Publications about books for children and young adults
In our first bracket of BoB judges, Kenneth Oppel selects Bomb over Wonder, and Margarita Engle chooses Code Name Verity over Titanic. The fact that I agree with both of these decisions counts for nothing in my little meta-battle; what we are evaluating here is the ability of each judge to come to a clear [...]
Never Say Die by Will Hobbs Intermediate, Middle School Harper/HarperCollins 212 pp. 2/13 978-0-06-170878-7 $16.99 Library ed. 978-0-06-170879-4 $17.89 e-book ed. 978-0-06-222384-5 $9.99 Set in the Yukon Territory hard by the Beaufort Sea, Hobbs’s latest turbocharged wilderness survival story has heavy weather, savage river waters, treacherous trails, and, as chief antagonist, a “grolar bear.” Just [...]
Since 1988 and the publication of Changes in Latitudes, Will Hobbs has been one of the preeminent adventure novelists writing for young people. Typically, his stories feature a young protagonist confronting some challenge or other posed by the natural world; in his new book Never Say Die, a boy and his adult half-brother face all [...]
I hope you can join us on Thursday, April 25th for “Fostering Lifelong Learners,” a one-day conference about early childhood education the Horn Book is co-sponsoring with the Cambridge Public Library and Reach Out and Read. The keynote address will be provided by Dr. Robert Needlman, editor of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, and [...]
In between the few huge publishing houses and the many tiny ones lie the small independents. Mary Cash is vice president and editor in chief of Holiday House, founded by Vernon Ives in 1935 and currently publishing sixty-plus new books a year; Jason Low is the publisher of Lee & Low Books, co-founded by his [...]
SLJ’s Battle of the Books has begun, with Kenneth Oppel judging Wonder v. Bomb. After Margarita Engle finishes with Code Name Verity v. Titanic tomorrow, I’ll weigh in on who was the better judge. Preliminary cavil: I’m a little bothered by Oppel’s ambiguous use of the word “faultlessly.” I spent most of yesterday at home, [...]
The Morning News started its tournament of books yesterday with a match between Louise Erdrich’s The Round House and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. I thought the critic, Edan Lepucki, did a great job of assessing each book’s strengths and shortcomings and coming up with a winner. Today, the match between Adam Johnson’s [...]
In an era in which books want to have sequels, sequels want to spawn series, series want to be like that other guy’s series, and those other guys become fewer and fewer as publishing consolidates itself, we thought it might be nice to take a time-out in favor of the outliers. Welcome to the Horn [...]
It’s Women’s History Month and thus the Kidlit Celebrates Women’s History Month blog is back. I’ll be over there later this month to write about our beloved Bertha; but go over there now to see accounts of the likes of Emily Brontë, Julia Morgan, and Temple Grandin. On a related note, I’ve been enjoying my [...]
