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Cover art from Outside, Inside by LeUyen Pham. Editorial: Women's History Month “Nonfiction Windows So White”: Marc Aronson calls for diverse perspectives. Carole Boston Weatherford on challenges for BIPOC authors. “Why Read Books from the Past?” An excerpt from Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh Our Tired Souls...
Original cover art by Oge Mora. Horn Book Fanfare: Our choices for the best books of 2020. Coverage of the 2020 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards virtual celebration: judges’ remarks, speeches, photos. Kathleen T. Horning interviews Leslie Brody, author of the Louise Fitzhugh biography Sometimes You Have to Lie. An update on the CCBC’s diversity statistics from Madeline Tyner. Gregory Maguire remembers Jill...
Welcome to Fanfare, our choices of the best books of 2020. When The Horn Book’s tiny office went from wall-to-wall books, ARCs, effin’ jeez, and piles and piles of still more books to fully remote, there was a lot of uncertainty. Overnight, our digital tag line — It’s virtually a...
’Twas the holiday issue, and all across Boston... the remote-working Horn Bookers were writing reviews of recommended new and reissued Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas books. (See also Marjorie Ingall’s article “What Makes a Good Hanukkah Book?” in the November/December 2020 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.) Jack and Santa...
Cover art from Once upon a Winter Day by Liza Woodruff. Published by Margaret Ferguson Books/Holiday House. Elizabeth Partridge on writing as an act of defiance. A Call to Action from The Brown Bookshelf by Paula Chase, Cheryl Willis Hudson, Wade Hudson, Kelly Starling Lyons, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, and Renée Watson “to imagine a new way of doing business, and abandon anti-Black and...
Cover art from The Little Ghost Who Lost Her Boo! by Elaine Bickell, illustration copyright 2019 by Raymond McGrath. Author Emma Otheguy on COVID-19, New York City, children's books, and contradictions. Kwame Alexander, author of The Undefeated, fetes Kadir Nelson, the book's artist and winner of the Caldecott Medal and...
Dudley Carlson: The farmers’ market was a riot of color. Red and green lettuces, orange carrots, blue and purple berries, and breads in rich browns and tans stretched for two blocks. At one end, a single booth held only green. Beautiful green beans were neatly bundled and stacked like a...
I’d like to begin by thanking the 2020 Newbery Award Selection Committee, chaired by the incomparable Krishna Grady. Thank you for the tremendous honor of making New Kid the first graphic novel in your ninety-eight-year history to receive your prestigious medal. I would also like to thank the ALA for...
When I found out on January 26th that I’d won the Legacy Award, I was ecstatic. However, it didn’t take me long — about an hour! — to start fretting about my speech. That’s just the way I am. I began working on my speech right away and had a...
Good morning, or good afternoon, or good evening, depending on when or where in the world you are reading this. As I compose this speech, I am sitting at home under a nationwide quarantine in the midst of the proliferation of a remarkable novel virus that has commandeered the attention...
I’d like to begin by thanking the 2020 Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury, chaired by LaKeshia Darden, who gave me one of the two best near-dawn phone calls of my life! I would also like to thank the ALA for making this moment possible. This is truly an amazing...
The year was 1999, and my very first picture book, Brothers of the Knight, was slated to be published by Dial Books for Young Readers. It was written by the actress and dancer Debbie Allen and based on a stage production of the same name that she had both written...
Special Issue: ALA Awards. Original cover art by 2020 Caldecott Medal winner Kadir Nelson. “A Year with Words and Pictures — but No ALA Annual”: The Horn Book editors discuss the children’s book landscape of 2019 and the unusual circumstances of 2020. Kevin Henkes’s Children's Literature Legacy Award acceptance speech. A profile of Kevin Henkes by Dudley Carlson, Laura Dronzek, Virginia Duncan, and Susan Hirschman. A profile of Coretta Scott...
Special issue: Breaking the Rules Original cover art by Jarrett J. Krosoczka. “Rule Breakers”: essays and comics from Nina Crews, Kacen Callender, Remy Lai, Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, Jasmine Warga, Lisa Brown, Kevin Noble Maillard, Martha Brockenbrough, Amy Sarig King, Lesléa Newman, Gene Luen Yang, Lynne Rae Perkins, Steve...
One of your authors who crosses the Atlantic with great success is Betsy Byars. I confess myself among her most ardent fans. The Cartoonist (Viking) has just arrived here; along with The Pinballs (Harper) it seems to me to show subtle but interesting changes going on in Mrs. Byars's work,...
