MORE 'BEST-BOOKS-OF-2018' POSTS
The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle By Christina Uss Margaret Ferguson Books (an imprint of Holiday House) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-8234-4007-8 Ages 9-12 On shelves now. The term “quirky” has gotten a bad rap recently. I blamed forced quirk. Have you ever read or watched something where the book or movie is just trying too […]
Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish By Pablo Cartaya Viking (an imprint of Penguin Random House) $16.99 ISBN: 9781101997260 Ages 9-12 On shelves now The other day a woman contacted me and wondered if I could offer any picture book/middle grade/ YA suggestions for a list of various topics. The list consisted of things like “OCD”, […]
The Funeral By Matt James Groundwood Books (an imprint of House of Anansi Press) ISBN: 978-1-55498-908-9 $18.95 Ages 4-7 On shelves now They say you don’t truly fear death until you have children. I’ll tweak that slightly. I say, you don’t truly fear talking about death until you have children. At least if you’re an […]
When I was a child I knew what Down syndrome was but I didn’t know it because of any picture books that contained characters with Down syndrome. None of my childhood literature covered it, so if I wanted to see someone represented in this way I had to turn on Sesame Street. Though it’s not […]
Louisiana’s Way Home By Kate DiCamillo Candlewick Press ISBN: 978-0-7636-9463-0 $16.99 Ages 9-12 On shelves October 2nd There once was a book called Raymie Nightingale. Not a big flashy book with glitter on the cover and fonts that look like escaped balloon animals. Just a quiet book set in the late 1970s in Florida, patiently […]
The Field By Baptiste Paul Illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara North/South Books, Inc. $17.95 ISBN: 978-0-7358-4312-7 Ages 4-7 On shelves now Here’s an interesting conundrum for you. Rattle it about in your brain for a while. It is an uncontestable fact that the majority of picture books published in America in a given year feature either […]
No doubt by this time you’ve read PW’s list of the Most Anticipated Children’s And YA Books of Fall 2018. Good strong books are on that list, many that I absolutely adore. That said, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of gaps. Just one graphic novel. Three nonfiction. And, because a book is usually […]
Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness By Anastasia Higginbotham Dottir Press $18.95 ISBN: 9781948340007 Ages 6 and up On shelves September 4th The other day I was at the table with my 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son and the subject of police shootings came up. I think there was a time when I would […]
Small Spaces By Katherine Arden G.P. Putnam & Sons (an imprint of Penguin Young Reader’s Group) $16.99 ISBN: 9780525515029 Ages 10-14 On shelves September 25th In fourth grade I sold my soul to the Scholastic Book Club’s Apple paperbacks. There was only one thing in the entire world I ever wanted to read, at that […]
We Don’t Eat Our Classmates By Ryan T. Higgins Hyperion (an imprint of Disney Book Group) $17.99 ISBN: 978-136800355-1 Ages 4-7 On shelves now Each year, as the new school year draws ever closer, a bounty of first day of school books are published. The bulk of them are overly familiar. A couple of them […]