School Desegregation in Children’s Literature

by The Bookologist In this mon­th’s “From the Edi­tor,” Mar­sha Qua­ley share’s schol­ar Rudine Sims Bish­op’s obser­va­tion that while there are many non­fic­tion books for chil­dren and YAs about the civ­il rights events of the 1950s, not too many authors have tack­led the top­ics in fic­tion. One excep­tion might be school desegregation/integration,which is the focus of this mon­th’s time­line.… more
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Turtles in Children’s Literature

Our Book­stormbook, The Shad­ow Hero, is the ori­gin sto­ry of a super­hero, The Green Tur­tle. While this char­ac­ter is not an actu­al che­lon­ian — though that would be an awe­some super hero — there are many tur­tles and tor­tois­es in chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Some might even be, tech­ni­cal­ly, ter­rap­ins. Here are some notables. more
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The World in Birdy’s Time, 1290 AD

The year of Birdy’s sto­ry in Cather­ine, Called Birdy is more than 700 years ago. It might be hard for us to imag­ine what it was like to live then, before tech­nol­o­gy and planes and even the print­ing press! Read­ing the book gives us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to put our­selves into that world and time. Here’s what was going on through­out Birdy’s world to help us place the book with­in its ref­er­ence points.… more
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Horse Stories in Children’s Literature

Leroy Ninker Sad­dles Up rides on the with­ers of a great many pre­vi­ous books. A time­line is only an at-a-glance his­tor­i­cal sur­vey, of course; still, we cre­at­ed this one to high­light some of the sem­i­nal books in a long his­to­ry of horse stories.  more
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