In 2009 at her blog nestled over at the online version of the New York Times, illustrator, designer and author Maira Kalman penned and illustrated a moving tribute to Abraham Lincoln, a post that was read and loved by many.
Read more new and notable children's books.
In early January, Nancy Paulsen Books (an imprint of Penguin) released the picture-book adaptation of that post, geared at children. Looking at Lincoln is a loving tribute to the former president, and it’s rendered in Kalman’s clear-eyed, honest manner. And it’s all topped off with her wonderfully offbeat flair ...
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If there is any children’s author today capable of taking the gravity of a cosmic situation in stride, it’s Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano.
A STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) education consultant who develops science curricula by day, DeCristofano possesses the rare gift to make complex scientific concepts accessible to young audiences. She and illustrator Michael Carroll first joined forces in 2005 in Big Bang! The Tongue-Tickling Tale of a Speck that Became Spectacular, tackling the abstract wonders of the universe’s creation.
With A Black Hole Is NOT a Hole, they unite again both to pique readers’ curiosity and ...
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When we listen to President Barack Obama deliver a speech, some of us may recall the sacrifices required to get to this place in history, but others have forgotten—or never knew—the whole story of the civil rights movement in America.
Cynthia Levinson has found that many adults have never heard of the Children's March that happened in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, in which hundreds of children were jailed after marching for civil rights. With We've Got a Job, she hopes to inform both children and adults. Here, Levinson discusses her everyday heroes and why their stories ...
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Well, this is depressing news. I ran across that particular article recently, but there’s no shortage of a thousand other write-ups on the same subject—how sitting all day is making us unhealthy.
Read the last Seven Impossible Things on Kevin Henkes' 'Penny and Her Song.'
It makes all the sense in the world, but many of us have jobs that simply necessitate sitting at desks most of the day, such as, ahem, writing about children’s books. So, even though we know it’s true, it’s still a bummer to read.
A friend who’s a second-grade ...
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Lesa Cline-Ransome and illustrator James E. Ransome, who most recently brought musical prodigy Joseph Boulogne to young readers in Before There Was Mozart, have collaborated once more, this time to create Words Set Me Free, the story of young Frederick Douglass and his determined quest for literacy.
Though Douglass is a well-known historical figure, few may know of his passion to learn to read as a young slave, or how reading opened the door to a full and dignified life. Here the author and illustrator (who also collaborate as husband and wife) discuss their joint work on this book.
Find ...
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“It should be said: Kevin Henkes is a genius,” wrote Bruce Handy in 2007 at the New York Times. I feel a bit like Handy in writing about Penny and Her Song, Henkes’ upcoming book, to be released by Greenwillow Books at the end of February.
Read the last Seven Impossible Things on 'Virginia Wolf.'
And that’s because Handy went on to admit—and here he was talking about Henkes’ 2007 picture book, A Good Day—that it took him a while to get around to writing about the book, since he didn’t have anything new to add ...
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Counting sheep takes on comical new meaning in Matthew Cordell’s over-the-top thematic twist on the arrival of not one but a dozen new siblings to young Davy’s family of sheep, qualifying this author/illustrator’s latest title, Another Brother, as a candidate for understatement of the year.
Read more new and notable children's books this February.
Not your average little lamb, for years Davy blossomed as the recipient of his parents’ undivided attention, learning to sing and play guitar, knit and shear his own wooly afro. But then the near-overnight addition of 12 new brothers shakes the ...
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It’s not often you see picture books for young children which address depression. Sure, there are probably many informative nonfiction titles on the subject, but I specifically mean fictional titles that approach the subject in a metaphorical way.
Read all about this year's ALA honors.
I hesitate to use the word “depression,” in fact, given that it implies a clinical diagnosis of a chemically imbalanced despair done by a professional in the medical field. Lots of children experience such a thing, but one can also merely get the blues. Leslie Staub and illustrator R.G. Roth address this ...
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In The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr., aka Houdini, when the protagonist decides to write a book, it's not to gain insight on his character or bring a sense of logic to his life. It's to make money.
Find more books about kids who write.
After all, his parents are both exhausted from working too hard, and his older brother is fighting in Iraq—his family could use some extra income. But Houdini discovers more than a get-rich-quick scheme between the pages of his notebook. He learns about his friends, his parents, his brother, even himself. Peter ...
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The Theater at the Dallas Convention Center was packed on Monday morning, filled with librarians and children's literature enthusiasts waiting to see what books, authors and illustrators would be recognized among the 2012 American Library Association awards.
Find more lists of the ALA winners and nominees: Caldecott, Newbery, Printz, Coretta Scott King and Pura Belpre.
We went in happy, and, for the most part, we left happy. The various ALA division presidents named the awards and honors they were responsible for, and we all clapped appropriately. To be sure, anyone listening would have heard many iterations of "What happened ...
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Know how one of the best things about a really good picture book is the kind of good, crunchy, thought-provoking conversation it can generate with a child? I like those books.
Read the last Seven Impossible Things on 'Here Come the Girl Scouts!'
Such stories aren’t always clothed in earnest, weighty titles or subject matter. We can always leave it to most celebrity authors anyway to take care of that for us. (Trust me, in no time we’ll have something like Mr. Bootsie Butterbean McTwinkles the Cat and the Meaning of Life or some such nonsense from the ...
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Preschool children all over the world are familiar with the cautionary tale of Little Bunny Foo Foo. But what grudge did that rabbit harbor against the field mice?
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Perhaps they weren't as innocent as we've all been led to assume. Cori Doerrfeld examines the other side of the story in her new picture book, Little Bunny Foo Foo: The Real Story—see who you're cheering for at the end. Here she talks about how she came up with idea of turning an old story on its head, and what ...
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King Edward the Fourth was gay
King Edward the Fourth was charming,
He'd a voice like silk,
And manners like milk,
And a smile that was most disarming.
As parlor tricks go, this was a pretty dumb one. I could recite the character flaws of Edward IV of England and how he manifested them: "he / Upsided-downed / His brother and drowned / Him dead in a butt of malmsey."
No matter that I didn't know what malmsey was, much less how much of it would be found in a butt. The limerick rhythm was hard to resist, and, besides, I ...
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Last year, Shane W. Evans wrote Underground, a book with minimal text and powerful images about the Underground Railroad, focusing in large part on one family’s journey. This month marks the release of his book We March, which traces one family’s preparations and path on the March for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.
When we caught up with Evans, he was in Uganda, teaching art classes to orphans.
Find more picture books about Martin Luther King and the March on Washington.
If we look at the covers of Underground and We March side by side, it ...
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As mentioned last week, I’m excited to see 2012 picture books, even as we get closer (just a little over a week now!) to the announcement of the 2012 Caldecott winner.
Read more new and notable books for kids this January.
Actually, given my enthusiasm to hear the Caldecott committee’s announcement on Jan. 23, it would be altogether more accurate to type it this way: JUST A LITTLE OVER A WEEK NOW! (I’ll spare you a larger font and the excessive use of exclamation marks.)
One well-crafted title I’ve already seen in 2012 is Shana Corey ...
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Whew, 2012 has arrived. I toasted it on midnight with my champagne flute and sparkling grape juice. (What? I like a good champagne, but that stuff is tasty.)
Not ready to dive into 2012 yet? Check out Seven Impossible Things' favorite picture books of 2011.
As I look ahead to what the year will bring in terms of picture books and anxiously await the Caldecott award announcements on Jan. 23, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time perusing the spring catalogs of many children’s book publishers. I thought it’d be fun to pick a handful of ...
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The Library of Congress has just named Walter Dean Myers the third National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and I couldn't be happier. The author of picture books, novels, nonfiction and poetry, his writing career spans almost 50 years. He has touched and changed countless lives, including mine.
Read more books by Walter Dean Myers at Kirkus.
The position was created, according to the Library of Congress website, "to raise national awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it relates to lifelong literacy, education and the development and betterment of the lives of young people ...
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At Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast—my blog where I write about illustration and contemporary picture books—I certainly can’t cover every picture book of interest to me in a given year. But I do what I can.
Read Seven Impossible Things on looking ahead to 2012.
This week, the last one of 2011, I take the opportunity at Kirkus to mention the one title I regret not covering at my own site this year. (To my credit, I tried to line up an informative Q&A with the book’s author, illustrator, editor and art director, but it ...
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This is the time of year when just about everyone weighs in with their “best of” lists. Whether it’s books, music, politics or even the top stories of the-year-that-wasn’t, you bet there’s a list for it. (There’s even a list for the year-end-list-readers.)
Read more of the best picture books of 2011 before we ring in the new year.
We’re creeping up on 2012, and there are many 2011 best-of children’s book lists already published. I wonder about next year and what the picture book landscape will bring us. Of course, even though I ...
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