In 1935, at age seven, I sent off two two-cent stamps to Leo Edwards in order to become a member of the Secret and Mysterious Order of the Freckled Goldfish. The club took its name from Edwards's book Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish. For my two stamps I was...
Cover art by Eric Rohmann from Honeybee, written by Candace Fleming. Heidi Rabinowitz and Sadaf Siddique consider religion in conversations around diverse books, with a focus on Jewish and Muslim representation. Middle-Grade Graphic Novels Make Good: Elissa Gershowitz on an ever-growing category that has something for everyone--now including a Newbery...
They rarely win awards. Few make it to the annual “best of” lists. They get stepped on, chewed, drooled on, and thrown. Their core audiences may not remember a word of them in a few scant years. Their pages are frequently viewed out of order. But board books are some...
It's the most wonderful time of the year. Grab a candy confection and read our selection of books filled with cheer — new or just reissued from yesteryear.* *with apologies to lyricist Edward Pola My Baby Loves Christmas by Jabari Asim; illus. by Tara Nicole Whitaker Preschool HarperFestival 20 pp. 9/19 978-0-06-288462-6 $7.99 In this cozy board book, Asim (Preaching to the Chickens, rev....
Third grade was the worst year ever. No, really. My parents split up that year, and my dad moved out. I know that every divorce is different, and I’m told that not all of them are as painful as ours was. I’m glad for that. Ours was brutal. My dad...
Welcome to Fanfare, our choices of the best books of 2019. I believe we first published this list in 1939, recommending the best of 1938. Many of the titles are now mostly forgotten (or notorious: see The Five Chinese Brothers), but look: there is Andy and the Lion, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, and The Hobbit....
Why do comics matter? At the risk of sounding completely self-absorbed, I’m going to answer this question by talking about me. I am an Asian American cartoonist. I’m going to tell you how I became these two things: an Asian American and a cartoonist. Then I’m going to tell you...
Cover art from Click, Clack, Boo!: A Tricky Treat by Doreen Cronin, illustration copyright 2013 by Betsy Lewin. Kirkus children’s editor Vicky Smith considers book discussion guidelines for the twenty-first century. “Black Kids Camp Too…Don’t They?”: Michelle H. Martin on why #WeNeedDiverseOutdoorBooks. Kitty Flynn wishes a happy twenty-fifth anniversary to Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley’s It’s Perfectly Normal. Cathryn M. Mercier, director...
My heart was racing like Secretariat, even though I had practiced my acceptance speech, as I nervously approached the podium. They had called my name to receive the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for my work on The Origin of Life on Earth: An African Creation Myth. The CSK Breakfast...
It was an adult book — The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley — that inspired me to try my hand at writing historical fiction for children. I’ll never forget the author’s harrowing description of one of the characters fleeing a pack of slave hunters. I have always been a history...
Good Coretta-Scott-King-Book-Awards-Breakfast-Sunday morning! I stand before you as the fifth recipient of the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement in the category of practitioner and in the company of the distinguished colleagues who have come before me: Dr. Henrietta Mays Smith, Demetria Tucker, Deborah D. Taylor, and Dr....
Ekua Holmes. Photo courtesy of Ekua Holmes.Congratulations to all of the 2019 awardees on the podium today. Along with you, I am deeply honored to receive this award, on its fiftieth anniversary, given in the name of Coretta Scott King — a woman whom I deeply admire for her work...
Ekua Holmes is love. I am but one grateful member of an immense and inspired community that cherishes, and is beloved by, Ekua. At its heart, this community is local, centered on the place of Ekua’s birth — Roxbury, Massachusetts — via Arkansas and the U.S. American South, via Africa....
When I was a young girl, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I was lucky enough to have weekly visits with my grandmother, Thelma Shepherd Rone, whom the adults called Dearest or Day but whom I always knew as Grammie. I was a quiet little girl, but I...
Claire Hartfield is a storyteller. It might be fair to say that she is a born storyteller, just-right words flowing through her pen with ease, creating images that allow her readers to see, to hear, even to breathe just as Claire did while writing. This gift might have come to...
Hello, hello, hello!Members of the 2019 Caldecott committee, my agents, my family, fellow authors and illustrators, publishers, librarians, beacons of the community—As the 2019 Caldecott committee gathered around a phone, early on a cold January morning in Seattle, I was having dinner in sweltering Myanmar, trying not to picture them....
