MORE POSTS FROM APRIL 2018
Maybe it was School of Rock that started the interest in working with children. Certainly the Goosebumps movie was an indication, and who can forget Jumanji? However you want to look at it, Jack Black at some point in the proceedings became the friendly face of children’s books adapted to the big screen. Considering the […]
A House That Once Was By Julie Fogliano Illustrated by Lane Smith Roaring Brook Press (an imprint of Macmillan) $18.99 ISBN: 978-1-62672-314-6 Ages 4-7 On shelves May 1st When I was growing up there was an empty house across the street. A melancholy, haunted structure that seemed to wear its sadness like a badge. No […]
Fond as I am of podcasts, I do have a tendency to view them as conveyance systems for blog fodder. I plug in my earphones, walk home from work, and get ideas for posts. That’s the hope anyway, but nine times out of ten a podcast is just a podcast. Even the most inspirational ones […]
It’s that time again! Time to take a gander at what’s happening in the world of books for grown-up types. Oh sure, half the time it’s quickie diet books and memoirs of Churchill (I can guarantee that if there’s a Churchill book out there, the patrons of my library will snap it up, lightning quick) […]
“50% of this book is just depressed donkeys.” In lieu of Shrek (which I had zippo information on hand to bandy about) I decided we’d go with what is arguably the second most famous Steig picture book out there. You know. The one chock full of sadness and woe. Along the way we tackle grammar, […]
The Cardboard Kingdom Edited and Illustrated by Chad Sell Written by Jay Fuller, David DeMeo, Katie Schenkel, Kris Moore, Molly Muldoon, Vid Alliger, Manuel Betancourt, Michael Cole, Cloud Jacobs, and Barbara Perez Marquez Knopf (an imprint of Random House Children’s Books) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-5247-1937-1 Ages 9-12 On shelves June 5th The other day I listened […]
This week Kate and I didn’t release a new episode of our podcast. In lieu of that, she’s typed up a transcript of our Babar episode, for those of you that would prefer our banter in written form. Here then is the episode in full. Many thanks, indeed, to Kate for doing the dirty work […]
“Frog and Toad on rooftops.” Now that I have your attention . . . The funny thing about the children’s book author Jonathan Auxier (you may remember him from his Peter Nimble stories, or perhaps from his deliciously creepy The Night Gardener) is that I knew him personally before he was a writer for kids. […]
When you think of the truly great picture books of all time, you realize pretty quickly that like all things famous, in order to achieve greatness the right parts had to be the right place at the right time. You have to have great art, marvelous writing (if, indeed, you have any writing at all), […]