#20-16 | #15-11 | #10-6 | #5-1 5. Oh, No! by Candace Fleming; illustrated by Eric Rohmann [Schwartz & Wade | Grades PreK-2] Click here for additional resources from Watch. Connect. Read. Can a librarian tell you about an outstanding picture book by answering eight important questions? Oh, yes! Q1: Does it star a brave frog, a mean tiger, a helpful [...]

#20-16 | #15-11 | #10-6 | #5-1 10. Step Gently Out by Helen Frost; photographs by Rick Leider [Candlewick Press | Grades PreK-2] Click here for additional resources from Watch. Connect. Read. It’s all deceptively simple. A spare, beautiful poem about noticing your surroundings, combined with remarkable images. While photography often strives for accuracy above all, Leider makes beauty his first [...]

  #20-16 | #15-11 | #10-6 | #5-1 15. Island: A Story of the Galápagos by Jason Chin [Roaring Brook Press | Grades K-4] Click here for additional resources from Watch. Connect. Read. In an explain-off, my money’s on Jason Chin. In each of his three releases to date, Chin takes the complex and makes it engaging for young readers. Island [...]

For the past few weeks, fellow elementary school librarian John Schumacher (he of Watch. Connect. Read.) and I have been busy preparing our annual Top 20 Books time capsule. You should see the size of the hole we had to dig. Looking back on 2012, these are the books we love. The books we love [...]

Brian Kenney writes about the current state of e-books and his hopes for the future in a recent piece for Publishers Weekly. But it isn’t what you might expect.
What do I want to come in 2013? What I want is simple: more chaos.
Click here to r…

Book trailers are pretty great, right? We’re all on the same page here? When well done, they’re an excellent way to drum up business for books. But there’s a problem. It seems nonfiction gets almost completely overlooked in the book trailer department. This needs to change. The realization came to me when prepping for the [...]

Time is running out to get gifts for the insufferable librarian in your life. With help from Etsy, the 2012 edition of the Librarian Lump of Coal Gift Guide has your back. Click here for the 2011 guide Click here for the 2010 guide Click here for the 2009 guide (Click the images below to [...]

It’s time to take a look back at the year that was in children’s lit miscellanea. Most Disgusting Moment in a Picture Book Puking off the crows nest in Pirate Princess by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen; illustrated by Jill McElmurry Throwing up on the captain of a pirate ship? That’s a walk-the-plank-able offense. *** Best Spine Logo [...]

Can you guess the classic children’s book by its scathing one-star review on GoodReads or Amazon? Yes children. You should definitely let strangers in your house when you are home alone. Don’t worry, even if they start trashing your house they’ll clean it up before mom comes home. And she won’t even know anything was [...]

Can you guess the classic children’s book by its scathing one-star review on GoodReads or Amazon? Yes children. You should definitely let strangers in your house when you are home alone. Don’t worry, even if they start trashing your house they’ll clean it up before mom comes home. And she won’t even know anything was [...]

The following is a work of fiction. In a shocking move, Encyclopædia Britannica, a name synonomous with knowledge the world over, is getting out of the information business. They will soon be rebranded “Christmas Tree Britannica” and sell sets of books to be used solely for holiday decoration. “The information biz is rough these days”, [...]

Leonard S. Marcus (a.k.a. our children’s lit historian) wrote an interesting piece for The Horn Book about picture book jackets, explaining how “covers have grown less representative of the books they trumpet.”
Say hello to Ye Olde E…

In November… …a missing friend returned. Dismay turned to jubilation when a masked stranger solved our missing READ poster problem. This also led to the discovery of the Star Wars Crawl Creator, which is one of my favorite internet finds of 2012. …we looked ahead. It appears that there’s some nice looking books coming out [...]

In November… …a missing friend returned. Dismay turned to jubilation when a masked stranger solved our missing READ poster problem. This also led to the discovery of the Star Wars Crawl Creator, which is one of my favorite internet finds of 2012. …we looked ahead. It appears that there’s some nice looking books coming out [...]

Is this thing working? Well, here we are. Thanks for coming. After five years at WordPress.com and a self-hosted site, this blog is now here at School Library Journal. I was able to bring my old header with me, so It’s feeling like home already. I never wrote a proper opening post when I started [...]