Original cover art and artist’s statement by Charly Palmer. Horn Book Fanfare: Our choices for the best books of 2024. Coverage of the 2024 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards celebration (once again in person, and including rare Special Citation!): judges’ remarks, speeches, photos. A conversation between Jonda C. McNair and Dianne...
We started our centennial year of mini-themed issues with picture books in the January/February issue, and now end, fittingly, with YA in November/December. It seemed like a natural progression — from “the early years,” as we were calling it, to young adult, with stops at poetry and folklore; nonfiction and...
We wish you a loaded bookshelf with snowflake, with dreidel, with elf for gift-giving, or your own self. Some ideas are right here. Here’s our annual list of recommended new and reissued picture books of seasonal and holiday interest. Season’s greetings from the Horn Book staff! Uri and the King...
Above and left: 1927 posters created for the library by illustrator Pierre Belvès when he was sixteen. Images courtesy of Fonds patrimonial L'Heure Joyeuse, Médiathèque Françoise Sagan. L’Heure Joyeuse was the first library in France devoted especially to children. It opened in the Latin Quarter of Paris in 1924, after...
Meg Medina holds office hours as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Photo courtesy of Meg Medina. I have been dedicated to writing for children since about 2006, when I began drafting my first middle-grade novel, Milagros: Girl from Away, which was ultimately published by Henry Holt Books for...
Cover art by Kerilynn Wilson from One Foggy Christmas Eve. Final issue of our centennial year! (But the celebration continues: stay tuned!) The Zena Sutherland Lecture: An excerpt from Meg Medina’s “Finding Hope in the Abyss.” Viviane Ezratty and Hélène Valotteau on the centennial of L’Heure Joyeuse, the first children’s...
When we set out to write a few pages about this issue’s centennial mini-theme of middle grade, we were somewhat daunted, and with good reason. We’ve said this before, but — it’s a huge topic, and one we’ve covered extensively throughout our hundred years. Our first recommended booklists, in October...
Not all deserving books bring home ALA awards. The books that didn’t win. Stopped Let’s Go! by Michael Emberley Elena Rides by Juana Medina Eclipsed Sunshine by Jarrett J. Krosoczka When the Stars Came Home by Brittany Luby; illus. by Natasha Donovan Wilted My Baba’s...
Cover art by Garth Williams from Charlotte’s Web, written by E. B. White. Cover art © renewed 1980 by Estate of Garth Williams. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Fifth issue of our centennial year! HB100: Much Ado About Middle Grade: Continuing our centennial coverage with discussion of this issue’s...