Posts tagged with kids-books
It appears to be working, too.
According to NPR, LeVar Burton, host of the beloved but defunct PBS show Reading Rainbow, is trying to crowdfund a web-based version of the series. The campaign is going swimmingly...
The Paladin Prophecy and The Paladin Prophecy: Alliance, by Mark Frost
The first two books in Mark Frost's Paladin Prophecy series go for the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to storytelling, mashing together fantasy (angels and demons!), science fiction (evil geneticists!), and action/suspense (martial arts smackdowns!) into a frenetic but entertaining literary roller-coaster ride...
The Dirt Diary, by Anna Staniszewski
The Dirt Diary, the first book in Anna Staniszewski's latest series for middle readers, centers around eighth-grader Rachel Lee, a shy, awkward girl with a passion for baking. When her parents split up, Rachel steals nearly $300 from her college fund and buys a plane ticket to Florida, hoping to fly down and talk some sense into her loving but flighty father. Rachel needs to replace the money before her mother finds out...
An Interview with Anna Staniszewski
We recently had the opportunity to interview Anna Staniszewski, author of the new middle-grade novel The Dirt Diary, and ask her some burning questions about inspiring creativity in children, her future writing plans, and brownie recipes. We've posted her responses below (along with a brief author bio) and will be featuring our review of The Dirt Diary later today...
I suspect this is a bad idea.
Slashfilm recently posted the first official image and plot summary for Disney's upcoming film adaptation of Judith Viorst's classic kids' book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. According to the article...
The Infinity Ring #1, 2, & 3: A Mutiny in Time, Divide and Conquer, and The Trap Door, by assorted authors
In an effort to duplicate the monster success of their 39 Clues series, Scholastic Books has launched The Infinity Ring, another multi-platform series blending reading and an online experience. The Infinity Ring series was outlined by The Maze Runner author James Dashner, and will be seven books long. The first three installments—Dashner's A Mutiny in Time, Carrie Ryan's Divide and Conquer, and Lisa McMann's The Trap Door...
For all those kindergartners with smartphones...
The creators of the Reading Rainbow television series have partnered with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Holiday House, and Charlesbridge Publishing to create a Reading Rainbow app, due out this spring. Details are still sketchy, but the app will feature an array of titles curated by Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton.
Because of Winn-Dixie goes musical
According to Playbill, songwriter Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening) and Legally Blonde lyricist Nell Benjamin are adapting Kate DiCamillo's children's novel Because of Winn-Dixie into a Broadway-aim...
The Magic Tree House gets animated
The full-length trailer is out for the upcoming Japanese anime adaptation of Mary Pope Osborne's mega-popular Magic Tree House books. The film will open in Japan on January 7, 2012, and I suspect...
Bagels, pizza, and sewer steam
Do kids really need a scratch-and-sniff illustrated guide to New York's aromas, both good and bad? My first thought was "Ew!", but then I remember my elementary school peers' passion for those Ga...
Patience (but not much of it) required
I love this idea: Abe's Peanut is a literary and art publication aimed at seven to eleven-year-olds. The publishers print original children's stories on artist-designed postcards. The cards are m...
Gone but not forgotten
Rather oddly, there will be two big-name book releases for children coming out next month written by long-dead authors:
Shel Silverstein's Every Thing On It will be released on September 20th. T...
Comics on the horizon
Yesterday, Publishers Weekly posted a helpful round-up of the kids' comics announcements released at this year's Comic-Con, including info on upcoming titles from Smile's Raina Telgemeier, the Amu...
I've been burned by these things before, you see.
Trailer's out for Martin Scorsese's Hugo, based on Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Behold:Eh. It's pretty, but I have my doubts.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid #2 brings the pain
At first I was surprised to hear that they'd made a sequel to last year's excruciating Diary of a Wimpy Kid adaptation, but then I read some reviews that tossed around phrases like "has 'straight ...
39 Clues on a budget
If you've never read the best-selling 39 Clues series, I noticed a "buy one, get the next for half price" deal at my local Barnes and Noble. I don't know if the deals will get better or worse as ...
The stomach churns
And in far, far more horrifying movie news, when I was looking up Hunger Games director Gary Ross, I found out that his next film (after HG) is apparently going to be a movie adaptation of one of ...
How Rocket Learned to Read, written and illustrated by Tad Hills
How Rocket Learned to Read, the latest picture book from bestselling author and illustrator Tad Hills, is an engaging, attractively illustrated story about a small dog who transform...
Zen Ghosts, by Jon J. Muth
Unlike the book we featured yesterday, Jon J. Muth's Zen Ghosts is an example of kid-friendly surrealism done absolutely right. It's short on words, but overflows with thought-prov...
The Memory Bank, by Carolyn Coman and Rob Shepperson
The Memory Bank (text by Carolyn Coman, illustrations by Rob Shepperson) is the story of two sisters. When Hope's evil parents banish her baby sister Honey for breaking the family'...
Zora Neale Hurston goes Nancy Drew
The Times has posted an article about Zora and Me, a new kids' novel featuring a fictionalized version of Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston as a girl detective. Written by Victoria Bon...
Get thee to a bookstore
How did this slip by me? I know last month felt like it was all Mockingjay, all the time in the kids' lit world, but seriously: how did I miss this?Author Norton Juster and illustrator Jules Feif...
Build your own book review
I had never heard of Common Sense Media before yesterday, but their purpose statement sounded innocuous enough: they're a nonprofit organization dedicated to "improving the lives of kids and famil...
Kids + books = recipe for success?
Laura Miller wrote an essay for Salon about two recent studies that link the mere presence of books in a child's home with the number of years of education the child will complete. The first stud...
Lord Sunday, by Garth Nix
Lord Sunday is the final book in Garth Nix's ambitious fantasy/adventure series The Keys to the Kingdom. Over the course of the six previous novels Nix's protagonist—an asthmatic 12-year-old na...
Teachers/parents/etc. take note...
I'm not sure if this contest will be of personal interest to our normal demographic, but it sounded too good to ignore: Random House Books and the Kids Crooked House Company have put together an ...
Hot-button topic
The most recent Horn Book newsletter has a great interview up with Joanna Cole, one of the co-creators (with illustrator Bruce Degen) of the Magic School Bus series. Cole and Degen's most recent ...
Raiders' Ransom, by Emily Diamand
Raiders' Ransom, the debut novel from writer Emily Diamand, was the winner of the inaugural London Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition, and it's easy to see why: Diamand's blend of ...
It's a journal!
Diary of a Wimpy Kid trailer's up, and it looks... painful. But in a funnier-than-you'd-expect way: