Roger Sutton

  Kate DiCamillo is a great choice for National Ambassador for Children’s Literature. Personable, thoughtful, respected by critics and loved by young readers.           Her The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane won the 2006 Boston-Globe Horn Book Award; I’ve always thought the only thing that stood between it and Newbery recognition […]

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Test-driving my new iPad mini (thank you Santa-Richard) while vacationing in Provincetowm–reading (Daniel Silva), eating (Chex mix) and shopping (thrilled to find a used CD of Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk about Love, which I’ll be inflicting on my reviewing class at Simmons in a few weeks). Also scrambling to get my reviews written–if I can’t […]

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The Horn Book’s annual busman’s holiday took us to the movies to see Saving Mr. Banks. We laughed, we cried; it’s not a very good movie but the star power and chemistry of Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks kept me involved. I hear from more knowledgeable sources that the film is at some distance from […]

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They were adorable. But between the pageant, caroling the night before, decorating the tree yesterday, and making enough Chex mix to last through Valentine’s Day, I feel like my holiday responsibilities are over. If Santa* would just write my book reviews I would be all set.   *He can be any color. I don’t care. […]

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Tomorrow I’ll be participating in my first  (and thus best, I suppose) Christmas pageant ever, with what seems to be a pretty Jesusy group of Unitarians. (They have a cross behind what passes for the altar, but a Mogen David hangs in the front.) My childhood Catholic church had a manger scene on the lawn in […]

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Here is Fanfare, the Horn Book’s list of the best books for young people published in 2013. The complete annotated list will be sent to Notes from the Horn Book subscribers next week; sign up now (it’s free) to get it hot off the server. The annotated list, beautifully designed by Lolly Robinson and suitable […]

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and may you all have lots of leisure time for reading this long weekend (if you get a long weekend). I’m happily juggling three time travel novels: Andrew Sean Greer’s The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells; Stephen King’s 11/22/63 (which I was at first listening to–it has a great reader–but it’s just […]

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The following books will receive starred reviews in the January-February 2014 issue of the Horn Book Magazine. Some of these books will also be included on our Fanfare best-of-the-year list, which will be published next month.   Santiago Stays; written and illustrated by Angela Dominguez (Abrams Appleseed/Abrams) Hello, Mr. Hulot; written and illustrated by David Merveille (NorthSouth) Big […]

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Former publisher of children’s books at HarperCollins and immortal author of picture books Charlotte Zolotow has died at the age of 98. As an editor and publisher she was quite a force, bringing us such revelations as The Pigman and Weetzie Bat; as an author, she is without peer in her particular realm: the quiet […]

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