Publications about books for children and young adults
Originality is everything in literature, as in art. “Originals never lose their value,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said. He may have been referring to Shakespeare and Wordsworth, but the statement is just as true of children’s literature. Of course, even originals owe something to the past — “we all quote,” Emerson acknowledged — but he did [...]
Water in the Park: A Book About Water & the Times of the Day by Emily Jenkins; illus. by Stephanie Graegin Primary Schwartz & Wade/Random 40 pp. 5/13 978-0-375-87002-6 $16.99 Library ed. 978-0-375-97002-3 $19.99 On a warm day, just before six a.m., a city park starts to stir: turtles laze on rocks by the pond, [...]
Bad things were done to me when I was small. Lacking adequate physical defenses, I escaped into my imagination, where I could be all-powerful and the scariest monster was the witch in my closet. Imagination expands when exercised; mine grew strong and wily, and a pleasure to me, too, when the bad things were in [...]
Table of Contents Features Caroline Fraser 10 Peter Rabbit and the Tale of a Fierce Bad Publisher The bunnysploitation of a children’s literature icon. Jeanne Birdsall 27 Middle Grade Saved My Life In praise of middle grade novels—and why not to confuse them with YA. Jonathan Hunt 31 The Amorphous Genre Needed: a gateway [...]
Ask the Passengers by A. S. King High School Little, Brown 295 pp. 10/12 978-0-316-19468-6 $17.99 Astrid would be the quintessential Q-for-Questioning girl in her high school’s LGBTQ support group if her small-town, small-minded school had such a thing — and the gay question is only one of many weighing her down. When her humanities [...]
Review of The Dark by Lemony Snicket. From the March/April 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
When writing nonfiction, including dialogue can be a dangerous proposition. Several years ago, I asked an author about the snappy dialogue in his nonfiction picture book about a poet. He said the words were a combination of excerpts from the poet’s autobiography and some things the author “rather assumed.” The book, he continued, got “whacked [...]
Between songs, Arlo Guthrie likes to strum his guitar and tell a story he learned from his father, Woody Guthrie. It goes like this: Two rabbits, a mama and a papa, are running full speed from a pack of baying hounds. Spotting a hollow log, the rabbits rush in and are immediately surrounded by the [...]
In our March/April “Different Drummers” issue, we asked authors, publishers, and critics to name the strangest children’s books they’ve ever enjoyed. Here’s what they had to say: Elizabeth Bird – “Seven Little Ones Instead” Luann Toth – “Word Girl” Deborah Stevenson – “Horrible and Beautiful” Kristin Cashore – “Embracing the Strange” Susan Marston – “New [...]
The Horn Book Magazine asked Elizabeth Law, “What’s the strangest children’s book you’ve ever enjoyed?” When I was in nursery school, my favorite bedtime books were two my mother stole from the Unitarian Sunday School library, Martin and Judy, volumes II and III, by Verna Hills Bayley. I loved these books, about two friends who [...]
