Publications about books for children and young adults
Auryn Inc.’s seek-and-find interactive storybook app Mitzi’s World: Seek and Discover More Than 150 Details in 15 Works of Folk Art (2012), based on Deborah Raffin’s book of the same name, features a selection of “neo-naive” oil paintings by prominent folk-artist Jane Wooster Scott. Spanning the four seasons, each painting depicts a scene inspired by [...]
Are they weird? What is weird, anyway? And will Jack ever reply to Polly? From the March/April 2013 special “Different Drummers” issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
by Ludwig Bemelmans About seven years ago a typographer brought Miss Massee to my house for dinner. It was a dreary building of six rooms in a noisy neighborhood. The windows of my living room looked out at a cobweb of telegraph wires, a water tank, and a Claude Neon sign that flashed “Two Pants [...]
by May Massee Every writer leaves bits and pieces of his own story in his books whether he knows it or not, so I thought I’d look through some of Ludwig Bemelmans’ books to see what he says about himself here and there. The trouble is, I find a paragraph that shows what a good [...]
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 [...]
Spring is here, and love is in the air (be sure to catch What Makes a Good YA Love Story? by Katrina Hedeen and Rachel L. Smith in the upcoming May/June 2013 issue of the Horn Book Magazine). Here are four more books that will make teens contemplate love in all its forms. The main [...]
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 [...]
Jenny Brown and the Center for Children’s Literature at Bank Street are putting on an ECE show of their own next Saturday, April 13th. “Literature for Early Childhood: What Do You Need to Know?” runs from nine to noon and will be keynoted by Horn Book fave Laura Vaccaro Seeger. You can sign up here.
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 [...]
