News & Features

Blackall's Caldecott-winning "Hello Lighthouse" inspired art by young resident of Maine, where connections to lighthouses run deep.

Assigned summer reading lists can seriously hinder kids’ long-term interest in reading. Donalyn Miller makes the case for giving children agency to choose what they read.

Author Suzanne Collins will bring readers back to Panem, 64 years before The Hunger Games began.

When the Ground Is Hard is the tale of an unlikely friendship that blossoms between the societal slabs of systemic racism, colorism, and classism in an Apartheid-era Christian boarding school in Swaziland. Award-winning crime fiction writer Malla Nunn talked with SLJ about the personal experiences that shaped this tightly woven, thoughtful, and timely YA adventure story.

“Every LGBTQ kids’ book that manages to make its way onto a bookstore or library shelf is a life raft,” says Melanie Gillman, creator of the graphic novel As the Crow Flies. Columnist Brigid Alverson considers LGBTQIA+ themes in the graphic format, with recommended titles for young readers.

Colby Sharp, one of the creators of the first Nerd Camp, offers his advice for hosting your own version of the popular education camps with a literacy twist.

Award-winning writer, hip-hop professor, and author of The Roots of Rap, Carole Boston Weatherford talks to Tiffany D. Jackson about Jackson’s new book Let Me Hear a Rhyme, a love letter to 1990s Brooklyn and the hip-hop generation.

A tribute to M.T. Anderson, who received the 2019 Margaret A. Edwards Award, which honors a “significant and lasting” contribution to young adult literature.

Deborah Heiligman, Julie Murphy, Morgan Parker, Tim Tingle, Eric Velasquez, and David Yoon wowed, moved, and charmed 200 librarians at the Eighth Annual Children's Librarians' Author & Illustrator Dinner.