Featured Posts
Caldecott Award live
The ALA Youth Media Awards will be announced tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. CT in Chicago (that's 9 a.m. for Martha and me in Boston). Here is a link to the live webcast. Watching online is not quite the same as being in that huge ballroom full of … [Read More...]
Preview March/April 2015 Horn Book Magazine
Beneath these packing peanuts lies the March/April 2015 Horn Book Magazine cover by Tomie dePaola. In the March/April 2015 Horn Book Magazine: Barbara Bader pays tribute to five gay picture-book creators. Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, 2014 Horn Book … [Read More...]
Live from Chicago! It’s Robin
FRIDAY, 10:45 AM: At the risk of seeming like a stalker, I have a few things to report from the Caldecott meetings in Chicago. Not really! I have nothing to report from the (closed) Caldecott meetings. But I am in Chicago, and I am at ALA. I was able … [Read More...]
Classics and timeless books
As a child, I frequented libraries that had rather old books. I remember my elementary school library had timeworn copies of the Madeline books and that one of my neighborhood libraries had old books by Lois Lenski, older versions of the Amelia … [Read More...]
Blogs & Opinions
The 2015 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction
The 2015 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction goes to Dash, by Kirby Larson, published by Scholastic Press. While Mitsi is going to miss spending time with her beloved dog Dash now that Christmas vacation is over, she is looking forward to … [Read More...]
Holistic healing, YA-style?
Serendipitously, these two audiobooks were next to each other on a cart. I'd take the song. … [Read More...]
Classics and timeless books
As a child, I frequented libraries that had rather old books. I remember my elementary school library had timeworn copies of the Madeline books and that one of my neighborhood libraries had old books by Lois Lenski, older versions of the Amelia … [Read More...]
Caldecott Award live
The ALA Youth Media Awards will be announced tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. CT in Chicago (that's 9 a.m. for Martha and me in Boston). Here is a link to the live webcast. Watching online is not quite the same as being in that huge ballroom full of … [Read More...]
Review of the Week
Review of Dreaming in Indian
Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American Voices edited by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale Middle School, High School Annick 130 pp. 11/14 978-1-55451-687-2 $19.95 “If your imagination isn’t working — and, of course, in oppressed people that’s the first thing that goes — you can’t imagine anything better. Once you can imagine something different, something better, then you’re on your way.” So begins the foreword to this dizzyingly eclectic anthology of contemporary … [Read More...]
App Review of the Week
Peg + Cat: The Tree Problem app review
The little-girl and feline, respectively, stars of the animated series Peg + Cat, have a series of loosely math-related, cat-stuck-in-a-tree adventures in The Tree Problem app (PBS Kids, January 2015). First choose a location: Math-tropolis, Dino Valley, The South Pole, Broadway, The Farm, or Peg's Backyard. (If you're indecisive, that just gives you time to hear Cat's cute tree-related wordplay: "Peek-a-boo, I tree you," "Tree bien," "Been there, been stuck in that"). Then pick a level, one … [Read More...]
Recommended Books
Reviews of selected books by Patrick Jennings
Putnam and Pennyroyal by Patrick Jennings; illus. by Jon J Muth Intermediate Scholastic 165 pp. 11/99 0-439-07965-9 $15.95 From the beginning of his narrative, it’s evident that … [Read More...]
What Makes a Good Math Storybook?
Owen giggles with glee as he pokes his eighteen-month-old fingers through the caterpillar holes; Ashley, age five, and Ryan, six, diligently work to stuff as many lima beans as possible into a child’s … [Read More...]
Review of Dreaming in Indian
Dreaming in Indian: Contemporary Native American Voices edited by Lisa Charleyboy and Mary Beth Leatherdale Middle School, High School Annick 130 pp. 11/14 978-1-55451-687-2 $19.95 “If … [Read More...]
From The Guide: Math Picture Books
In “What Makes a Good Math Storybook?”, Audrey M. Quinlan explores some “classic picture books that can be enjoyed as works of literature and also to painlessly introduce math concepts to children.” … [Read More...]
Review of Ling & Ting: Twice as Silly
Ling & Ting: Twice as Silly by Grace Lin; illus. by the author Primary Little, Brown 44 pp. 11/14 978-0-316-18402-1 $16.00 Lin’s third Ling and Ting easy reader (Ling & Ting: Not … [Read More...]
Interviews
Sharon Draper on Stella by Starlight
In the January/February 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, editor Martha Parravano talked to Sharon M. Draper about her new intermediate novel Stella by Starlight. Read the full review … [Read More...]
Five questions for A. S. King
A. S. King's books are one of a kind: strange, sometimes surrealistic, but always grounded in truth. Her latest YA novel — Glory O'Brien's History of the Future (Little, Brown, 14 years and up) — is … [Read More...]
Five questions for Lizzie Skurnick
Since 2013, Lizzie Skurnick Books (LSB; an imprint of Ig Publishing) has been handpicking and reissuing "the very best in young adult literature, from the classics of the 1930s and 1940s to the social … [Read More...]
Liniers on What There Is Before There Is Anything There
In the November/December 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, editor Martha Parravano asked Argentinian cartoonist Liniers about the inspiration for his "deeply unsettling" but "bravely existential" … [Read More...]
Steampunk queen: An interview with Gail Carriger
Gail Carriger introduced readers to her alternate Victorian London — chock-full of steampunk technology and supernatural characters — in 2009 with Soulless, the first volume of her five-book adult … [Read More...]
