Features & Opinion
"The Shortest Day, " Susan Cooper's 1974 poem honoring the winter solstice, is performed annually at The Christmas Revels. Now, Carson Ellis's gouache illustrations grace a picture-book version, The Shortest Day (Candlewick, 5–8 years), which imagines people "down the centuries of the snow-white world" as they greet the season. See...
Five questions for Susan Cooper The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper, illus. by Carson Ellis, Candlewick, 5–8 years. Contemplative seasonal picture books Small in the City by Sydney Smith, Holiday/Porter, 3–6 years. A Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin, Little, Brown, 3–6 years. A Stone Sat Still...
While as far as I’m concerned it’s never too early for peppermint-stick ice cream, I always feel discombobulated reading holiday books before Halloween, but that’s how we get you news of the good new ones in a timely fashion (although as I recall, Christmas books get heavy circulation throughout the...
These works of historical fiction provide snapshots of time and place — and blood- and chosen families — for middle-graders and middle-schoolers. In Indian No More, it’s 1954 and eight-year-old Regina Petit and her family — members of the Umpqua tribe in northern Oregon — are forced by the U.S....
These audiobooks for young adults speak to important topics in engaging ways. This is a gripping audio version of A.S. King's Dig., a YA novel with so many characters that each chapter begins with a cast list. Three of the characters get their own readers — Mike Chamberlain, Kirby Heyborne,...
The following picture books explore the warmth of relationships in seasonal settings. In Sydney Smith's Small in the City, an intrepid child on the move in the big, wintry city speaks directly to an unknown someone, dispensing advice and encouragement. With full-bleed spreads juxtaposed with ones featuring small vignettes, Smith...
Five questions for Rainbow Rowell Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell, illus. by Faith Erin Hicks, Roaring Brook/First Second, 14 years and up. Meet-cute love stories Somewhere Only We Know by Maureen Goo, Farrar, 14 years and up. Love from A to Z by S. K. Ali, Simon/Salaam, 14 years and up....
We are celebrating the 2019 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, which were presented in a ceremony at Simmons University on October 4th. It was great fun, with two unprompted standing ovations (plus a third I accidentally set off); a group sing-along video "Happy Birthday to You" for award chair Monica Edinger,...
Starring ghosts, ghost hunters, goblins, and changelings, these new adventures for intermediate and middle-school readers are atmospherically spooky (but not-too-scary) books to snuggle up with on a gloomy fall day. Find more Halloween recommendations in Friday's Horn Book Herald e-newsletter. Mollie sets out to return Guest, a changeling child, to...
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