We adults have the habit---good or bad, depending on the child---of making many aspects of the lives of children diminutive. That includes their names; we tend to shorten their names or assign children new nicknames altogether. This can be frustrating for some children, if it’s a nickname they never asked for. Such is the case with young Paulina in the spirited French picture book import coming to shelves next month, Rémi Courgeon’s Feather, originally published in 2012 and translated into ...
Thinking outside of the box gets a lot of lip service but isn’t always rewarded – especially in the lives of children. Gloriously, there are four brand-new picture books on shelves that celebrate creative thinkers and problem-solvers of many stripes. (To boot, all four have received starred reviews here at Kirkus, and hey, I didn’t even plan that.)
Let’s kick it off with Liz Garton Scanlon’s wild and wonderful Another Way to Climb a Tree, with Hadley Hooper’s luminous artwork ...
Young children are naturally curious about the lives of other children who live in far-off countries. Matt Lamothe’s This Is How We Do It: One Day in the Lives of Seven Kids from Around the World is a book that addresses just that. But it’s also a book reminding child readers that, while the everyday lives of people across the globe may have a whole host of differences, there are many similarities as well, many things that unite us.
In ...
I’ve seen quite a handful of new picture books lately starring dogs, such as Maria Gianferrari’s Hello Goodbye Dog, a spirited tribute to therapy dogs and classroom-reader dogs, illustrated by Patrice Barton, as well as Found Dogs, a sunny counting book for very young children from Erica Sirotich where shelter dogs are united with new family members. Those are but two examples of recent titles. There is nothing remarkable about seeing a lot of dog books; puppies are a mainstay ...
Barbara DaCosta and Ed Young aren’t new to collaboration. In 2012, she wrote and he illustrated Nighttime Ninja, her debut picture book. Mighty Moby, on shelves in early August, is their second collaboration, and it came to exist in a way not typical for most picture books, what the author calls “an unusual method” and “backward.”
Evidently, Ed Young created the story, based on Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick, in illustrations. Following that, Barbara wrote words for the images ...
Seymour Simon photographed by Charles Harbutt.
In 2003, the New York Times referred to children’s book author Seymour Simon as the “dean” of science books for child readers. Simon, who was a classroom teacher for nearly 25 years, has been making books (more than 300 now) for nearly 50 years, and nothing much is stopping him.
This August sees the publication of Rocks & Minerals, another addition to Seymour’s Harper series of photo-essay nonfiction titles. Quoting poet William Blake in the Author’s Note of his new ...
Bao Phi photographed by Anna Min.
Minneapolis-based writer and poet Bao Phi, who has made his way in the world of poetry (he has a poem in 2006 Best American Poetry and is a National Poetry Slam finalist), sees his debut early next month in the world of children’s literature. A Different Pond, illustrated by Thi Bui, is an autobiographical picture book, a tender story striking in its honesty and its utter lack of sentimentality. It began life as a poem, which Bao tells me about ...
Is the news getting you down? Are you experiencing a bit of a summer slump? (Here in the South anyway we are halfway done with summer break.) Or just ennui in general? I’ll be the first to raise my hand and answer my own questions: yes to all of the above!
When this happens, I like to think about the good things going on around me. (We pessimists have to work hard at this.) I’ll share my book-related list here ...
