Elizabeth Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
Hats off to Stand Up, Yumi Chung! Sure it’s a funny story couched in a meaningful one, but for what it’s saying and how it says it, I award it a great big rubber chicken. It may not be a work of grit and suffering, but it’s fun and that, to my mind, is worth all the hoity-toity awards in the world.
A little-known and unexpected aspect of 20th century literature is the delightful discovery that some well-known authors also wrote one or more children’s books. This unusual literary theme is explored in the exhibition They Also Wrote Children’s Books, on view in the Grolier Club’s second floor gallery from March 4 through May 2, 2020.
“You have the most to learn from the perspectives that are hardest to find in the world.” For today’s cover reveal, American Hmong author Kao Kalia Yang discusses the story behind her remarkable and beautiful upcoming picture book The Most Beautiful Thing, and how intersectionality informs her writing.
Humor, hijinks, and activism? Must be today’s President’s Day book jacket reveal.
A book that isn’t afraid to be a little weird is a book I can truly respect. Guest star Aaron Reynolds suggests this Peggy Rathmann classic, to the benefit of all.
No series of rote facts, Overground Railroad puts you in the shoes of the ordinary people that had to leave everything and everyone they knew in search of a better life. Historical events like The Great Migration are vague. This book hands young readers not just specifics. It hands them people they can get to know and care about.
Representation and children’s books. I talk fables and fairytales with Natalie Portman.
Each year, the winners of the Sydney Taylor are “sent”, as it were, on blog tours. And today, I am pleased beyond measure to be speaking with Andrew Maraniss, winner of the Sydney Taylor Honor for Middle Grade, for his book Games of Deception: The True Story of the First US Olympic Basketball Team at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany.
The other day publisher and author Marissa Moss of Creston Books sent me an interesting query. We all know that the bar has risen for nonfiction authors and even, to a certain extent, illustrators of children’s books. But what is the role of the publisher in all this? A guest post on accuracy in nonfiction.
With the full and present knowledge that monkeys in children’s literature are problematic to the extreme, Kate and I tackle a book that involves a kind of animal that is professed to be a monkey but is, in fact, an ape, much like the problematic-in-his-own-way Curious George.
Great writing for kids, when you encounter it, reminds you that there is always a new way to look at this old, familiar world of ours. If you buy only one bee book for the rest of your life, make it this one.
Today’s list consists of all the 2020 comics I’ve seen so far that made me inordinately happy. Please note that a lot of these aren’t out quite yet. Consider them something to look forward to then.
“I did change the outcomes and timelines of some major events, which allowed certain settings to exist when in real history they were already gone or hadn’t yet come into existence, but I tried to always alter them in favor of the exiled or subjugated parties.” Dylan Meconis presents new information on the sequel to her hugely lauded graphic novel, Queen of the Sea.
Today the book I bring is none other than that Reading Rainbow classic A Chair for My Mother. I talk about some of the good narrative choices made by this book, while Kate talks about some of the very strange illustration choices.
Hand this to the kid that yearns for that freedom. For wide-open spaces and mysterious figures hiding in the shadows and snot nosed brothers and lots and lots of puppies. Hand it to someone who needs their own mountain. Even if it’s just a literary one.
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