Season’s greetings from the Horn Book staff! Here’s our annual list of recommended holiday books. (See also the reviews of Hanukkah/Christmas story Red and Green and Blue and White and The People Remember for Kwanzaa in the November/December 2021 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.) Leah’s Star by Margaret Bateson-Hill;...
Hanukkah starts early this year — November 28 — so I hope that leaves you enough time (supply chain problems notwithstanding) to benefit from our annual Holiday High Notes recommendations. This year saw a cheeringly large number of winter holiday–themed titles. On page 18 you’ll find a selection of our...
Dear friends: While I wish I could tell you I’ve been off the grid for the past month in some fabulous wilderness outpost, the reasons for my absence from your inboxes are far more mundane: Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. I’m avoiding at least three more as I type. But that’s how...
The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore; illus. by Loren Long Primary Harper/HarperCollins 40 pp. g 9/20 978-0-06-286946-3 $18.99 Long’s inclusive take on Moore’s poem focuses on four different families in four diverse dwellings: a country farmhouse, a city apartment, a trailer home, and a house in the tropics....
Dear friends: I’m so sorry to have missed you last week but the close of the January/February book review section, not to mention the events of the nation, kept me otherwise occupied. Is it too soon to anticipate opening my January/February Magazine editorial with Phew? If you’re feeling at all...
Ready to celebrate? I bet you are, and our annual Holiday High Notes list of recommended seasonal titles is here to help you get the party started. It’s not too early, he says, having picked up two boxes of chocolate peppermint cookies earlier today, and while to keep household peace...
’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...
Dear friends: What I’m late with this week are my Christmas book reviews, destined for our annual “Holiday High Notes” list to be published in the November/December issue of the Magazine. I believe it was a Winnie Winkle comic that taught me that some industries — fashion, publishing — live...
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....
The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper; illus. by Carson Ellis Primary Candlewick 32 pp. g 10/19 978-0-7636-8698-7 $17.99 “So the shortest day came, and the year died, / And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world / Came people singing, dancing / To drive the dark away.” Thus begins...