Bringing a Maligned Man to Life, With a New Perspective

Many today may be vexed having to hoof 500 yards to school or work, but imagine walking 500 miles to get an education. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the formidable subject of Jabari Asim’s eleventh book and first picture book biography, did just that, leaving his home in Malden, West Virginia and trekking hundreds of treacherous miles through the mountains of Virginia to reach Hampton Institute, where former slaves like him were free to study and read what they pleased. Though Washington is perhaps best remembered for founding the Tuskegee Institute and penning the important memoir Up from Slavery, in ...

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Art and Passion in Renaissance Italy

Set in Renaissance Italy, Victoria Strauss’ Passion Blue may be geared toward teens, but with its page-ripping intrigue and riveting glimpse of life behind the convent walls, even older readers are sure to swoon. When 17-year-old Giulia Borromeo, the illegitimate daughter of a count and a seamstress, becomes orphaned and learns she’s to be sent to a convent, she consults an astrologer for a talisman to help secure her dreams of a husband other than Christ. But in the convent, Giulia finds she must choose between a workshop of female painters who share her gift for creating art and ...

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Yael Kohen's 'We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy'

In her first book-length study, Marie Claire contributing editor Yael Kohen takes a serious look at women in the funny business. Carol Burnett descended the stair draped with a curtain rod, Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers lamented the throes of living with Fang and Edgar, Mary Tyler Moore tossed her beret into the Minneapolis sky, Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine set the switchboard alight, Roseanne Barr revealed the plight of the working-class ‘Domestic Goddess,’ Ellen DeGeneres came out on national television. And yet, in 2007, Vanity Fair published the late Christopher Hitchens’ now infamous article, “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” Kohen ...

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‘Monsieur Marceau’: Master Mime

In Monsieur Marceau, her stunning collaboration with illustrator Gérard DuBois, Leda Schubert puts into words the life of one of the world’s most gifted silent performers, Marcel Marceau.

For over 50 years, Marceau (1923-2007) dazzled audiences everywhere as a mime of unparalleled skill. YouTube devotees may still catch in action the man who taught Michael Jackson to moonwalk and brought to international acclaim a white-faced, hapless adventurer named “Bip.” But here alongside his artistry, which DuBois captures in arrestingly evocative oils, Schubert also highlights Marceau’s early history, revealing how during World War II he used his miming ...

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Marie Tillman on 'The Letter'

In April 2004, many Americans were shocked and saddened to hear of the heroic death of Pat Tillman, the bracingly handsome Arizona Cardinal who had taken leave from a successful NFL career to enlist in the Army—none more so than his wife, Marie.

But when the story of Tillman’s Silver Star-worthy sacrifice in an ambush in Afghanistan devolved into a high-level cover-up of accidental friendly fire, public outrage and congressional inquiry thrust the Tillman family into the national spotlight as they struggled with all dimensions of the truth behind their loss. With the outpouring of support following her ...

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Code Name ‘Enthralling’

Fast-forwarding a few centuries from her usual Arthurian-adventure milieu, Elizabeth Wein captures the heart-stopping drama of modern war in Code Name Verity, a gripping spy novel centered on the friendship of two young women in World War II Britain.

When secret agent “Verity” is caught by the Gestapo, much like Scheherezade, she promises to write down the details of her mission in hopes of prolonging her life and avoiding further torture. The narrative she weaves recounts the history of her friendship with Maddie, who piloted their plane that crashed in Nazi-occupied France. While Wein’s masterful plot is too explosive ...

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Kate Coombs, Diving into Poetry

Kate Coombs may be known for her middle-grade fantasies (The Runaway Princess and The Runaway Dragon) and picture-book fairy tales (Hans My Hedgehog, illustrated by John Nickle, etc.), but as it turns out, poetry is her first love.

Water Sings Blue: Ocean Poems, her fifth book and first poetry collection, includes 23 delightful ocean poems—some serious, others brilliantly playful and light—set alongside Meilo So’s suggestive watercolors just teeming with the hues, movement, and wonders of sea and shore. Though she now resides in Utah, Coombs says some of her fondest childhood memories come from time spent at ...

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Looking Through ‘Sisters of Glass’

Poet Stephanie Hemphill has a bent for history and dark subjects, having unleashed her signature novel-in-verse prowess with prize-winning results before on Sylvia Plath (Your Own, Sylvia, 2007) and the Salem witch trials (Wicked Girls, 2010).

But in Sisters of Glass she turns to a literally lighter topic, glassmaking in 15th-century Venice, to conjure up a page-ripping family drama involving two sisters torn between tradition and following their hearts. We were eager to speak with the Illinois native to learn the story behind her latest historical venture that young teens should devour.

Check out more novels in verse for teens ...

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Piecing Poems in ‘I Lay My Stitches Down’

Middle school librarian by day, poet and avid quilter during her off hours, Cynthia Grady presents “the threads that weave the fabric” of an enslaved life in I Lay My Stitches Down: Poems of American Slavery.

This evocative first collection of poems, which we called in a starred review, “a powerful grouping of thought-provoking poems and brilliantly designed paintings,” also features gorgeous artwork by Coretta Scott King and American Book Award–winning artist Michele Wood (I See the Rhythm, 1998, etc.).

