Good Comics for Kids
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 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.
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 7, 2022 by Betsy Bird
There is a place in this world for good, meaningful picture books, and there is a place in this world for funny stuff. And this stuff? Some of the funniest I’ve seen in a long time.
ADVERTISEMENT
October 12, 2019 by Betsy Bird
Don’t be surprised then if you detect a note of longing in the eyes of the kids that read this book. Thick with adventure, chock full of awe and beauty, this is what they mean when they say comics are an art unto themselves. The finest of the fine. Questing done right.
March 27, 2019 by Betsy Bird
We think about aliens all the time and what they might be like. Imagine actually finding other planets where they might live. That’s what Just Right does. It allows for the scope of possibility, even as its very message about the difficulty in finding planets like our own reinforces the fact that this place is pretty special.
April 13, 2018 by Betsy Bird
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 […]
September 1, 2017 by Betsy Bird
After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again By Dan Santat Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan) $17.99 ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6 Ages 4 and up On shelves October 3rd Sometimes its easy to forget in the midst of all those picture books about farting dogs, night kitchens, and giant dance parties that initially literature […]
Teen Librarian Toolbox
by Karen Jensen, MLS
Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.