The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
Thanks to all who have emailed, called, texted or tweeted their concern for our safety and well-being. We are all fine. The attack coincided with an all-staff conference call with our New York colleagues, so I didn’t find out about it until later in the day when information was available but fragmentary and spookily fact-free, [...]
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Llama Llama… author-illustrator and rock star to preschoolers Anna Dewdney will be our special guest at the Fostering Lifelong Learners conference on April 25th, joining in the conversation about making and sharing great books for preschoolers. Here are five questions for her. 1.What did your own children teach you about creating books for preschoolers? My [...]
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When I first started reading on my Kindle with some regularity, I would assiduously report typos and formatting issues via the “report content error” option you can get via highlighting a word (other options include looking up the word in a dictionary, which is handy indeed). When you tattletale on a misspelled word, you get [...]
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Cambridge Public Library youth services manager (and Horn Book reviewer) Julie Roach will be discussing library services for preschool children at our Fostering Lifelong Learners event (free; you should come) at CPL on April 25th. I asked her to share some of her thoughts on serving this (very) particular audience. (I think her answer to [...]
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In international news, French President François Hollande announced today that in gratitude for our loan of Elizabeth Law to La Ville-Lumière, he is sending some of his country’s most esteemed illustrateurs to New York City for a series of public pourparlers avec some of our own. Here’s the full lineup and schedule.
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The winner of our first, and most likely last, Judging the BoB Judges (if this features DOES come back we need a snappier name) contest is Martine Leavitt. For her enthusiasm, her no-dithering policy, and her frankness about her own reading tastes: “[Endangered] has a happy ending, too. Was it too happy? Not for me. [...]
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Our third round is a three way, comprising BoB’s two-semifinal rounds (Lynne Rae Perkins judging Bomb and The Fault in Our Stars; James Patterson doing the same for No Crystal Stair and Splendors and Glooms) and the Big Kahuna round (Frank Cottrell Boyce judging The Fault in Our Stars, No Crystal Stair and the resurrected [...]
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At our upcoming Fostering Lifelong Learners: Prescribing Books for Early Childhood Education conference, Horn Book Guide Executive Editor Kitty Flynn will be leading a presentation about how the Horn Book evaluates and reviews preschool books. This is one aspect of her work that also engages her off the clock: Kitty and her husband are parents [...]
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Did anyone see the recent episode of Project Runway where they designed tearaway clothes for strippers? BOTH teams lost. I wish we could do the same here. Pitting Starry River of the Sky against Splendors and Glooms, Thanhha Lai incomprehensibly evokes a video game junkie “from, say, Dallas” to say that both books work as “entertainment.” [...]
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We’re onto the second round of the BoB, with Donna Jo Napoli choosing between Code Name Verity and Bomb, and Martine Leavitt adjudicating Endangered v. The Fault in Our Stars. Napoli has already been called out for including spoilers to Code Name Verity (while, hilariously, saying “I won’t spoil it for you”) but I don’t [...]
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The following books will receive starred reviews in the forthcoming May/June issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Crankee Doodle; by Tom Angleberger; illus. by Cece Bell (Clarion). Picture a Tree; written and illustrated by Barbara Reid (Whitman). That is NOT a Good Idea!; written and illustrated by by Mo Willems (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins). Bo at Ballard Creek; by Kirkpatrick [...]
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I like the way Marie Lu (Seraphina v. Moonbird) and Catherine Gilbert Murdock (No Crystal Stair v. The One and Only Ivan) each find much in common between their contenders. (Especially Lu’s observation about the relationship between birds and dragons.) But where you might think that qualities in common might facilitate comparison, neither of these [...]
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It was exciting to realize that emergent literacy was a field that was not spoken of at all in the pediatric literature. Imagine that! A whole area of crucial child development which doctors seemed utterly unaware of. It was an opportunity that could not be passed up.
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Let us first note that both Adam Gidwitz (Jepp, Who Defied the Stars v. Starry River of the Sky) and Franny Billingsley (Liar & Spy v. Splendors and Glooms) break the mold by discussing their winning books first. Billingsley more so than Gidwitz, who devotes some 1200 words to the agony of choice and the [...]
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Very different approaches here from Kathi Appelt (Three Times Lucky v. Endangered) and Deb Caletti (Temple Grandin v. The Fault in Our Stars). Appelt’s voice is very . . . considered, placing her contenders in literary context and braiding her observations on one book with her thoughts about the other and bringing them into contention [...]
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In our first bracket of BoB judges, Kenneth Oppel selects Bomb over Wonder, and Margarita Engle chooses Code Name Verity over Titanic. The fact that I agree with both of these decisions counts for nothing in my little meta-battle; what we are evaluating here is the ability of each judge to come to a clear [...]
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Margarita Engle has completed her bit for the BoB, which means the showdown between her and Kenneth Oppel will commence here soon. But make sure you read their decisions first as God forbid I be accused of spoilering on top of everything else. One question though: has anyone ever analyzed the order in which the [...]
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