The synergy between Wood’s ornate, lushly colored paintings and Grady’s finely hewn syllabic verse is so powerful ...

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Stepping Gently Out with Helen Frost and Rick Lieder

With Step Gently Out, the stunning first-time collaboration between poet Helen Frost and nature photographer Rick Lieder, proponents of the odd separation of author from illustrator in children’s publishing are hereby put on notice.

The marriage between word and image in this gorgeous picture book melds one poem encouraging young readers to explore insect wonders of the natural world with breathtakingly intimate photographs captured  only with the aid of natural light. Its success is both organic and the result of Frost and Lieder’s creative union from their project’s inception. We had the privilege of speaking with these ...

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Philip Levine: A Poet By and For the People

In anticipation of National Poetry Month, we caught up with U.S. poet laureate Philip Levine to check on the state of American poetry.

Last August, the celebrated 84-year-old poet who has won just about every major American literary award—the Pulitzer, the National Book Award (twice), the National Book Critics Circle Award for starters—was named the 18^th poet laureate of the United States. We were eager to learn Levine’s thoughts on his most recent honor and poets that have caught his eye since assuming his post. Much like his famously plainspoken narrative verse, Levine proved both ...

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Winterson on ‘Why Be Happy?’

The title of Jeanette Winterson’s searing memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, seems rhetorical or plain cheeky until one learns the question was posed literally by her mother just after demanding her lesbian daughter disavow her sexuality or permanently leave their home. Then-16-year-old Winterson left, and the rest, as they say, is literary history.

Read more new and notable nonfiction this March.

Winterson, who in her early 20s began telling the story of a girl adopted by Pentecostal parents in her Whitbread Prize-winning novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), here lowers fiction’s veil ...

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Lest We Forget: Jim Crow

When we first tried connecting with Linda Barrett Osborne to discuss Miles to Go for Freedom: Segregation & Civil Rights in the Jim Crow Years, scheduling proved a little difficult. The recently retired senior writer and editor at the Library of Congress was serving on a jury in a case involving five defendants accused of opening fire on a crowd and facing 45 criminal counts.

This happenstance proved rather ironic, for bookending Osborne’s rivetingly accessible and grippingly illustrated study of segregation and civil rights are two landmark Supreme Court cases: Plessy v. Ferguson, whose 1896 concept of “separate but equal ...

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Debunking Black Holes for Kids

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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'6 Husbands Every Wife Should Have'

Fans of “Just the Way You Are,” Billy Joel’s 1978 Grammy-winning Song and Record of the Year, listen up: Steven Craig has some relational advice for you.

“Don’t go changing to try and please me [… ] I need to know that you will always be / the same old someone that I knew.” Both outlooks, Craig says, forecast doom when it comes to managing your love life.

Read more new and notable nonfiction in February.

In this provocative relationship guide, The 6 Husbands Every Wife Should Have, the Michigan-based clinical psychologist, corporate coach and radio host offers numerous tips, quizzes ...

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Not Just Another New-Sibling Story

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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Tragedy and Heroism in Halifax Harbour

Ask Sibert Medal–winner Sally Walker (Secrets of a Civil War Submarine, 2005, etc.) what subjects turn her on, and she’ll tell you point-blank: “history, mystery and science.” In Blizzard of Glass: The Halifax Explosion of 1917, Walker tackles all three in this gripping account of one of the most devastating maritime accidents in history.

Early on Dec. 6, 1917, two boats bound for war-torn Europe inexplicitly collided in the narrows of Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia. The Imo, laden with war-relief supplies, mistakenly crossed paths with the Mont-Blanc and ripped a hole in her hull that sparked a ...

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Behind ‘Balloons over Broadway’ with Melissa Sweet

When images of the modern Thanksgiving come to mind, the balloon titans of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade have become as ubiquitous as turkey. But while children of all ages may watch transfixed as beloved helium-filled cartoon characters float slowly above the New York City avenues, it’s safe to say hardly any in that delighted crowd knows how those magical creatures came into being. Until now. In Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade, Caldecott honoree Melissa Sweet (A River of Words, by Jen Bryant, 2008) reveals the incredible story of Anthony ...

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‘Bunheads’–Behind the Scenes with Sophie Flack

While Bunheads may be Sophie Flack’s literary debut, this page-ripping romp backstage at the ballet marks the first step in the 28-year-old’s second career. Three years ago, at the tender age of 25, Flack retired from dancing with the prestigious New York City Ballet as a member of its corps de ballet, a position she’d held for nine years.

Drawing largely from Flack’s experiences with NYCB, the novel follows 19-year-old Hannah Ward’s struggles and quiet triumphs as she trains and dances in the ultra-competitive corps, all the while wrestling with forces outside the theater calling ...

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Of Mice and Writers

Sharp and spirited as the master storyteller who inspired them, the first collaboration between seasoned children’s authors Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright takes young readers back to 1859 London for a delightful new twist on the age-old conflict among cats, mice and men.

Here, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, the venerated Fleet Street public house renowned for counting literati like Dickens among its patrons, houses this microcosm of the Victorian world where Skilley, a vegetarian alley cat and the eponymous Cheshire Cheese Cat, teams up with Pip, a literate mouse, to outwit nefarious forces threatening the balance of power ...

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