On the highest floor of an old factory at the edge of Brooklyn, overlooking the water, is a skylit artists’ studio. This profile is drawn from interviews with the seven children’s book creators who, over the years, have shared that studio with Sophie Blackall.“Drawn in Brooklyn,” 2010 Photo: Matt Carr.Sergio...
The Iliadadapted by Gareth Hinds; illus. by the adapterMiddle School, High School Candlewick 264 pp.3/19 978-0-7636-8113-5 $27.99Paper ed. 978-0-7636-9663-4 $16.99As with his treatment of The Odyssey (rev. 11/10), Hinds offers an ambitious and compelling comics adaptation of a Homerian epic. This complex, winding tale picks up in the tenth year...
Photo: Petite Shards Productions.Good evening. Muy buenas noches.I’m so happy to be with all of you here tonight, and to share this incredible moment on stage with Sophie [Blackall] and to help honor the enormous legacy of Walter Dean Myers. My deepest congratulations to all the winners and honorees of...
Meg Medina and R. J. Palacio at Niagara Falls, circa 1979. Photo: Marco Jaramillo.Imagine a girl, wavy brown hair, big smile, bright eyes, on the tall side, long legs and arms, in constant motion. (If she were a baby animal, she’d be a colt.) Imagine this girl is your best...
To Night Owl from Dogfishby Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg WolitzerIntermediate, Middle School Dial/Dutton 311 pp. g2/19 978-0-5255-5323-6 $17.99At the start of this epistolary (via email) novel, twelve-year-olds Bett Devlin, an adventure-loving California girl of African American and Brazilian descent, and Avery Bloom, a tightly wound New Yorker whose single...
Hey Pop,It’s been a minute since I’ve written you a proper letter, mostly because I don’t know your address or even if they have email wherever you are.When you were around, we’d write each other lots of letters, even if we knew we’d be meeting up for breakfast the next...
Helloby Fiona Woodcock; illus. by the authorPreschool Greenwillow 40 pp.5/19 978-0-06-264456-6 $17.99In Look (rev. 7/18), Woodcock strung together a series of words with double os, more or less one per page, to tell a story of a brother and sister visiting the zoo. In this companion, double ls get the...
The path leading to Ray Charles began on the fire escape of a rent-controlled apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It was here that I discovered Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Little Brown Baby, Shakespeare’s “Et tu, Brute?” and Willard Motley’s Knock on Any Door; scurried down a rabbit hole; and walked on Gwendolyn Brooks’s...
Dissenter on the Bench: Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Life & Workby Victoria OrtizMiddle School, High School Clarion 184 pp. g6/19 978-0-544-97364-0 $18.99e-book ed. 978-1-328-63990-5 $9.99Since her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a hero to many Americans for her progressive positions on cases involving free...
Photo: Bill McGuinnessI can’t remember a time when I have not been drawing and painting!As a child I loved picture books and memorized Mother Goose poems. I attended public elementary school in the Bronx, New York. In kindergarten, the teacher taught us the alphabet. She asked the students to draw a picture...
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Meby Mariko Tamaki; illus. by Rosemary Valero-O’ConnellHigh School First Second/Roaring Brook 298 pp.5/19 978-1-250-31284-6 $24.99Paper ed. 978-1-62672-259-0 $17.99This relatable, heart-wrenching, and often funny graphic novel opens with seventeen-year-old Frederica (“Freddy”) Riley’s email to advice columnist Anna Vice. “For almost the past year I’ve been...
Kwame and Nikki. Photo: Beatrice Saba.Over the past twenty years, I’ve been a vegan, a vegetarian, and a pescatarian. There have been only three periods in my adult life when I’ve indulged in the pleasures of meat. One was right after winning the Newbery, when I found myself craving cheeseburgers....
Ogilvyby Deborah Underwood; illus. by T. L. McBethPreschool, Primary Godwin/Holt 40 pp.5/19 978-1-250-15176-6 $17.99Ogilvy, a wide-eyed, line-drawn bunny, is excited to make friends in a new town. But upon arrival, the rabbit’s sartorial choices are challenged; Ogilvy, clad in a knit article of clothing, is asked: “Is it a sweater...
My mom and dad truly laid the foundation for my writing life by reading to me and my siblings every night — giving me a heart for stories. And there were many moments that followed that inspired my literary journey. Here is one.In February of 1991, my father showed me...
Moth: An Evolution Storyby Isabel Thomas; illus. by Daniel EgnéusPrimary Bloomsbury 48 pp. g6/19 978-1-5476-0020-5 $18.99e-book ed. 978-1-5476-0024-3 $13.29“This is a story of light and dark. Of change and adaptation, of survival and hope.” In a shadowy (pre-industrial) wood, a peppered moth — its “speckled, freckled” wing patterns wonderfully detailed...
The Coretta Scott King Book Awards are part of a profoundly rich history of African American children’s literature. It is a history that stretches back into the nineteenth century through the early-twentieth century Brownies’ Book magazine and the mid-twentieth-century Ebony Jr! publication.It is a history that encompasses the bibliographies of...
The Runawaysby Ulf Stark; illus. by Kitty Crowther; trans. from the Swedish by Julia MarshallPrimary, Intermediate Gecko 134 pp.4/19 978-1-77652-33-5 $17.99Paper ed. 978-1-776572-34-2 $11.88The portrait of old age and infirmity in this Swedish import is considerably more unvarnished than we’re used to in books for children. Grandpa is no lovable...
The Fisherman & the Whaleby Jessica Lanan; illus. by the authorPrimary Simon 48 pp.5/19 978-1-5344-1574-4 $17.99e-book ed. 978-1-5344-1575-1 $10.99In this dramatic wordless tale, a commercial fisherman and what appears to be his son collect fish in the large net thrown from their boat. They sail on — that is, until...
The sound of her voice. The comfort of her lap. The colors and words on the pages of the books tucked around us. My mother read to me from the time I was born. I vaguely remember a poem called “The Rock-a-By Lady.” I found out later it was by...
Photo: Jati LindsayWhen I was fourteen, my mother caught me lumbering down the hallway toward my room cradling a turntable. The turntable was hers and had been in the family for decades, stored in the basement of our house. I’d never heard any sound come from it. Not at the...
My first novel came out ten years ago, and one year later, in 2010, it was honored with the John Steptoe Award for New Talent by the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury. I was surprised and delighted on a number of levels when I got the call that January...
Viral: The Fight Against AIDS in Americaby Ann BausumMiddle School, High School Viking 166 pp. g6/19 978-0-425-28720-0 $17.99“The first to die left behind little more than their names and brief stories of chaotic, terrifying deaths. Individual by individual, they went from being seemingly well to perplexingly ill in a matter...
Stevie by John Steptoe (1950–1989) was published by Life magazine and then by Harper & Row in 1969. It celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2019.I locate the beginning of what I’ve come to call #blackboylit — literature for children and young adults that centers the experiences of boys of African...
The Music of What Happensby Bill KonigsbergHigh School Levine/Scholastic 346 pp.1/19 978-1-338-21550-2 $17.99e-book ed. 978-1-338-21552-6 $10.99In order to help his unstable mother make delinquent mortgage payments, Jordan tries his hand at the food truck business, using his late father’s old truck, Coq Au Vinny. Things don’t go too well until...
Special Issue: ALA Awards.Original cover art by 2019 Caldecott Medal winner Sophie Blackall.Pauletta Brown Bracy’s Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award Acceptance speech.“The Year in Words and Pictures”: Horn Book editors Elissa Gershowitz and Martha V. Parravano discuss the children’s book landscape of 2018.Meg Medina’s Newbery Medal acceptance speech.Author R. J....
Bear Came Alongby Richard T. Morris; illus. by LeUyen PhamPreschool Little, Brown 40 pp.6/19 978-0-316-46447-5 $17.99e-book ed. 978-0-316-46445-1 $9.99This boisterous adventure is a story about discovery, the twists and turns a day can take, and the ways in which friendships can be forged when least expected — all in the...
illustration from Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai. The following books will receive starred reviews in the July/August 2019 Horn Book Magazine. Each year our July/August issue celebrates the ALA Youth Media Awards; this time around you can look forward to original cover art by (second-time!) Caldecott Medalist Sophie Blackall,...
We Are Here to Stay: Voices of Undocumented Young Adultsby Susan Kuklin; photos by the authorMiddle School, High School Candlewick 182 pp.1/19 978-0-7636-7884-5 $19.99The Trump administration’s 2017 repeal of DACA put photojournalist Kuklin (Beyond Magenta, rev. 3/14) and her work-in-progress, about undocumented immigrants, in an awkward place: would she be...
