Publications about books for children and young adults
Lolly and Robin have posted the first ballot for Calling Caldecott’s mock award, so go vote. My first choice has remained consistent for months but I had some fun choosing my runners-up. (Wouldn’t it be great if we lost the “Caldecott Honor” euphemism? And wouldn’t it be even greater if we RANKED the recipients?)
I got to take a road trip to Connecticut a week ago to attend a picture book conference at Yale. Sorry to say, I was not able to get to all of the sessions, but Roger asked me to write up what I could. The event was a fundraiser for the Edith B. Jackson Child [...]
In her article “What Makes a Good YA Dystopian Novel?” from the May/June Horn Book Magazine, April Spisak offers thirteen recommendations for young adult dystopian books and series. We’ve also suggested some recently published Hunger Games trilogy readalikes for both YA and younger audiences here on Out of the Box. But since it’s always good [...]
Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, editor Holly Thompson, a YA author (Orchards, a 2012 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults book) and a longtime resident of Japan, became especially concerned about teen survivors of the quake and tsunami. She decided to collect YA short fiction from writers and translators connected to Japan either by [...]
There’s still time to vote in our Calling Caldecott mock Caldecott awards—the second round of voting closes at 9AM tomorrow (Thursday). The medal and honor books will be posted around noon. Our sister publication SLJ announced the winners of their mock Newbery at Heavy Medal yesterday, but voting at Someday My Printz Will Come is [...]
Lisa Loeb (and her iconic, adorable cat-eye glasses) burst into popular consciousness in 1994 with the smash single “Stay (I Missed You).” She apparently didn’t fall off the face of the earth since then: Lisa Loeb’s Silly Sing-Along: The Disappointing Pancake and Other Zany Songs (Sterling, January) will have children of this decade—and their nostalgic [...]
This past Saturday I had the pleasure of attending “The Exquisite Conversation: An Adventure in Creating Books,” a program at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium co-sponsored by MIT, the Cambridge Public Library, and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance. The panel, consisting of several of the contributors to The Exquisite Corpse Adventure (published in print by [...]
We’re heading into gift-buying season, and activity books are a great choice for creative kids. The previous activity/coloring book I reviewed on this blog was a hit with my sister’s nephew, so I took a look at a few of the new activity books we’ve received. I love fairy tales and superheroes, but Vincent Boudgourd’s [...]
Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up (December, Little, Brown) is, hands-down, one of my favorite YA novels of the season. It’s written as Min Green’s epic, no-punches-pulled breakup note to Ed Slaterton, intended to accompany a box she’s going to leave on his doorstep. Each object (illustrated by Maira Kalman) in the box was collected [...]
Welcome to the Horn Book’s new digital home; please take a look around. One of the things I like most about the new hbook.com is the ability it gives readers to engage in dialogue with us and each other; just about every post and article ends with a spot for you to tell us what you think. Please do so.
