Search Results for "fresh air" |

Fresh Air: Taking Storytime Outdoors

April 18, 2019 No Comments

“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it.” —George Eliot In the state of Iowa, where I live, the change from winter to spring is like an on and off switch. Yet, at the end of another vortex, Spring has finally come to Iowa. Spring is a perfect time to schedule your storytime programs outdoors.… more

Freshwater Pearls

April 18, 2024 1 Comment

This column dives into four Caldecott picture books that feature freshwater resources, precious and limited assets that sustain terrestrial life.

Nonfiction Setting and My Comfy Chair

November 28, 2018 2 Comments

I’m fussy when it comes to choosing where to sit. The comfy chair or the well-worn red sofa? Lights on high or nicely dimmed? Soft throw blanket? Sometimes even in a restaurant, I ask to sit at a different table than the one the host chooses because it doesn’t feel right. My husband rolls his eyes. Setting whether in fiction, nonfiction, or my own family room, holds a special place in my heart.… more

Doorways to the Wild and Wondrous

April 22, 2021 4 Comments

Today, writing about nature and outdoor play just feels as natural and right to me as breathing. All my happy memories of chasing frogs, climbing trees, and splashing in summer lakes easily inform the stories I write.

In Memoriam: Wendy Watson

February 25, 2018 2 Comments

Wendy Watson was a third generation author and artist. Her grandparents, Ernest W. Watson and Eva Auld Watson, were painters and pioneer color block printers. Ernest was also founder and editor of the magazine American Artist, co-founder of Watson-Guptill Publications, and co-founder of one of the first summer art schools, the Berkshire Summer School of Art. Wendy’s father, Aldren A.

… more

Tomi Ungerer: Far Out Toward the Heart

July 27, 2016 No Comments

Phyllis: Tomi Ungerer has written and illustrated over 30 books for children, along with over 100 other books. I didn’t know much about him until Jackie suggested we do a blog on him, and I’m so glad she did. I came home from the library with a stack of his books, which range widely from the ridiculous to the mysterious.… more

Jen Bryant

April 20, 2016 2 Comments

In this interview with Jen Bryant, author of A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, our Bookstorm™ this month. Do you recall the first time you encountered a William Carlos Williams poem? I was in high school—and it was part of an anthology reading that we did for English class. I had disliked/not understood/ been unmoved by all of the other poems in this assigned reading (I recall that the language in those poems was archaic and flowery, and the forms very, VERY traditional)—and then—whooosh—like a breath of fresh air, here were a few selected W.… more

Mental Health: Character Mental Health: Middle Grade

August 5, 2023 No Comments

Middle grade readers will find windows and mirrors in these novels whose characters experience anxiety, phobias, depression, therapy, OCD, ADHD, or grief. This list, developed by Ann Jacobus and Nancy Bo Flood, provides good recommendations.

The Encyclopedia of Writing and Illustrating Children's Books

Starting Over … Sort Of

August 3, 2023 1 Comment

This year—after more than 40 years as a fulltime writer of books for children—I feel the need to start over. What went wrong in my career? It’s a long list, I’m afraid

See the Ghost: Three Stories about Things You Cannot See

See the Author / See the Illustrator

August 3, 2023 3 Comments

Once in a while, a duo creates several books together and they get to know one another. We're curious about how that works. Meet David LaRochelle, author, and Mike Wohnoutka, illustrator, of six books together (so far).

More More More Said the Baby by Vera B. Williams

Books for Baby Gifts

June 21, 2023 1 Comment

Books are a wonderful way to encourage families to start the read-aloud habit early and often. Here are suggestions from people who work with children, families, and books.

Connecting with Nature

April 26, 2023 No Comments

While experiences in the natural world are beneficial to both children and adults, they are especially crucial for young people. This selection of Caldecott Honor books invites readers to explore and appreciate the natural world.

Art Will Out

December 17, 2022 No Comments

This month we have been thinking about the mysteries of the visual arts—how some artists must create, no matter the circumstances.

Death and Grief

December 1, 2022 12 Comments

For those who are mourning the loss of a relative, a pet, a friend, a teacher, these books for young and old are recommended by our subscribers.

Celebrating Black Women in the U.S.

