The post Here’s some family reading I can really get behind appeared first on The Horn Book.

Saw Handel’s Rodelinda yesterday. More involving than I thought it would be but had to contend with my prejudice against countertenors. It’s me; not them, but I find it a little creepy when the heroine is kissing her long-lost man and he sounds like a GHOST. My virtual live-in-HD-pal Robin McKinley has a good report.

Also saw Margin Call and My Week with Marilyn. Both really well-acted and gorgeous to look at. And am reading Mark Mills’ The Information Officer, set during WWII on Malta. All I knew about Malta was from my last grownup book: Catherine the Great really, really wanted it. It sounds great–has anyone been?

The post Weekend update appeared first on The Horn Book.

The post >For appearances sake appeared first on The Horn Book.

The post >Sister is doing it for ourselves appeared first on The Horn Book.

We tried to keep up our end of the bargain, yes, shilling A Family of Readers, but also, for each of the book’s four sections, presenting some new books that would be great gift-giving choices for the upcoming holidays. And, in case you need some tips, here they are for you:

Part I: Reading to Them

Nini Lost and Found, written and illustrated by Anita Lobel
Higher! Higher! [new board book edition] written and illustrated by Leslie Patricelli
A Pocketful of Posies, compiled and illustrated by Salley Mavor
Me and You, written and illustrated by Anthony Browne

Part II: Reading with Them

Mirror, Mirror, written by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josée Masse
Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same, written and illustrated by Grace Lin
Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley, by Stephanie Greene

Part III: Reading on Their Own

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World’s Strangest Parrot, written by Sy Montgomery, photos by Nic Bishop
Big Nate: In a Class by Himself by Lincoln Peirce

Part IV: Leaving Them Alone

Annexed by Sharon Dogar
The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
Shipbreaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds

Who can spot our Newbery and Caldecott hoped-fors?

The post >In which we are Proclaimed appeared first on The Horn Book.

The post >Live and on stage appeared first on The Horn Book.

And, later today, I have five questions of my own for Lincoln Peirce, author of the Big Nate books, in Notes From the Horn Book. Coming your way around 3:00PM, at which time I’ll be ensconced on the Limoliner writing book reviews, I swear.

The post >Turning the Tables appeared first on The Horn Book.

Yesterday, Martha and I had another techno-forward event, a bookstore presentation via Skype. They could see us but we couldn’t see them, so I am freely imagining hordes of attendees. Our editor Marc Aronson has a report.

Tomorrow I am off to New York for the Times Best Illustrated party (did anyone else get a seriously crunchy DIY vibe from the list?), a meeting with our publisher, and breakfast with Anita Lobel, so I can thank her in person for that glorious cover painting.

The post >Tweetchat etc. appeared first on The Horn Book.

And if you find yourself in Maplewood, NJ this Sunday at 2:00PM, Martha and I will be talking about the book via Skype at Words bookstore. Our editor Marc Aronson will be there in the flesh to talk and I guess forge our signatures.

The post >Twinterview appeared first on The Horn Book.

In other blog news there was a Twitter-tempest last night over a blogger’s review of Laurel Snyder’s completely amiable middle-grade novel Penny Dreadful. Book blogger Noël De Vries was loving the book until she came to a reference to lesbian moms which implied they were “normal.” De Vries wrote “The only problem is, being a lesbian is not normal. It’s not something that “just happens” to people, like being poor or brave. In fact, when you look through Biblical glasses, homosexuality is, well, an abomination.”

Ohhhh-kay. I suppose if you are looking at at homosexuality from a Biblical perspective (albeit a very particular fundamentalist one), De Vries’ assertion makes its own kind of sense, but she then veers into a decidedly irrational corollary: “Characters like Willa and Jenny [the moms] with their happy little family, show elementary-age readers that Christian beliefs are hateful and silly. Add these characters to the full-blown assault of politically-correct propaganda that is molding America’s children.” So if an author depicts characters whose behavior you label abhorrent, then he or she is making you out as the hateful one? Note to Noēl: not everything is about you, dear.

The post >She likes us! She really likes us! (She, on the other hand . . .) appeared first on The Horn Book.