Traveling to the Inventive Land of 'Hokey Pokey'

“In a sense, Hokey Pokey began with my longtime desire to write a science fiction book,” says Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli. The author, who has an abiding interest in astronomy and nuclear physics, says he’d been making notes on an idea for weeks, trying to “scratch this science fiction itch,” but kept getting bogged down. Then one day, he says, “I found myself just veering to the left and writing pretty much the words that you see now on the first page.”

Though this “practically unconscious muse-donated first page” surprised him, looking back, Spinelli suspects he was already at ...

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Maurice Sendak Reissued

In 1959, HarperCollins released Janice May Udry’s The Moon Jumpers, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. It’s the story of four children (and a black cat) who head outside on a warm summer night, away from the parents, and bask in the magic of a full moon.

I’m a fan of Maurice Sendak’s works, and I’ve always liked this odd tale of lunar revelry and worship. The children dance, barefooted, in the grass and reach up to the sky, even jumping to try to reach the moon. A bit of unsullied child bacchanalia. It’s weird. It ...

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Going Beyond Black History Month

In a column this week, Kirkus’ Children’s & Teen Editor Vicky Smith writes about promising new titles for both children and teens, as publishers anticipate Black History Month, celebrated every February.

Also seeking out new titles for the month-long celebration will be teachers and librarians. I nodded when Vicky wrote, “here’s hoping that the industry does not forget or neglect books by and about African-Americans for the next 11 months.” Hear, hear! I hope educators remember this as well.

You definitely want to head over there for Vicky’s recommended titles. Included there is a mention of Kadir Nelson ...

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Melissa Sweet: Every Book, a New World

It’s been a good time lately to be a fan of illustrator Melissa Sweet.

Last year, Melissa illustrated Susan Hood’s Spike, the Mixed-Up Monster, the story of a hopelessly adorable axolotl salamander, which was recently named a Highly Commended honor book for the 2013 Charlotte Zolotow Award. She also illustrated Alicia Potter’s Mrs. Harkness and the Panda, the fascinating picture book biography of socialite explorer Ruth Harkness, who brought back the first live panda to the United States. It’s a picture book I didn’t cover here at Kirkus or my own blog but that I ...

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The Empty Shelves of 2013

Is there anything quite so lovely as an empty bookcase? Mine are rarely this beautiful. My office is in a constant state of packing and unpacking, with boxes and packages arriving by the dozen every day. I have a fairly complicated and not-quite-capacious-enough system of storage for the floods of books that ebb and flow (mostly flow) over the course of the year. This particular bookcase is reserved for titles starred in Kirkus. I save them all year long and then sift through them as I compile my lists of the best.

Having finally finished 2012’s lists, I have ...

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'Cheer Up, Mouse!' Hits All the Right Notes

Back in 2012, I was lucky enough to see an early copy of Jed Henry’s Cheer Up, Mouse!. I’ve been smitten with it ever since.

I’ve had to wait all this time to yawp about it, but my patience has paid off—it was finally released this week from Houghton Mifflin.

I highly recommend finding a copy. This is a great book: It tells a simple and appealing tale, and it’s filled with bright, warm art. No tricks up its sleeves. No attempts to break any new ground or get all postmodern in our faces. Just ...

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In Memoriam: Gerald McDermott

“Fumpseeitattwee!” my then–2-year-old daughter said to me imploringly.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Fumpseeitattwee!”

She clearly wanted something badly, but I was darned if I knew what it was. She pestered me with the same request over the course of an afternoon and evening. Finally, in a stroke of delayed parental genius, I had it: “Thump! She hit that tree.” It was a line from the one of her favorite books, Zomo the Rabbit, by Gerald McDermott.

We’d read that book so many times that I could (and probably did) recite it in my sleep, and ...

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'My Father's Arms Are a Boat': Unafraid to Be Contemplative, and Sad

Occasionally, I’ll run into someone who will say they avoid sad works of art. “I just altogether skip movies with sad endings” is but one example.

I definitely have days when I choose Mount Carmel over Laura Marling and Raising Arizona over Cast Away. But to avoid any heartbreak whatsoever is something I don’t comprehend. Sometimes the beauty in a more somber work of art can actually make me feel better about the world. The notion that someone thoughtful captured it, assuming they did so with grace and subtlety, can sometimes bring insight as to what it means ...

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The High-Octane, Visual Poetry of Bob Staake

If you follow author/illustrator, designer, and editorial illustrator Bob Staake, whom the Washington Post once described as “one of the most dynamic, original, colorful and humorous cartoonists working today,” then you know he’s a very busy guy. He’s written and/or illustrated over 50 children’s books to-date in his career, and he seems to never slow down.

For this reason, I was unsure if he’d have time to have a brief chat with me here today, but once I saw an early copy of his upcoming picture book, Bluebird (to be released by Schwartz & Wade ...

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Peeking into ‘The Water Castle’

“This one is special,” concludes the Kirkus review of The Water Castle, by Megan Frazer Blakemore. Indeed it is. This middle-grade mystery/fantasy twines together such disparate threads as the Peary-Henson Polar expedition, turn-of-the-20th-century medical quackery, the fragile demarcation between legend and history, and a sixth-grader’s equally fragile sense of self.

