Publications about books for children and young adults
There was never anyone quite like her. Other amazing children’s writers have won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, but none had her extra‑ordinary range: verse; picture-book texts; books for every conceivable age group; scripts for radio, television, film; serials for newspapers and magazines. “I have been such a tradesman all my professional writing life,” she [...]
Editors’ note: this inaugural column will be followed by twice-yearly roundups to be published on the Horn Book website, www.hbook.com — and don’t miss Viki Ash’s primer, “What Makes a Good Board Book?” online and in the March/April 2010 Horn Book Magazine. My fascination with board books began in 1987 with a quartet of them [...]
From the September/October issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Reviewer Deirdre F. Baker asks What Came from the Stars author Gary D. Schmidt about the function of elevated language in the novel. Read the full starred review of What Came from the Stars here. Deirdre F. Baker: For the book’s fantasy elements, you hark back [...]
From the September/October issue of The Horn Book Magazine: We ask This Is Not My Hat author/illustrator Jon Klassen about his own taste in haberdashery. Read the full starred review of This Is Not My Hat here. Horn Book editors: What is your favorite style of chapeau and why? Jon Klassen: A good old-fashioned baseball [...]
The following books will receive starred reviews in the November/December 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?; by Debi Gliori (Walker) Little Tug; by Stephen Savage (Porter/Roaring Brook) Abe Lincoln’s Dream; by Lane Smith (Roaring Brook) Pinned; by Sharon G. Flake (Scholastic) My Book of Life by Angel; by Martine Leavitt (Ferguson/Farrar) Starry River of the Sky; by Grace Lin (Little, Brown) [...]
I would call it a guilty pleasure if I felt guilty. But my subscription to People magazine actually liberates me. Instead of furtively flipping pages in the checkout line, hoping to find the photos of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s baby before it’s time to unload the hummus, I have Blue Ivy Carter (seven pounds) delivered, so [...]
What’s the magic word? These days many children would answer, “Expelliarmus!” or some other Harry Potter-ism, but for generations before this the magic word has always been “please.” And yet anyone who works with children regularly can attest to the fact that quite a lot of them don’t seem familiar with that magic word, or [...]
You can sometimes feel like the Old Stage Manager in this job, watching ’em all come and go for their hour upon the stage. Big picture books, little picture books, good girls and bad girls, vampires, angels, fallen angels, books for boys, fantasy, and realism. The players have producers: not just publishers but also the [...]
Every September of my English teaching career, I’d type up the semester’s reading list and prepare myself for the inevitable question: I’ve already read this! Why do I have to read it again? I’d tell my students that rereading a novel at a new period in their lives could bring fresh insight. But I never [...]
Type — the formal language of the printed word — speaks to us in mysterious ways. It’s not always clear just what type is saying, or how our reading experience is enhanced or undermined, however subtly, by slight variations in point size (the overall dimensions of the type), or the thickness and proportions of an [...]
