Recent Articles

From an ear­ly age, chil­dren are cap­ti­vat­ed by “things that go,” from climb­ing on trucks in a Big Rig library event to rac­ing bicy­cles along a park path. This arti­cle offers a line-up of Calde­cott Award books that fea­ture var­i­ous modes of land transportation.

In this arti­cle and the next three arti­cles to come, we will explore paths to peace and peace­build­ing in class­rooms and schools through the lens of High­er Ground and the pow­er of sto­ry and art.

In 2010, Car­ol Spiegel pub­lished Book by Book: An Anno­tat­ed Guide to Young Peo­ple’s Lit­er­a­ture With Peace­mak­ing and Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion Themes, chock full of books that edu­ca­tors could use in their class­rooms, libraries, and at home. As hap­pens with book lists, some of the books in that guide are out of print. We’re pub­lish­ing some […]

How long does it take to write and have a non­fic­tion pic­ture book pub­lished? A few years? Five? How about nineteen?

Books have been a part of Vaun­da Micheaux Nelson’s life since the day she was born. “My moth­er found my name in a nov­el she was read­ing,” Nel­son says. Books and fam­i­ly and his­to­ry form a thread through many of Nelson’s award-win­ning pic­ture books.

In pic­ture books, the illus­tra­tions often car­ry half, or more than half, of the nar­ra­tive. Increased under­stand­ing of illus­tra­tion tech­niques can enhance your appre­ci­a­tion and plea­sure when read­ing and shar­ing pic­ture books.

Each morn­ing, when I can, I walk two and a half miles.  I walk for exer­cise because I write most of the day.  But main­ly I walk to lis­ten for stories. 

When we pub­lished our first issue of Bookol­o­gy back in April of 2015, Karen Cush­man was our first fea­tured author. With the pub­li­ca­tion of her 10th book, War and Mil­lie McGo­nigle, we knew it was time to check in, curi­ous about the way Karen orga­nizes and writes her novels.

In this lat­est post, con­trib­u­tor Con­stance Van Hov­en shares the ways that books helped her recon­nect with her Read­ing Team now that they are able to be togeth­er in per­son once again.

So, I was going to write yet anoth­er pithy lit­tle piece on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, but life had oth­er plans.

This sea­son, if you vis­it Min­neapo­lis’ Mid­town Farm­ers Mar­ket, you’ll stroll by a har­vest of pic­ture books by Min­neso­ta authors: Pic­ture Book Parade — a new ini­tia­tive by children’s authors Sarah War­ren and Cather­ine Urdahl.

Loah Lon­don­der­ry, hero of my new mid­dle grade nov­el, The Most Per­fect Thing in the Uni­verse, is the daugh­ter of a not­ed ornithol­o­gist ded­i­cat­ed to sav­ing endan­gered birds of the Arc­tic tun­dra. That sen­tence con­tains four words that, when I start­ed writ­ing, I knew lit­tle about: ornithol­o­gist, endan­gered, and Arc­tic tun­dra. Uh oh. I’ve never […]

Why do I love this expos­i­to­ry lit­er­a­ture book so much? Because it clev­er­ly com­bines envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence and engi­neer­ing in a way that’s bound to engage a broad audi­ence of young readers.

We wel­come Robert Topp, own­er of The Her­mitage Book­shop in Den­ver, Col­orado, and read­er-aloud extra­or­di­naire, vol­un­teer­ing in the pub­lic schools for more than 28 years.

Day­light sav­ings time makes me grum­ble at hav­ing to get up ear­li­er. But, it also means that spring is com­ing. I start think­ing about what seeds I will plant for my gar­den, and which books I will read to my stu­dents, to give them hope when they still see snow on the ground. To encourage […]