The Yarn
January 19, 2016 by Betsy Bird
Jazz Day: The Making of a Famous Photograph By Roxane Orgill Illustrated by Francis Vallejo Candlewick Press $18.99 ISBN: 9780763669546 Ages 9-12 On shelves March 8th Some books for kids have a hard road ahead of them. Here’s a secret. If you want a book to sell just oodles and oodles of copies to the […]
July 27, 2012 by Betsy Bird
The Giant and How He Humbugged America By Jim Murphy Scholastic $19.99 ISBN: 978-0-439-69184-0 Ages 10 and up On shelves October 1st What are we to make of the proliferation of true-life hoax books for children filling our library and bookstore shelves this year? Whether it’s the clever ruse of The Fairy Ring scandal or […]
April 14, 2012 by Betsy Bird
Eye of the Storm By Kate Messner Walker (a division of Bloomsbury) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-8027-2313-0 Ages 9-14 On shelves now Pity the science geeks, the math geeks, and other kids that love a ripping yarn with a grounding in something other than fantasy. When I troll the shelves of the children’s room in my local […]
January 24, 2012 by Betsy Bird
Since it’s apparently football season (or at least that’s what the trending topics on Twitter seem to imply) think of this as a kind of post-game recap of what went on yesterday in the land of ALA Media Awards. Each year I like to look at what I got right, what I got wrong, what […]
January 17, 2012 by Betsy Bird
When you consider the fact that whole hoards of librarians will be traipsing Texas-ward this week so as to attend the Midwinter American Library Association Conference, this post is pretty much coming in at the last possible moment. Even as we speak committee members are girding their loins (or whatever it is committee members gird) […]
October 24, 2011 by Betsy Bird
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans By Kadir Nelson Balzer and Bray (an imprint of Harper Collins) $19.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-173074-0 Ages 9-12 On shelves now Humans tend to be a highly visual species. When folks tell you not to judge a book by its cover, that’s an optimistic sentiment rather than […]
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September 14, 2011 by Betsy Bird
*sniff sniff* Smell that? That’s the sweet scent of an upcoming award season. It’s already beginning to drift our way from the future. Things are clearly heating up since we’re seeing two award-based blogs up and running. For Newbery fans Heavy Medal has already come out of the gate swinging. Between the inevitable comparison between […]
August 26, 2011 by Betsy Bird
Never Forgotten By Patricia C. McKissack Illustrated by Leon and Diane Dillon Schwartz & Wade $18.99 ISBN: 978-0-375-84384-6 Ages 4 and up On shelves October 11, 2011 The more I read children’s literature the more I come to realize that my favorite books for kids are the ones that can take disparate facts, elements, and […]
August 6, 2011 by Betsy Bird
The Cazuela That the Farm Maiden Stirred By Samantha R. Vamos Illustrated by Rafael Lopez Charlesbridge $17.95 ISBN: 978-1-58089-242-1 Ages 4-8 On shelves now I am lucky to work in a children’s room with a significantly sized bilingual section. The books you’ll find there cover a wide range of languages. Chinese, Arabic, Urdu, you name […]
June 7, 2011 by Betsy Bird
Normally I’d do this kind of post for June 15th but there’s a possibility that I might be a bit busy on that date, so we’ll do it now for kicks. It’s time for our mid-year Newbery/Caldecott querying. I’ve already indulged in some Spring Predictions, but I prefer the Summer ones because at this point […]
Politics in Practice
by John Chrastka
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