Their father’s catastrophic stroke takes Price, Brynn and Ephraim Appledore-Smith from their home in Cambridge to Crystal Springs, Maine, to take up residence in the titular Water Castle, the huge, almost architecturally impossible mansion built on the grounds of their mother’s family’s old “curative”-water ...

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“Do You Remember?”: A Victim Confronts His Bullies

For years, Eric Kahn Gale wanted to write about his own painful experience of being bullied as a child, but he could never envision a way to make the material engaging. One day, walking around Los Angeles listening to This American Life, he heard a two-minute episode on the cruelty of children. “This little kid was telling the interviewer about how his bully had a book that taught him how to be mean to people. It blew my mind!” It was clear to Gale that the adults on the show assumed the book was all in the child’s imagination ...

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Laying the Foundation, Setting up House

At the risk of sounding like comedian Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man character, circa the early ’90s (“In my day, we didn’t have safety standards for toys. We got rusty nails and big bags of broken glass!”), many young people today don’t have a firm grasp of where things come from, how they started or precisely why it is that they work. Whether it’s understanding a piece of fruit’s path from orchard to grocery store or how one’s cellphone works, they’re at a loss.

I’m a 40-year-old who often feels the same ...

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Ink Robin: Making Apps Organically

Ink Robin was born in 2011 when a group of three friends—Tim Penner, Joanna Rivard and Matt Rivard—decided it would be fun to make an app for the royal wedding (Will & Kate). Their debut created enough positive buzz, and the trio enjoyed the process so much, they decided to get a bit more serious about app making. A little more than a year later, there are two more books on Ink Robin’s virtual “bookshelf”—Leonard and Piccadilly’s Circus—both of which received Kirkus stars (see all of the children’s apps that made our Best Apps ...

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Two Best Bets for January

It’s not 2013 quite yet, but it’s never too early to see what the new year will bring us in the way of picture books. Here are but two titles.

First up is the debut picture book from Jesse Klausmeier, Open This Little Book, illustrated by the great Suzy Lee.

The most helpful thing I can tell you is this: Go find a copy and experience it. The book’s official summary, as it appears on the copyright page? “Die-cut pages open to reveal different animals, each opening a book of a different color and reading about the ...

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Children’s-Book Apps: A 2012 Update

Looking back over 2012 in book apps and interactive e-books as I’ve compiled my lists of the best has been, as always instructive. Not even three years after the launch of tablet technology in the consumer marketplace, what constitutes a great children’s-book app looks very different now from the way it did two years ago, when Kirkus first started reviewing them.

Within the realm of apps and e-books for children, the most momentous change is in where the best stories are coming from. Of our top 10 apps of 2010, seven were electronic adaptations of printed books. Our ...

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Rebecca Rule: 'There's No Messing Around'

Rebecca Rule comes from “a long line of New Hampshire Yankees” and has spent much of her life collecting and telling stories from her home state and the wider New England region. Best known for her live humorous presentations, she’s recently realized a longtime ambition to write for children with her book The Iciest, Diciest, Scariest Sled Ride Ever! illustrated by Jennifer Thermes. Here, Rule discusses their collaboration and the pleasure of writing her first children’s book.

As a storyteller, can you talk about the relationship between telling and writing your tales?

I'm very interested in Yankee ...

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A Fundamental Tool: Sheer Courage

I write weekly here about picture books. My role isn’t to wax philosophical about current events or even to give parenting advice. (Perhaps I shouldn’t say this aloud, but I’m largely winging it when it comes to parenting.)

But last Friday’s tragic news out of Connecticut still weighs heavy on my mind, as it does for many. As I wrote at my own site on Sunday, children die every day all over the world in all kinds of horrific and brutal and unfair circumstances, but this, as we all know, hits really close to home in ...

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Santa vs. One Beastly Boy

It’s that precious time of year, filled with gifts wrapped in sparkly bows, dreams of sugar plums, the merry dimples and rosy cheeks of Santa, angels securing their wings with each tinkle of a bell, lip-smacking latkes, and laughs like bowls full of jelly. There’s also more fruitcake than you can possibly stand, but pshaw! It’s still mostly all sweetness and goodwill and good ol’-fashioned gluttony.  And it’s all heartwarming. Yes?

No, thank you. Bradley Bartleby will have none of that. Well, except for the gluttony.

Bradley is the dastardly star of Jonathan Emmett’s ...

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Gifts for the Fairy Tale Lovers in Your Life

The holidays are upon us. They’ve descended like the South’s 13-year May cicadas. (If I’m going to compare the holidays to something, why not conjure up a warm time of year?)

This week I offer up gift-giving ideas of one, and only one, stripe. You get three guesses. Will I be recommending as gift ideas: a) custom luxury yachts, b) Swedish gumboots, or c) books?

In all actuality, I know nothing about yachts, and since I’d rather be barefoot, I’m not exactly an authority on any type of footwear. So, let’s talk books. Specifically ...

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Ashley Bryan's Desire to Help

Ashley Bryan believes that "the desire of a child, when they see someone in need, is to help." Perhaps it's his own desire to help others that keeps Ashley Bryan such a youthful and involved human being—or should we say "human doing"—at age 89. Who Built the Stable? A Nativity Poem began during Bryan's annual trip to work with children in Africa. The boy hero, a carpenter and shepherd, offers shelter in a stable he's built to a couple who seeks a place to stay after others have turned them away. 

How did the idea ...

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