June 14, 2022 No Comments

We feel called this month to celebrate the many accomplishments of Black women in this country — some of whom are historical icons, too many of whom we have we have never heard of.

How Parks Connect Us
… and Why It Matters

April 22, 2022 1 Comment

Spring is in the air, and we’re pulled outdoors to wander in our favorite city parks. Ducks are dabbling; frogs are trilling; the apple trees are bursting into bloom. Everywhere, it seems, children frolic and neighbors wave. It’s been a long winter, but our cities are alive.

Nonfiction Storytime, Part 3

May 19, 2021 No Comments

In my experience, you can elevate the learning experience with nonfiction books through the development of activities that connect with a specific topic or the theme of your program.

Julius Lester

April 29, 2021 1 Comment

Julius Lester loved language and he loved story. Language, Lester wrote, is not just words and what they mean; music and rhythm are also part of the meaning. Just reading his books for children makes us want to read them out loud to hear that music and rhythm along with his gift for putting words together.

The Cottage of Lost Play

April 8, 2021 2 Comments

Working on my magical realism middle-grade novel, I realized I couldn’t visualize where my story is located. I could describe immediate buildings, but the landscape was blank. If I couldn’t see it, neither could a reader.

Geography, Part 1

March 24, 2021 1 Comment

Many picture books have anonymous settings, but some include authentic landmarks identifying locations that can be pinpointed on a map. Traveling from west coast to east coast, several Caldecott Award books feature settings in the United States, and we can become armchair travelers through the illustrations.

Constance Van Hoven and Her Extended Reading Team
March 2021

March 9, 2021 2 Comments

I’ll be honest, this installment of Raising Star Readers should be called “Raising Gigi’s Spirits.” The thing I miss most about spending time with my Reading Team is sharing laughter — everything from giggles to rolling-on-the-floor belly laughs.

We Are Grateful

November 26, 2020 No Comments

We have to confess to book envy — that is encountering a picture book and wishing that we had written it. The book’s approach is so arresting, the heart of the book so big, the images so rich. Such books not only make us wish we’d done them, they change what we want to do and what we can do.

… more

Jane Langton Gave Me Geese

November 4, 2020 13 Comments

In Wildness is the preservation of the World. ~ Henry David Thoreau It’s rare a children’s book changes you when you’re an adult. I don’t mean fleeting Harry Potter/Team Edward crossover fandom, but genuine change (as with Watership Down). I was nearly 30 when Jane Langton’s book The Fledgling was published in 1980. At that stage of my not-yet-fledged career, I read children’s books by the boxload and was thrilled to discover a new one by my favorite writer.… more

The Mozart Season

April 9, 2020 No Comments

Fresh Lookology features books published several years ago that are too good to languish on the shelf. At the end of softball season and the beginning of summer, 12-year-old Allegra Leah Shapiro learns that she has been selected as a finalist in the Ernest Bloch Young Musicians’ Competition. She is the youngest finalist, something she worries about as she spends the summer practicing Mozart’s fourth violin concerto.… more

Arnold Lobel at Home

January 2, 2020 2 Comments

Every winter I find myself missing Arnold Lobel, a quietly brilliant author-illustrator who left us far too early. I pull out my Lobel I Can Read collection. Frog and Toad Are Friends was published in 1970, the year I graduated from high school, bent on my own career in children’s books. Hailed an instant classic by many far-seeing individuals, Frog and Toad earned a Caldecott Honor.… more

Sense of Wonder

October 24, 2019 1 Comment

In her book A Sense of Wonder, Rachel Carson wrote: If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.… more

The Season Of Styx Malone

February 28, 2019 2 Comments

Our Books & Bagels book group met a couple of weeks ago to discuss The Season of Styx Malone by Kekla Magoon. When I pick the books for this parent-child bookclub, I’ve usually read them in advance and know they will be good for discussion. This one I picked before I’d read it. I’d read reviews and whatnot, of course, but I think it was actually the cover that made me sure this would be a great book for our group.… more

Winter Extravaganza

December 19, 2018 No Comments

The first snowfall is like being transported inside a snow globe. The landscape transforms with a fresh sprinkle of snow on everything from the trees to houses. “Crunch, crunch” can be heard from the boots of families making their way outside to experience the first snow of the season. Snow is an experience where families can engage with each other through activities such as sledding, making snow angels, making snowmen, or making snow ice cream.… more

Some Illustrator!

