Hilo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth By Judd Winick Random House Children’s Books $13.99 ISBN: 978-0-385-38617-3 Ages 9-12 On shelves September 1st Relentless cheer. You can use it for good. You can use it for evil. You can use it in the name of humor too, but that’s a trickier game to play. I’m […]
Castle Hangnail By Ursula Vernon Dial (an imprint of Penguin Group) ISBN: 978-0803741294 Ages 8-11 On shelves April 21st These are dark times for children’s fantasy. Dark times indeed. Which is to say, when I pick up a fantasy novel for kids, more often than not I find the books filled with torture, violence, bloody […]
With Comic Con NYC later this week, publisher previews on the rise, and various work-related meetings, talks, and speeches I’m just the teeniest tiniest bit busy this week. But no matter! It is you, dear readers, that give me what for and how to. For you I would forgo all the sleep in the world. […]
The Simples Love a Picnic By J.C. Phillipps Houghton Mifflin Harcourt $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-544-16667-7 Ages 3-7 On shelves now I am on a mission. A quest. A journey to find the funniest picture books published for children in a given year. It isn’t an easy thing to do. First, you have to deal with the […]
So what’s the talk of the town these days? Well the relative brouhaha came about at the end of last week when ReedPOP announced a panel of “the world’s biggest children’s authors” in the field. That the luminaries in question were all white and male struck a raw nerve with a whole slew of folks. […]
Monster On the Hill By Rob Harrell Top Shelf Productions $16.28 ISBN: 978-1-603090759 Ages 8-12 On shelves now See, people? *shakes book in the air* How hard is this, really? I stand beside thousands of children’s librarians who have, for years now, been in a bit of a pickle with the kiddos when it comes […]
The Meanest Birthday Girl By Josh Schneider Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) $14.99 ISBN: 978-0-547-83814-4 Ages 6-9 On shelves now. Life is easier when you can categorize it. When you can slot it in a distinct category and reduce everything to black and white terms. Gray is problematic and messy, after all. […]
Lockwood & Company: The Screaming Staircase By Jonathan Stroud Hyperion Books for Children $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-4231-6491-3 Ages 10 and up On shelves September 17th I’m sick of historical fiction. I’m sick of contemporary fiction. I’m sick of realism and science fiction. Fantasy I watch with a wary eye. I don’t always feel this way but […]
The Year of Billy Miller By Kevin Henkes Greenwillow (an imprint of Harper Collins) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-226812-9 Ages 6-10 On shelves September 17th I don’t readily compare books to Ramona (now THERE’S a sentence opener, ladies and gentlemen). To compare any children’s book to Beverly Cleary’s classic series just leaves one wide open to ridicule. […]
Morning, fellow plebes! And isn’t the weather just fine and dandy these last few days? It has been in New York anyway. Which is to say, it feels like we briefly stole San Francisco’s temperatures for our own use this week. Giving it back is going to be awful. To take my mind off that, […]
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made By Stephan Pastis Candlewick Press $14.99 ISBN: 978-0-7636-6050-5 Ages 9-12 On shelves February 26th Call it the attack of the syndicated cartoonists. For whatever reason, in the year 2013 we are seeing droves of escapees from the comic strip pages leaping from the burning remains of the newspaper industry into […]
Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great By Bob Shea Hyperion Books $15.99 ISBN: 978-1423159520 Ages 4-8 On shelves May 28th I feel like it’s only recently that pop culture has opened its eyes and realized that when it comes to mythical creatures, unicorns are the funniest animals. Sasquatches rank a close second and zombies have their […]
Pickle: The (Formerly) Anonymous Prank Club of Fountain Point Middle School By Kim Baker Illustrated by Tim Probert Roaring Brook Press (a division of Macmillan) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-59643-765-4 Ages 9-12 On shelves now When I was in college I took a course in journalism to fulfill an English credit. I had no real desire to […]
The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom By Christopher Healy Walden Pond Press (an imprint of Harper Collins) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-211743-4 Ages 9-12 On shelves now. Since when did fairytales become the realm of the girly? I blame Disney. Back in the days of Grimm your average everyday fairytale might contain princesses and pretty gowns […]
Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: One Dead Spy Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales: Big Bad Ironclad! By Nathan Hale Amulet (an imprint of Abrams) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-419700396-6 ISBN: 978-1-4197-0395-9 Ages 9-12 On shelves now If you should find that you share your name with a Revolutionary War Hero you have various ways of making use of that […]
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