Jonker, Travis
2,132 Articles
Last 30 days
Last 6 months
Last 12 months
Last 24 months
Specific Dates
From:
To:
Notes on May 2017
In May . . . . . . Hugo Cabret stole my smartphone. He tried FaceApp and the results were something to see. . . . a children’s book predicted the future. The Good For Nothing Button basically foretold the fidget craze. . . . I talked to Shel Silverstein. It was a pretty one-sided […]
Dan Santat Should Be in Charge of Starbucks (Among Other Things)
On the occasion of his latest book, Rodzilla (written by Rob Sanders) coming out earlier this month, Dan Santat kindly took a few of my questions about unicorn fraps, cardboard humans, the Caldecott Medal, and bad picture book ideas. As rare as… a unicorn. The color-changing, flavor-changing #UnicornFrappuccino—here for a limited time at participating stores.?? […]
Top 10 Circulated Chapter Books of 2017
Last week we reviewed the 10 most popular picture books in our school library this year. But that was last week! Which chapter books are tops? T8. The BFG by Roald Dahl I’m going to go ahead and call this the Feature Film Effect. The movie released last summer generated interest, and I could feel […]
Throwback Thursday: Playing Fact or Fiction with Jennifer and Matthew Holm
Travis: We had it all laid out. The first Season 1 of The Yarn was supposed to be eight episodes. I made four. Colby made four. We were all set. But as we were listening to the tape of Jennifer and Matthew Holm interviewing each other (for episode eight) an additional episode emerged – one […]
Books on Film: Getting to Know Maurice Sendak
So what was passionately close to my heart was a kid. And a kid doing something. And whatever that something was was what the book was going to be about. That’s Maurice Sendak (who as we now know is unquestionably better than Dr. Seuss) talking about the heart of what was to become his masterpiece: Where […]
Top 10 Circulated Picture Books of 2017
The school year is ending soon – a good time to take a look at the most popular books in our K-4 school library. Today – picture books. I did something with this list – I excluded all series books (there is one sequel on here, though). Why? Because if I didn’t, the thing would be […]
Exclusive Cover Reveal: THE WORD COLLECTOR by Peter H. Reynolds
Peter H. Reynolds always manages to walk a delicate line with his books – make that a couple lines: weighty but not weighed down. Universal yet kid-centric. No easy feat. I was happy to share the cover for Peter’s upcoming book, The Word Collector, but first – I wanted to talk to him about it. […]
100 Scope Notes Original: The Plant Who Wanted to Play the Guitar
Trying something new here – an original story. Well, not exactly original. It’s inspired by the above short film Leaf From Orange Tree Learns Guitar by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, which I first learned about while reading this. If you would like a PDF of this story, you can download it here.
‘Do You Want to Hear My Joke?’ Betsy Bird’s FUNNY GIRL
Travis: Betsy Bird is funny. It only makes sense that she would want to help bring funny into the lives of young readers. Last spring I sat down with Bird at the Evanston, IL public library to talk about her all-female humor anthology Funny Girl. In this episode Betsy shares how it all went down: from […]
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LOG IN
We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LOG IN
Thank you for visiting.
We’ve noticed you are using a private browser. To continue, please log in or create an account.
