Publications about books for children and young adults
A recent conversation about the current state of the picture book soon came around to the subject of book jackets. A senior art director in the group noted mournfully that as jacket designs have increasingly become the province of sales and marketing teams, covers have grown less representative of the books they trumpet. The disconnect [...]
Jon Klassen’s This Is Not My Hat certainly encourages discussion– see Lolly’s review here, Robin’s review here and mine over here–but over at Amazon I discovered a rather breathtaking display of the strategic (psychotic?) deployment of the non sequitur as a tool. (By a tool? Discuss.): “This book is another in the long line of [...]
Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DaCosta; illus. by Ed Young Preschool Little, Brown 32 pp. 9/12 978-0-316-20384-5 $16.99 Silently, in the dark of night, a ninja creeps through a house. While the family sleeps, he stealthily embarks on his mission. “Hand over hand, the ninja climbed and clambered. Step by step, he balanced and leapt.” It’s [...]
this Saturday, with “From Screen to Book” at the Cambridge Public Library, an afternoon’s discussion of picture books and digital media. The presenters include three illustrators, Candlewick art director Ann Stott, and agent Holly McGhee; the moderator is Jenny Brown from Shelf Awareness, who, incidentally, wrote a great account of the Horn Book at Simmons [...]
Trick or Treat by Leo Landry; illus. by the author Preschool, Primary Houghton 32 pp. 8/12 978-0-547-24969-8 $12.99 Landry’s cheery watercolor and pencil illustrations and calm palette signal that this Halloween story is more treat than trick; together, the straightforward text and simple compositions build suspense and inject humor [...]
Henry Cole’s Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad (see the Review of the Week, by Betty Carter) presented us with some very complicated questions. It’s a terrific and intriguing book, a wordless, pencil-illustrated tale of a young girl feeding and protecting a person hiding behind the cornstalks in her family’s barn; soldiers and a [...]
Machines Go to Work in the City by William Low; illus. by the author Preschool Holt 32 pp. 6/12 978-0-8050-9050-5 $16.99 Books don’t get much better than this for machinery-loving preschoolers. Listeners are first introduced to a particular situation involving vehicles, from a garbage truck to a [...]
This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen; illus. by the author Primary Candlewick 40 pp. 10/12 978-0-7636-5599-0 $15.99 g The eyes have it in Klassen’s latest hat book (I Want My Hat Back, rev. 11/11). Klassen manages to tell almost the whole story through subtle eye movements and the tilt of seaweed and [...]
Pirateria: The Wonderful Plunderful Pirate Emporium by Calef Brown; illus. by the author Primary Atheneum 40 pp. 7/12 978-1-4169-7878-7 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-1-4424-3897-2 $12.99 Brown presents a book-length advertisement for an imaginary emporium of all things pirate. Whether you need rags or pantaloons, spinnakers or planks, you can be sure to find them at Pirateria. [...]
Lolly Robinson and Robin Smith will inaugurate this season of the Calling Caldecott blog tomorrow, and I know that the questions posed in the logo (What can win? What will win? What should win?) will provide plenty of discussion. At the HBAS colloquium later this month, I’m going to be talking to Erin Stead, Phil [...]
