Hold Fast By Blue Balliett Scholastic $17.99 ISBN: 978-0545299886 Ages 9-12 I honestly don’t think you can be a reviewer without being honest about your own personal prejudices first. When I pick up a book for children I have to cut through a thick swath of issues infecting my brain that may have little to [...]
Take Me Out to the Yakyu By Aaron Meshon Atheneum Books for Young Readers (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1442441774 Ages 3-7 On shelves now. Corner a children’s librarian. Say the words “Japan” and “baseball”. Ask for picture books that involve both topics. What will you get? If I were a betting [...]
Cowboy Up!: Ride the Navajo Rodeo By Nancy Bo Flood Photography by Jan Sonnenmair Wordsong (an imprint of Highlights) $17.95 ISBN: 978-1-59078-893-6 Ages 8-12 On shelves now Sometimes I think half my job simply consists of making lists. Not that I’m complaining. I love lists. I love making them, and checking them, and adding to [...]
A Girl Called Problem By Katie Quirk Eerdmans Books for Young Readers $8.00 ISBN: 97800-8028-5404-9 Ages 9-12 On shelves now. Who says that mystery novels for kids all have to include the same tropes and settings? I tell you, half the time when a kid comes up to a reference desk asking for a mystery [...]
Picture a Tree By Barbara Reid Albert Whitman & Company $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-8075-6526-1 Ages 3-6 On shelves now. If you weren’t a teacher or a librarian you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of how critically important tree units are to our school systems. They’re huge. Each and every year when I worked as a children’s librarian [...]
Giant Dance Party By Betsy Bird Illustrated By Brandon Dorman Greenwillow (an imprint of Harper Collins) $17.99 ISBN: 978-0061960833 Ages 3-7 On shelves now. Gotcha! I’m just messing with you. No, I’m not going to actually review my book here. I’m not going to wax rhapsodic over the hidden meanings lurking behind the mysterious cupcake [...]
Maria Had a Little Llama / Maria Tenia Una Llama Pequena By Angela Dominguez Henry Holt (an imprint of Macmillan) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-8050-9333-9 Ages 4-8 On shelves August 20th Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you a humbled woman. A woman who “knew” certain facts but, until she saw them working in her own personal [...]
No Fits, Nilson! By Zachariah Ohora Dial (an imprint of Penguin) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-8037-3852-2 Ages 3-7 On shelves June 13th The small child is a frightening beast. A truly terrifying creature that can level the most powerful adult with the mere pitch of their fury laden screams. As a children’s librarian I used to tell [...]
The rules are simple. Reinterpret a famous scene from any Maurice Sendak book in the style of another famous children’s picture book artist. Perhaps you’d like to do Pierre ala Ezra Jack Keats or Outside Over There in the style of Marcia Brown. All power to you. Whatever you prefer, if you think this is [...]
Brick by Brick By Charles R. Smith Jr. Illustrated by Floyd Cooper $17.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-192082-0 Ages 4-8 On shelves now Sometimes I feel like the older I get the more interesting history becomes. Not that history, real history, wasn’t always fascinating. It’s just that when I was a kid you couldn’t have named a subject [...]
The Water Castle By Megan Frazer Blakemore Illustrated by Jim Kay Walker Books for Young Readers (an imprint of Bloomsbury) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-8027-2839-5 Ages 9-12 On shelves now Where does fantasy stop and science fiction begin? Is it possible to ever draw a distinct line in the sand between the two? A book with a [...]
The Dark By Lemony Snicket Illustrated by Jon Klassen Little Brown & Co. $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-316-18748-0 Ages 4-8 On shelves April 2nd You do not know the temptation I am fighting right now to begin this review with some grandiose statement equating a fear of the dark with a fear of death itself. You have [...]
Ariol: Just a Donkey Like You and Me By Emmanuel Guibert Illustrated by Marc Boutavant Translated by Joe Johnson Papercutz $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-59707-399-8 Ages 9-12 On shelves now. The French are different from you and me. They have better comics for their kids. Sure, America’s been doing passably well in the last few years, but [...]
Doll Bones By Holly Black Illustrated by Eliza Wheeler McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-416963981 Ages 9-12 On shelves May 7th I don’t watch much horror in general. I’m what you might call a chicken. When I do see it, though, I’m not particularly disturbed by random splattering and gore. [...]
Hank Finds an Egg By Rebecca Dudley Peter Pauper Press, Inc. $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-4413-1158-0 Ages 3-7 On shelves May 1st Photography in children’s literature holds a real fascination for me. No work of pure photography has ever won a Caldecott Award or Honor and, when it comes right down to it, there are only two [...]
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