, and one of the many blessings of having The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch on this year’s list is that it has given me the opportunity to talk about the book at scores of schools […]
December 15, 2016
A year-end blast of happy Whoosh! news
The end of the year is list-making time — a fact driven home to me each time I come across yet another Top 10 of 2016’s best music that has heretofore eluded my ears. (I’m trying to get caught up, but would certainly welcome your music suggestions in the comments.) The past few weeks have […]
