
Heavy Medal
November 12, 2024 by Betsy Bird
You want a plot that’s tight? World-building that manages to be both comprehensible and succinct? And heart too, right? You want to actually feel something as a result of the hero’s journey? Welp, here you go.
October 16, 2024 by Betsy Bird
Hope is hard to write in a book. Hope is particularly hard to write in a picture book. Still, when someone gets it right, there’s nothing else like it. Maybe it’s true. Hope? It really is a thing with feathers.
September 6, 2024 by Betsy Bird
Is this a future classic? The answer may lie in the goats.
September 27, 2023 by Betsy Bird
“Make no more clouds. I have drawn the rainbow here.” Attend the tale of Bea Wolf, and a better comic for kids you're unlikely to find anywhere.
September 22, 2023 by Betsy Bird
If you think the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, and Brooklyn at that same time makes for an awkward tri-narrative, you are wrong. And if you also think that it would be highly difficult to weave three such perspectives together, there you are correct, but it can be done. The Lost Year proves as much.
August 24, 2023 by Betsy Bird
A squirrel heroine. An epic adventure. Delicious hints of familiar fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, naturally), and tasty treats. For the anxious child, Evergreen may well be the hero they’ve always needed.
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July 20, 2023 by Betsy Bird
I dare you to read even two chapters and not be engulfed in the narrative. Smart and savvy, Jawbreaker is the novel you wish you had read as a kid and are grateful that kids get to read today.
November 18, 2022 by Betsy Bird
Shuna’s JourneyBy Hayao MiyazakiTranslated by Alex Dudok de Wit$27.99ISBN: 9781250846525Ages 9-12On shelves now In the pantheon of Miyazaki fans you have to rate yourself on a kind of scale. There are, after all, folks out there that make veritable pilgrimages to places like the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka in suburban Tokyo or the café Kodama in […]
October 14, 2022 by Betsy Bird
Choosing Brave is the book for kids we will turn to on the topic of Emmett Till for decades and decades and decades to come.
July 22, 2022 by Betsy Bird
Balancing its messaging with great storytelling, character development, and the magic trick of making a mother character both the antagonist and loving, Frizzy is a roller coaster ride of emotions in a single, simple, quick to read little package.
Good Comics for Kids
by Renee Scott
Teen Librarian Toolbox
by Karen Jensen, MLS
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