Normally published in December, now pushed up to January for your reading pleasure. But I’m shaking things up this time around. Let’s do something a little different. In all my past Final Prediction Editions of Newbery/Caldecott winners, I cling stubbornly to the same format: name the predicted winner and honors. This year I’m going a […]
It has been a crazy December. So just in brief then, here are 100 of the books that showed up on my 31 Days, 31 Lists series that I personally enjoyed the most. I do this list each year as a kind of personal bookkeeping. Go about your business. We’ll be back to our regularly […]
And that, as they say, is that. A noble experiment runs its natural course. For those of you who followed along every day, I thank you. It’s been a thrill, an exhausting exhausting thrill, to bring you a different list of great 2016 books every day in December. Now we find ourselves on the cusp […]
No excuses! These are just the books that I read in 2016 that I thought knocked it out of the park. These aren’t the “best of the year”. These are just the books that were particularly good and that somehow crossed my radar. I read a lot more than what you’ll see here, but I […]
Back on December 9th I wrote a piece on those reprinted picture books I was happiest to encounter in 2016. Now I’ll say a word or two about the reprinted novels of this year. Naturally, if you look at the output from the publisher New York Review Books you’ll find a lovely array of titles. […]
I peer into the darkness and at long last I see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re almost there! Almost at the end of this month’s 31 Days, 31 Lists challenge. I’m certainly delighted, not least because I’ve managed to keep it up so far (knocking on wood now as hard as […]
It’s finally come! The list is nearing its end. So it is with great delight that I present to you some of the last of the lists. Today’s is particularly long, celebrating what I consider to be some of the best books of 2016. Since so many of them have shown up on my other […]
During the 2016 Boston Globe-Horn Book Colloquium Carol Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes spoke together about the art of writing about other people. During the speech they mentioned how part of their job is to break down “the canonical boundaries of biography.” Too often kids read the same biographies about the same people over and […]
Note that I didn’t specify which holidays, of course. These are just the books I think did a slam bang job of lauding their respective days of celebration. Enjoy one and all! 2016 Transcendent Holiday Titles Babushka: A Christmas Tale by Dawn Casey, ill. Amanda Hall Oh, certainly this isn’t the first Babushka title you’ve […]
There were no science books on the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for 2016. Nor in 2015. Nor 2014. Bomb in 2013 was sort of a science book, so we’ll count that. And Moonbird that year certainly was. Yet it’s often surprising how consistently science and nature get overlooked when they’re handing out awards […]
For a year or two I helped sit on the committee for the New York Historical Society’s book prize. Each year it goes to books that, “… honor the best children’s historical literature and encourage authors to continue to create engaging and challenging narratives that provide a window into the past for middle readers and […]
Earlier this year I had a lovely lunch with an author of nonfiction titles for kids. As we discussed the wide range of nonfiction available to children these days she lamented the fact that we’ve become so narrow in what we deem worthy of our children’s attention. Sticking strictly to what we consider to be […]
Fun Fact: The American Library Association does not currently give an award specifically to great works of children’s book poetry. Is not that strange? When I first discovered this to be true, I was perplexed. I’ve always been a bit of a rube when it comes to the poetic form. Placing stresses on syllables and […]
Okay! I’ve been looking forward to this particular list for a while. But first, a quick note on what we’re calling these things. Not too long ago the very funny Glen Weldon wrote a piece for an NPR blog about whether or not we should be calling these books “comics” or “graphic novels”. Weldon is […]
Alongside yesterday’s easy book list, this is the other list that could have been a little beefier this year. Not a lot of racial diversity to be found, to be frank. That fault lies with me, not the books published in 2016. Still, with that in mind, this list is a collection of great books […]
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