May 3, 2018 2 Comments

In my next life, I’m coming back either as a cat living in our house (think Canyon Ranch for cats), or Melissa Sweet. I’ve followed her career since she illustrated James Howe’s Pinky and Rex (1990). I love this book for its atypical characters (Pinky is a boy who loves pink and stuffed animals, and Rex, his girl friend, is into dinosaurs), but also for Melissa’s fresh-faced characters and bright watercolors.… more

Take the Next Turn

March 8, 2018 No Comments

As a writing warm-up, why not ask your students to create a fresh new spin on a tired old way of saying something?

Poetry from Stones

January 5, 2018 5 Comments

Outside my window right now: bare trees, gray sky, a brown bird. No, let’s try again. Outside my window, the leafless sweetgum shows a condo of squirrels’ nests, a dark blue rim on the horizon indicates wind moving in, and a white-crowned sparrow scritches under the feeders. Better. Even in winter, especially in winter, we need to wake up our lazy brains, reach for names that might be hibernating. … more

True Story

December 7, 2017 7 Comments

Recently I attended a writer’s conference mainly to hear one speaker. His award-winning books remind me that the very best writing is found in children’s literature. When he delivered the keynote, I jotted down bits of his sparkling wisdom. At one point he said that we live in a broken world, but one that’s also filled with beauty. My pen slowed.… more

Pie Season

November 23, 2017 3 Comments

Jackie: This is gratitude season and that is a good reminder. Many of us have plenty to be grateful for and we often forget that while waiting for the next good things. It’s also Pie Season. It is the one time of the year at my house when we have no holds barred on pie. Everyone gets to have a favorite at Thanksgiving.… more

To Bee or Not to Bee

September 28, 2017 2 Comments

Jackie: It’s good to be back on this blog this month. We took a necessary break, but cannot be away from talking about books for too long. The pressure builds… Phyllis is busy writing in the North Woods, so I am bee-side myself with enthusiasm for doing this blog. We have a make-shift birdbath on our deck, next to our hummingbird and oriole feeders, and this summer the bees have found the bird bath.… more

Hands on the Wheel

August 31, 2017 No Comments

A few years ago, I remember Teenage Nephew 2 pointed out (from his newly gathered storehouse of driver’s ed wisdom) that I put my hands in the wrong positions on the steering wheel. The new placement, he told me, is either 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 on the clock face, to avoid breaking your arms if the airbag deploys. It’s been a while since I’ve been in driver’s ed (in fact, to a teenage brain I’m sure it was so long ago that Teenage Nephew imagines my training included dinosaur-avoidance tactics), so I took it on faith that he was right.… more

Why Students Copy Their Research Sources,
and How to Break the Habit

June 20, 2017 1 Comment

By third grade, nearly all students know what plagiarism is and understand that it’s both immoral and illegal, and yet, again and again, we catch them copying their sources. Why don’t students express ideas and information in their own words? Because they haven’t taken the time or don’t have the skills to analyze and synthesize the material they’ve collected so that they can make their own meaning.… more

No Trout Tomato Soup for Two

April 25, 2017 1 Comment

Enjoy this recipe for tomato soup from Creekfinding's author, Jacqueline Briggs Martin.

March Shorts

March 31, 2017 2 Comments

Oooo! Here in Minnesota, shorts in March mean chills. These books will give you chills – in a good way! Cat Goes Fiddle-I-Fee
Adapted and illustrated by Paul Galdone
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985
(reissued in April 2017) I recognized the title immediately as I song I know well, sung as “I Had a Rooster” by Pete Seeger on Birds, Beasts, Bugs & Little Fishes in 1968.… more

Our Hearts Will Hold Us Up

February 28, 2017 1 Comment

Jackie: It seems perfectly appropriate that the Manager of Holiday Placement has placed Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate love and affection, right in the middle of cold, dark February. I want that celebration to spread out for the whole month (why not the whole year?) the way the smell of baking bread fills an entire house, not just the kitchen.… more

