Posts tagged with children-s-books
Once and future Studio Ghibli
The trailer is out for Mary and the Witch's Flower, which I'm interested in for two reasons. First, it's based on a novel by Mary Stewart, author of my beloved Nine Coaches Waiting (which is...
A hundred and thirty-odd years later...
I got an e-mail last week about The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, a "never-before-published, unfinished children’s story by Mark Twain, completed and brought to life by Caldecott Medal winners Philip and Erin Stead", which will be released next September from Random House. The cover art...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Secret Keepers, by Trenton Lee Stewart
This week's Book Giveaway is The Secret Keepers, the latest book by The Mysterious Benedict Society author Trenton Lee Stewart. A full review will follow shortly, but first I must inform you that this cover art is even cooler in person...
Expanded (but not enough)
The more I think about Common Sense Media's list of 50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12, the more I quibble with it. They chose a lot of great books, sure, but others range from flawed (Ender's Game) to age-inappropriate (The Fellowship of the Ring) to straight-up unworthy (The Bad Beginning: A Series of Unfortunate Events)...
Moderately impressed
*Common Sense Media put together a list of 50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12, and while I don't agree with all of their choices (or missing choices—um, where's Harriet the Spy? Or anything by Diana Wynne Jones? Lloyd Alexander? Jeff Smith's Bone series?), they...
It would also make an excellent gift... for me.
I recently ran across artist Kristjana S. Williams's The Wonder Garden: Wander through 5 habitats to discover 80 amazing animals. Much like this, this, and...
Unnecessary, but to be expected
According to Deadline, Disney is planning a live-action movie adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffman's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The film will be directed by Lasse Hallstrom, and called The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. This feels like a missed opportunity to me: see, I grew up with...
Iffy math
Booklist recently posted an article about the massive increase in the length of middle-grade literature over the past 40 years, attributing the 173% increase to the popularity of the Harry Potter series. Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to consider changes in font or style, which I would assume accounts for...
Same issue, different book
Literally only a few months after the flap over the depiction of slavery in the children's book A Fine Dessert, there is another, virtually identical controversy...
Cheese plays more of a supporting role
Okay, I'm not 100% sold on the idea that Heidi is primarily about cheese, but I totally believe that great children's literature is nearly always improved by a memorable food description, from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe's tea party with Mr. Tumnus to...
Newer & improved
Mental Floss recently posted some comparison images of the changes Richard Scarry’s 1963 picture book Best Word Book Ever underwent between its initial publication and...
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, by Stephan Pastis
While people usually compare Stephan Pastis's Timmy Failure series to Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, they're missing an even closer relation: the Timmy Failure books are basically a novel-length version of Marjorie Sharmat's Nate the Great series, albeit with racier humor and a stupider protagonist...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, by Stephan Pastis
This week's Book Giveaway is Stephan Pastis's Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. I chose it both because I'm fond of Pastis's Pearls Before Swine comic strip, and because I'm hoping it will be a less excruciating but thematically-similar version of Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. A full review will follow later today...
Next up: hovercars
In another recent NPR post, there's a discussion of an early childhood test that claims to be a clear indicator of a person's eventual reading ability...
Hotly anticipated
Aaaaand today marks the release of The Princess and the Pony, Kate Beaton's first book for children. I'm super excited about this one, even if A) I am several decades past the target audience age, and B) the book trailer is...
Bad Magic, by Pseudonymous Bosch
As I read Pseudonymous Bosch's Bad Magic, I had a bizarre feeling I was reading a junior-division version of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. Bad Magic is a lot less creepifying (thankfully), but it covers similar ground—a mysterious, isolated place, a half-explained plot, and a weird blend of fantasy and reality...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Bad Magic, by Pseudonymous Bosch
This week's Book Giveaway is Pseudonymous Bosch's middle-grade novel Bad Magic, which seems to be a spin-off of his The Name of This Book is Secret series. I haven't read Bosch's earlier novels, but many a sixth-grader has enthusiastically recommended them to me, and I approve of the fact that, as pen names go, "Pseudonymous Bosch" is much cooler than "Lemony Snicket" or "Pittacus Lore"...
SO. EXCITED.
Hark! A Vagrant author Kate Beaton recently announced that she has written her first book for children, and clearly she knows her audience: the book will be called The Princess and the Pony. I have no idea if said pony is THIS pony, but...
Editing a sacred cow
There's an interesting article in The New York Times about a decision by the Swedish national broadcaster to edit out two scenes in a newly-restored DVD version of the 1969 TV series Pippi Longstocking...
Eh. Whatever.
Adam Mansbach, author of the bestselling children's book Go the Fuck to Sleep, has written a "sequel": You Have to Fucking Eat. I feel $14.95 is about ten bucks more than I would be willing to pay for a joke picture book, but...
Anastasia Krupnick, with a little remodeling
According to The Cut, Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik books are going to be re-released next January, with slightly updated content (the publisher is taking out some no-longer-socially-acceptable language and content) and, thankfully, infinitely better cover art...
The Lowly Worm returns
NPR informs me that there's a new Richard Scarry book coming out this month (despite Scarry's death in 1994). Scarry's son, Richard "Huck" Scarry Jr., claims to have found the partially-finished manuscript for Richard Scarry's Best Lowly Worm Book Ever! in his father's Swiss chalet, and decided to complete it himself...
Scholastic strikes again
Scholastic is working on another "multi-platform action adventure property", according to Publishers Weekly. Like The 39 Clues, Spirit Animals and...
RIP, Walter Dean Myers
Critically acclaimed YA author Walter Dean Myers died this week at the age of 76. Myers (whose motto was apparently "Reading is not optional") served as the 2012/2013 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, and campaigned tirelessly against the extreme racial imbalance featured in children' literature...
Goodnight, some more
Today Sterling Children’s Books is releasing Goodnight Songs, a compilation of "lullaby poems" by Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny author Margaret Wise Brown. According to Publishers Weekly, the book features the work of twelve different illustrators and is packaged with a...
These Broken Stars on TV
Publishers Weekly informs me that Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's novel These Broken Stars is going to become a TV show. The book—which I've been seeing in the kids' sections of local bookstores—was published last month and is the first installment in the "Starbound" science-fiction trilogy...
A little gift for me
I recently saw this title in the children's section of a local bookstore: Ballad, by French comic artist and illustrator Blexbolex. The book is both absolutely gorgeous (the quality of this image doesn't do it justice, trust me—the actual colors are much darker and richer) and weird as hell...
Quirky
I don't have a toddler, and I certainly don't have $300 to blow on a novelty lamp, but I'm still coveting this Miffy Lamp XL, inspired by the Miffy series of picture books drawn and written by Dutch artist Dick Bruna. I've never read the Miffy books, which were introduced in the 1950s, but they're apparently famous enough to...
School of Fear, by Gitty Daneshvari
Like Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Gitty Daneshvari's novel School of Fear is a story about extraordinarily odd children visiting an even odder place. School of Fear can't compare to Dahl's classic, but it boasts plenty of goofy charm, a uniformly appealing cast of characters, and tons of snappy one-liners...
Diversity in children's literature
NPR's Elizabeth Blair recently posted an article about the lack of diversity in children's books. According to a report by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, only 3% of children's books are “by or about Latinos—even though nearly a quarter of all public school children today are Latino.” Blair...