MORE 'BEST-BOOKS-OF-2017' POSTS
Accident! By Andrea Tsurumi Houghton Mifflin Harcourt $17.99 ISBN: 978-0-544-94480-0 Ages 4-7 On shelves October 3rd There is no accident so small that a forward thinking six-year-old can’t turn it into World War III. You see, there are certain things they won’t tell you when you prepare to become a parent. They’ll conveniently fail to […]
Town Is by the Sea By Joanne Schwartz Illustrated by Sydney Smith Groundwood Books $19.95 ISBN: 978-1-55498-871-6 Ages 4-9 On shelves now There’s been a lot of talk lately about how a parent can engender empathy in their children. It’s a good question and worth a lot of discussion and listening. As a parent I’ve […]
Once at NYPL I asked Marc Aronson to do a Children’s Literary Salon on the topic of the history of children’s nonfiction. It was eye-opening. It was extraordinary. It was not recorded for posterity so unless he does it again sometime (hint hint, Marc, hint hint) we have nothing to refer to aside from his […]
The Ethan I Was Before By Ali Standish Harper (an imprint of Harper Collins) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-243340-4 Ages 9-12 On shelves now Southern Gothic children’s literature. Sounds crazy, no? But as weird as it might sound it’s a legitimate genre. You may think it’s all Flannery and Faulkner but kids have a delightful range to […]
Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix By Jacqueline Briggs Martin and June Jo Lee Illustrated by Man One Readers to Eaters $18.95 ISBN: 978-0-9836615-9-7 Ages 5-10 On shelves now. A kid walked up to my Reference Desk. Looked me square in the eye. Said, “I need a biography…” “Sure thing!” I chirruped. That’s […]
York: The Shadow Cipher By Laura Ruby Walden Pond Press (an imprint of Harper Collins) $17.99 ISBN: 9780062306937 Ages 9-14 On shelves May 9th. A wise bookseller friend of mine once said (and I’m paraphrasing here because she bloody tweets too often to locate the precise words), “If you work in a bookstore you are […]
My Valley By Charles Ponti Translated by Alyson Waters Elsewhere Editions (an imprint of Archipelago Books) $24.00 ISBN: 978-0914671626 Ages 4-8 On shelves now. I’ve written a lot about the state of translated children’s books in America lately. It is what it is. Generally speaking, Americans can be a bit cagey when it comes to […]
A New School Year: Stories in Six Voices By Sally Derby Illustrated by Mika Song Charlesbridge $16.99 ISBN: 978-1580897303 Ages 5-12 On shelves June 27th Sometimes I think that easy readers are the hardest books for kids to write. Those are the beginner books where the word count is limited and you have to somehow […]
Wolf in the Snow By Matthew Cordell Feiwel and Friends (an imprint of Macmillan) $17.99 ISBN: 978-1250076366 Ages 4-7 On shelves now It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why it is that I love picture books as much as I do. Putting aside the usual reasons (brain growth, increasing a child’s capacity for wonder, parent/child bonding, […]
The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist By Cynthia Levinson Illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton Atheneum (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) $17.99 ISBN: 978-1-4814-0070-1 Ages 6-10 On shelves now Today I’d like to begin with a small talk about diversity. Not diversity of people necessarily, but diversity […]