Publications about books for children and young adults
After spending fifteen minutes rubbing pages and getting curious looks from passersby in the office (“why, yes, I am one of the new interns, and yes, I rub board book pages in my spare time; why do you ask?”), I finished reading Jordan Crane’s heat-sensitive, color-changing board book Keep Our Secrets (McSweeney’s McMullens, November). Two [...]
Two new entries (both August) in Little Simon’s A Classic Board Book series, which repackages well-known picture books as board books, are on opposite ends of the adaptation spectrum. Emily Gravett’s Orange Pear Apple Bear makes by far the more natural translation. Gravett’s spare text, ample white space, humor, and eye-pleasing illustrations in a soft [...]
Hervé Tullet—the French author, illustrator, and ad agency art director known as the “Prince of Preschool”—has been popping up all over the office recently. Tullet’s new book Press Here directs readers to press, rub, shake, and blow on colorful dots which then “transform” with the page turn. Chronicle’s been promoting Press Here with an adorable [...]
From coloring books to flash cards, baby journals to stuffed animals, adaptations of Eric Carle’s tissue collage illustrations seem endless. Night and Day Studios has reshaped Carle’s work for the iPad, releasing My Very First App in December. This was the first of the company’s two apps adapting recognizable artwork into children’s games (see January’s [...]
Knopf recently released a board book version of Il Sung Na‘s The Book of Sleep. In the original edition, a playful and spare text accompanies sweet illustrations that, upon closer look, contain a multitude of textural and illustrative details (including the protagonist owl as a search-and-find character on spreads where another character takes center stage). An [...]
Laurel Snyder, probably best known for her middle-grade novels Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains, or, The Search for a Suitable Princess, Any Which Wall, and Penny Dreadful, presents a Judaism-themed board book that’s preschooler-perfect. Nosh, Schlep, Schluff: BabYiddish records a day in the life of one young tot (could be either gender; one of [...]
At this time of year, one can’t help but notice the heart-emblazoned kids’ books cramming the shelves in our local chain stores. Pawing through bags of candy hearts and other commercial love-related products, I decided to look at two board books pubbing just in time for Valentine’s Day. Dog food, frisbees, bubbles from a jar… [...]
Jean McElroy’s Let’s Count 123! (Simon and Schuster, May), a pleasant new board book that counts ten of the celebratory objects at a child’s birthday party (“1 cake / 2 candles / 3 party hats”), bills itself as “both chunky and lightweight!” The inside pages are not cardboard but paper-covered flat boxes (I think). So, [...]
¡Muy bueno! Leslie Patricelli’s Higher! Higher!, a 2009 Boston Globe-Horn Book honor book, will be reissued as a bilingual board book (Higher! Higher! / ¡Más alto! ¡Más alto!) in January, along with The Birthday Box / Mi caja de cumpleaños. Look for reviews of two brand-new Patricelli titles, Potty and Tubby (all Candlewick), in the [...]
Every year in the November/December issue, the Horn Book Magazine presents Holiday High Notes, reviews of recommended new holiday books. The list usually consists of a majority of Christmas books, with a few Hanukkah titles and maybe a couple of Kwanzaa books thrown in. This year, though, there are no Hanukkah books on that list [...]
