Publications about books for children and young adults
by Ludwig Bemelmans *Paper read at the meeting of the American Library Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 22, 1954. My deep gratitude to the members of the American Library Association for the Caldecott Medal. Now we shall talk about art. There is one life that is more difficult than that of the policeman’s and that is [...]
Deadly!: The Truth About the Most Dangerous Creatures on Earth by Nicola Davies; illus. by Neal Layton Primary, Intermediate Candlewick 64 pp. 3/13 978-0-7636-6231-8 $14.99 Readers with a taste for the grisly realism of nature will revel in the latest Davies and Layton collaboration, featuring the ways in which animals cause lasting harm or death [...]
It’s a simple formula. Boy meets girl (or, more often, girl meets boy. Or, less frequently, boy meets boy or girl meets girl). Boy and girl fall in love. One loses the other, or some other conflict arises. Then comes the happy ending. This plot, or some variation of it, is one we’ve read over [...]
The Horn Book Magazine asked Luann Toth, “What’s the strangest children’s book you’ve ever enjoyed?” I have to confess upfront to being a word girl. Don’t get me wrong: I love art, especially when the interplay of a book’s words and images click to form the perfect vehicle for the storytelling, but it is usually [...]
Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems by Marilyn Singer; illus. by Josée Masse Primary Dial 32 pp. 2/13 978-0-8037-3769-3 $16.99 g “It’s not easy,” warns Singer in a note about the “reverso,” a verse form she created and first used in Mirror Mirror (rev. 3/10); and the first poem (“Fairy Tales”) in this companion [...]
While marketed as a two-volume music CD with an accompanying booklet, Natalie Merchant’s Leave Your Sleep might be better understood as a fascinating anthology of children’s poetry accompanied by biographical notes and two CDs on which each of the twenty-six poems is set to music. But it is even more than that. Leave Your Sleep [...]
Caroline Fraser examines the sordid publishing history of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Foreign Correspondence: Karen Jameyson takes us deep into Jeannie Baker’s process for creating the cross-cultural picture book Mirror. Author Jeanne Birdsall stresses the importance of letting middle grade be middle grade. Jonathan Hunt on the future of connecting kids with nonfiction. Caldecott [...]
The Horn Book Magazine asked Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, “What’s the strangest children’s book you’ve ever enjoyed?” My mother introduced me and my siblings to the wonderful weirdness in Howard R. Garis’s Uncle Wiggily tales. Garis gave us old Uncle Wiggily Longears and his adventures with Sammie and Susie Littletail, Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the Wibblewobbles, [...]
Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children by Jan Pinborough; illus. by Debby Atwell Primary Houghton 40 pp. 3/13 978-0-547-47105-1 $16.99 Nowadays, Anne Carroll Moore is remembered as the fiercest of the library ladies whose influence on children’s library service and publishing was both inspirational and — sometimes — intractable. [...]