Skinny Dip with Linda Sue Park

January 18, 2017 1 Comment

We interviewed Linda Sue Park, veteran author and Newbery medalist, whose books have inspired children in many ways, appealing to a wide range of readers with books like A Single Shard, The Mulberry Project, Keeping Score, Yaks Yak, and A Long Walk to Water. Which celebrity, living or not, do you wish would invite you to a coffee shop?… more

Fantasy Gems

January 3, 2017 No Comments

The Christmas present that stands out most in my memory was given to me when I was 16. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve. At that age, I expected clothes and practical gifts. Somehow, my mother knew to give me the boxed set of The Lord of the Rings. I hadn’t read any fantasy before this. So I was curious.… more

William Steig and Transmogrification

November 3, 2016 2 Comments

Jackie: After Phyllis and I read Amos and Boris for our last month’s article on boats we both wondered why we hadn’t looked at the work of William Steig. He so often executes that very satisfying combination of humor and heart. Steig’s language is funny but his stories regularly involve worrisome separation and then return to a loving family.… more

One North Star, Three Creative Artists

September 27, 2016 3 Comments

Betsy Bowen’s book, Antler Bear Canoe: a Northwoods Alphabet, has been a favorite alphabet book for the last 25 years, reminding every reader about the things they love in their unique environment. Now, a counting book will sit alluringly on the bookshelf next to that title. One North Star: a Counting Book (University of Minnesota Press) has been written by Phyllis Root, and illustrated with woodcuts by Betsy Bowen and Beckie Prange.… more

Francis Vallejo

July 21, 2016 No Comments

We are pleased to share with you our interview with Francis Vallejo, the illustrator of Jazz Day: the Making of a Famous Photograph, our Bookstorm™ this month. This book is so rich with visual images that stir readers’ imaginations. You’ll feel like you’re standing on the street with the other onlookers! The title page says that you used acrylics and pastels to create this art.… more

Skinny Dip with Rebecca Kai Dotlich

July 6, 2016 10 Comments

We are pleased to share a Skinny Dip with Nancy Johnson, professor, children’s/young adult literature and English/ language arts education, Western Washington University.

How To Make An Apple Pie and See The World

June 30, 2016 2 Comments

A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to learn how to make a really good pie. I asked around — bakers, caterers, cooking store owners etc. and the book The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum came up consistently. One person mentioned How to Make An Apple Pie and See The World by Marjorie Priceman.… more

Skinny Dip with April Halprin Wayland

June 8, 2016 2 Comments

Today we welcome author and educator April Halprin Wayland to Bookology. Her most recent picture book, More Than Enough, is a story about Passover. April was one of nine Instructors of the Year honored by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, Creative Writing. Which celebrity, living or not, do you wish would invite you to a coffee shop? I would LOVE to have coffee (one-shot latte with extra soy, extra foam) with Crockett Johnson, author/illustrator of Harold and the Purple Crayon but most notably for me, author/illustrator of Barnaby, a comic strip that ran during WWII (actually 1942-1952).… more

The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats

Celebrating Ezra Jack Keats

March 29, 2016 3 Comments

Jackie: This is the time of year when I read the Travel Section of the Sunday paper. I just want to go away from gritty snow, brown yards and come back to Spring. Well, there are no tickets on the shelf this year so Phyllis and I are taking a trip to the city created by Ezra Jack Keats. And why not?… more

Books about Chocolate

February 24, 2016 No Comments

February is National Chocolate Month, so how could we let it pass by without an homage to chocolate … in books? Far less costly on the dental bill! “In 2009, more than 58 million pounds of chocolate were purchased and (likely) consumed in the days surrounding February 14th — that’s about $345 million worth. (Kiri Tannenbaum, “8 Facts About Chocolate,” Delish) Were you a part of the national statistic?

… more

Books about Chickens

January 27, 2016 8 Comments

Whether a chicken makes you cluck, BAWK! or cheep-cheep-cheep, books about chickens make us laugh. We may not have been introduced to a chicken in real life but, trust me, some people keep them as egg-laying wonders and other people keep them as pets. These fowl have been around in many colors, types, and breeds in most countries in the world … and quite recently they have become the subject of many books.

… more

Features

COLUMNS

Resources

Advertise

Follow Us

Many of the books on this website can be purchased from Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that supports local, independent bookstores. Bookology and local booksellers receive a small commission for each book sold. Thank you for your support.