Publications about books for children and young adults
The Peanuts gang is back in two new interconnected Loud Crow Interactive apps. A follow-up to last fall’s fabulous A Charlie Brown Christmas app, Loud Crow’s latest story app It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (October 2012) is based on the 1966 animated holiday TV special of the same name. Linus spends Halloween night in [...]
The long-awaited movie version of Stephen Chbosky’s 1999 novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Summit Entertainment, October 2012; PG-13) celebrates the 90s, the mix tape, friendship, love, and the benefits both of observing life and participating in it. What could have been cloying is in fact a sensitive coming-of-age film. And though there are [...]
“Everyone’s story matters,” according to Morris Lessmore, a lifelong lover of books and the title character of William Joyce’s The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. That’s certainly a worthy notion, and it has made me a champion of this particular story since the animated short film first won an Academy Award in February, [...]
David A. Carter and Noelle Carter’s Bot Garage app (Random House/Smashing Ideas, 2011), a companion to their 2011 counting pop-up book Lots of Bots, invites users to recreate the wacky robots showcased in the book and create their own inventions. Build a robot by selecting from a gallery of ten brightly colored options for each bot [...]
Daniel Striped Tiger, you’ve come a long way, baby. Introduced on the show The Children’s Corner in the 1950s, shy Daniel went on to be one of many puppet inhabitants of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Earlier this month PBS debuted an animated spin-off series featuring his four-year-old son, also named Daniel, and [...]
“Once upon a time there was no alphabet… only numbers.” William Joyce’s app The Numberlys (Moonbot Studios, January 2012) introduces users to a highly detailed, Metropolis-inspired city scape, where a society of cute blobby creatures manufactures numbers. Numbers form the basis of all organization and communication, but this world, though “orderly,” lacks color, creativity, and [...]
When I came across this book, it made enough of an impression for me to want to mention it well past its August 2011 publication date. Peter H. Reynolds’s I’m Here (Atheneum) is a welcome addition to the growing body of (mostly mediocre) children’s literature dealing with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and Asperger’s Syndrome in [...]
Benji Davies’s illustrations for the Bizzy Bear board books (Nosy Crow) are like catnip for young children. I defy any toddler or preschooler worth her salt to walk by a Bizzy Bear book and not pick it up. The wide-eyed, cheerful animals on the construction site (Let’s Get to Work!) or traveling to the beach [...]
We’ve just put up a list of recommended mythology-related books, published and reviewed in the Magazine in the last few years. Enjoy!