George and Bernette Ford are two icons of African American children’s literature. George is the winner of the first Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, in 1974, for Ray Charles (written by Sharon Bell Mathis) and a past president of the Council on Interracial Books for Children. He and Bernette were...
Charlie & Mouse Even Betterby Laurel Snyder; illus. by Emily HughesPrimary Chronicle 48 pp.5/19 978-1-4521-7065-7 $14.99This third Charlie & Mouse picture book/easy reader hybrid (Charlie & Mouse, rev. 7/17; Charlie & Mouse & Grumpy, rev. 11/17) shines the spotlight on Mom’s approaching birthday. The first chapter sets the scene, with...
My Papi Has a Motorcycleby Isabel Quintero; illus. by Zeke PeñaPrimary Kokila/Penguin 40 pp. g5/19 978-0-525-55341-0 $17.99Spanish ed. 978-0-525-55494-3 $17.99Quintero’s picture-book text acts as an evocative love letter to her apá and to the interconnected web of Mexican immigrant working-class people who built her hometown of Corona, California. When Papi...
I Am Hermes!: Mischief-Making Messenger of the Godsby Mordicai Gerstein; illus. by the authorPrimary, Intermediate Holiday 72 pp. g4/19 978-0-8234-3942-3 $18.99e-book ed. 978-0-8234-4203-4 $11.99Following I Am Pan! (rev. 5/16), here comes Pan’s father, Hermes, the messenger god, eager to tell his own story. This Hermes is handsome, insouciant, impulsive, and...
Growing up, I always loved magic. It was exciting, because I was a curious kid who devoted a good deal of brainpower to figuring out the whys of the world. This love of magic eventually manifested in a love of science — and with it science fiction — which permeated...
Where the Heart Isby Jo KnowlesIntermediate, Middle School Candlewick 294 pp. g4/19 978-1-5362-0003-4 $16.99On Rachel’s thirteenth birthday, new neighbors move in, affluent dilettante “farmers” who engage her, at minimum wage, to look after their animals while they’re away during the week. She comes to love the menagerie, even Lucy, the...
You Are Newby Lucy Knisley; illus. by the authorPreschool Chronicle 48 pp.3/19 978-1-4521-6156-3 $17.99Knisley chronicled her wedding in her 2016 adult graphic-novel memoir Something New; her latest, Kid Gloves (2019), is about pregnancy; and concurrently she has authored her first picture book — about a newborn baby. In lilting, lighthearted...
As you know (and if you don't, you must be new here 😉), the Coretta Scott King Book Awards celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, and the Horn Book's annual special issue is themed around that anniversary. We are honored to have a roster of more than thirty African American...
Because I was running away from anything that required being in the public eye, I am sure that any early motivation to be a writer was deeply buried in my subconscious and lay there, unrecognized, for many years. Writing this article has sent me back to pull those memories together...
On a rainy day in July 2017, a group of teachers, librarians, and community activists gathered at Frugal Bookstore, Boston’s only Black-owned bookstore, to participate in a discussion of Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give (which would go on to be named a 2018 Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor...
Enemy Child: The Story of Norman Mineta, a Boy Imprisoned in a Japanese American Internment Camp During World War IIby Andrea WarrenIntermediate, Middle School Ferguson/Holiday 214 pp.3/19 978-0-8234-4151-8 $22.99Continuing her theme of children in peril because of governmental policies outside of their control, Warren (Surviving Hitler, rev. 3/01; Escape from...
Darius the Great Is Not Okayby Adib KhorramHigh School Dial 313 pp. g8/18 978-0-5255-5296-3 $17.99 Sophomore Darius Kellner doesn’t fit in at his Oregon high school, where he’s bullied by Trent Bolger and his “Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy.” But Darius also doesn’t fit comfortably in his own life due to clinical...
Courtesy NCAAP.I was used to getting red-ink marks in the margins of my school essays until I met my high school English teacher, Linda Christensen. For our final projects, Ms. Christensen would write two-page letters with praise and feedback about revisions. I had never had a teacher be so thoughtful...
Memory is a very inexact and unreliable process, and it’s tricky to try to point to one event in our past and say it was somehow life-changing. That said, if the question is: what set me on the road to becoming an author? I have a memory that is as...
Harold & Hog Pretend for Real! [Elephant & Piggie Like Reading!]by Dan Santat; illus. by the author; with additional illustrations by Mo WillemsPrimary Hyperion 64 pp. g5/19 978-1-368-02716-8 $9.99Santat takes the already-meta Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series to new heights of self-awareness in this easy reader starring Harold and...
B Is for Babyby Atinuke; illus. by Angela BrooksbankPreschool Candlewick 40 pp.3/19 978-1-5362-0166-6 $16.99Atinuke and Brooksbank (Baby Goes to Market) reunite for another tenderly funny slice-of-life story set in an unspecified African village and starring a winsome baby girl, who is dearly loved. This alphabet book sticks with the letter...
Cover art by Kadir Nelson Table of Contents Features "Let Our Rejoicing Rise" by Rudine Sims Bishop Celebrating fifty years of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards. "An Interview with George and Bernette Ford" by Roger Sutton Two icons of Black children’s literature reflect on its history and future....
Though many things in life are set to autopilot, we thrive when we are choosing. I made the choice to be an artist when I was around seven and realized I could copy Fred Flintstone pretty accurately. It was a spark of magic that I wanted more of.As an only...
Nine Months: Before a Baby Is Bornby Miranda Paul; illus. by Jason ChinPrimary Porter/Holiday 32 pp.4/19 978-0-8234-4161-7 $18.99e-book ed. 978-0-8234-4213-3 $18.99A pithy quintain describes the moment a fertilized human egg becomes a two-celled zygote: “Small. / Ball. / The point of a pin. / Then it divides… / Our story begins.” It’s the first...
When I was in sixth grade, my elementary school hired a new librarian. I don’t remember her name. I only know that she was young, white, and had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. This new librarian taught us African songs and dances, and would then put on music...
With the Fire on Highby Elizabeth AcevedoHigh School HarperTeen 392 pp.5/19 978-0-06-266283-5 $17.99e-book ed. 978-0-06-266285-9 $9.99High school senior Emoni Santiago, whose “Puerto Rican side is as Black as [her] Black American side,” is many things — an aspiring chef, a proud North Philly native, a reserved student who keeps to...
The Little Guysby Vera Brosgol; illus. by the authorPreschool, Primary Roaring Brook 40 pp.4/19 978-1-62672-442-6 $17.99The “strongest guys in the whole forest” are the Little Guys — small pastel-colored creatures with acorn-cap hats; red, nose-like appendages; and stick arms and legs. Together there is nothing they cannot conquer. For example,...
The Coretta Scott King Book Awards originated as a response to the failure of the children’s literature establishment to acknowledge the talents and contributions of African American writers and illustrators. As late as 1969, forty-seven years after the first Newbery Medal had been awarded, and thirty-one years after the awarding...
Photo by Sonya Sones“Writer vs. Author.” This dichotomy is one I deal with on a daily basis, sometimes on a minute-by-minute basis. I grew up in the age before social networking, so typing out words on a keyboard has long been a private activity for me. Even if the finished...
Claudette S. McLinnOn behalf of the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee, welcome to The Horn Book’s special issue commemorating the Coretta Scott King (CSK) Book Awards’ fiftieth anniversary. I was delighted to learn that The Horn Book would feature a special commemorative issue devoted to this historic golden anniversary,...
Wildheart: The Daring Adventures of John Muirby Julie Bertagna; illus. by William GoldsmithIntermediate, Middle School Yosemite Conservancy 128 pp.3/19 978-1-930238-94-7 $17.99This creatively rendered biography-in-comics-format of John Muir (1838–1914) is filled with the naturalist’s adventures, from his childhood in Scotland to his pioneering conservation work and formation of America’s National Parks....
The Vanishing Stair [Truly Devious]by Maureen JohnsonHigh School Tegen/HarperCollins 373 pp.1/19 978-0-06-233808-2 $17.99In this absorbing continuation of Truly Devious (rev. 1/18), amateur gumshoe and anxiety sufferer Stevie Bell is still trying — from afar, her parents having removed her from Ellingham Academy at the end of the first book —...
There Are No Bears in This Bakeryby Julia Sarcone-Roach; illus. by the authorPreschool, Primary Knopf 40 pp.1/19 978-0-399-55665-4 $17.99Library ed. 978-0-399-55666-1 $20.99e-book ed. 978-0-399-55667-8 $10.99Sarcone-Roach’s previous bear-centric picture book, The Bear Ate Your Sandwich (rev. 1/15), featured an unreliable offstage narrator, a cover-up, and — spoiler alert — no bears....
photo by Katie BircherAdvance office copies of our May/June special issue, that is, which means that if you are a subscriber it is also on the way to you. If you are not a subscriber, first, shame on you, but, second, you can order single copies of this issue of...
Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasonsby Laura Purdie Salas; illus. by Mercè LópezPrimary Millbrook 32 pp.4/19 978-1-5124-9809-7 $19.99e-book ed. 978-1-5415-4383-6 $19.99Salas presents a volume of “riddle-ku” poems, a form that is a cross between riddles, haiku, and “mask poems” (poems narrated by “something nonhuman”). The book is divided...
Beware of the Crocodileby Martin Jenkins; illus. by Satoshi KitamuraPrimary Candlewick 32 pp. g3/19 978-0-7636-7538-7 $16.99Heeding the old adage “when introducing a topic to children, start with what they know,” Jenkins initiates his discussion of crocodiles with their most prominent feature: those fascinating and intimidating teeth, which Kitamura depicts in...
Dealing in Dreamsby Lilliam RiveraHigh School Simon 328 pp. g3/19 978-1-4814-7214-2 $18.99e-book ed. 978-1-4814-7216-6 $10.99Rivera (The Education of Margot Sanchez) presents an action-filled dystopian novel about loyalty, power, and losing and finding oneself. Nalah, a.k.a. Chief Rocka, is the leader of the all-girl gang Las Mal Criadas, which owns the...
Poetreeby Shauna LaVoy Reynolds; illus. by Shahrzad MaydaniPrimary Dial 32 pp. g3/19 978-0-399-53912-1 $17.99To celebrate the end of winter, young poetry lover Sylvia writes a poem about spring and ties it to a birch tree in the park. The next day her poem is gone; in its place is another...
The Undefeatedby Kwame Alexander; illus. by Kadir NelsonPrimary, Intermediate, Middle School Versify/Houghton 40 pp. g4/19 978-1-328-78096-6 $17.99e-book ed. 978-0-358-05761-1 $12.99Alexander and Nelson honor the achievements, courage, and perseverance of ordinary black people as well as prominent black artists, athletes, and activists. The free-verse poem begins: “This is for the unforgettable. /...
We are just dotting the is of the May/June issue celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Coretta Scott King Awards. Phew! I don't think we've published an issue with quite so many moving parts. I speak literally, figuratively, and emotively.I hope our subscribers appreciate this landmark issue, and I wanted...
Two Brothers, Four Hands: The Artists Alberto and Diego Giacomettiby Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan; illus. by Hadley HooperPrimary, Intermediate Porter/Holiday 64 pp. g4/19 978-0-8234-4170-9 $21.99e-book ed. 978-0-8234-4224-9 $16.99Experts at accessibly describing art and exploring the often-complex lives of its creators, Greenberg and Jordan (most recently Meet Cindy Sherman, rev....
The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. Jamesby Ashley Herring BlakeIntermediate, Middle School Little, Brown 373 pp. g3/19 978-0-316-51553-5 $16.99e-book ed. 978-0-316-51550-4 $9.99After receiving a heart transplant, twelve-year-old Sunny decides it’s time for a “New Life” with specific components — including finding a boy to kiss and finding a new best...
Carl and the Meaning of Lifeby Deborah Freedman; illus. by the authorPreschool, Primary Viking 48 pp. g4/19 978-0-451-47498-8 $17.99Carl is an earthworm, always moving under the ground, digesting leaves and “turning hard dirt into fluffy soil.” When a field mouse asks him why he does...
Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arcby David ElliottHigh School Houghton 191 pp. g3/19 978-1-328-98759-4 $17.99e-book ed. 978-0-358-04915-9 $9.99In this verse novel, “voices” refers to Joan of Arc’s messages from the saints; to the various people who testified for and against her; to Joan herself; and to the objects...
Dogs in Spaceby Vix Southgate; illus. by Iris DeppePrimary Kane Miller 32 pp.3/19 978-1-61067-824-7 $14.99With a happier ending than that of their legendary predecessor Laika, dogs Belka and Strelka became, in 1960, among the first animals to return, alive, from orbital flight. That does not, however, deny the suspense with...
Lovely Warby Julie BerryHigh School Viking 471 pp.3/19 978-0-451-46993-9 $18.99When the Greek god of fire, Hephaestus, catches his wife Aphrodite, goddess of love, in 1942 Manhattan in a passionate affair with his brother Ares, god of war, Aphrodite defends her actions by showing the two gods what real love looks...
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