E.B. White

Mélina Mangal

April 8, 2021March 2, 2021 by Candice Ransom

Mélina Mangal’s Self on the Shelf I looked on my shelves, wondering which books to highlight. I have several shelves, scattered around the house. Though I am a school librarian, my home shelves are quite fluid, as in, they’re not strictly organized. Books are loosely grouped by format and size, sometimes by genre. I really don’t have that many books (I love to visit the library!),

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The Many Travelers through
The Hundred Acre Wood

March 8, 2021January 21, 2021 by Zachary Stier

Throughout my childhood, my father and I traveled to the local library with a wagon. He insisted that I fill the wagon as high as we could with books. We went on hundreds of journeys with some of the most special characters in children’s literature. The adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh and friends in The Hundred Acre Wood was and continues to offer exciting adventures.

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Big Green Textbook

March 7, 2021October 8, 2020 by Candice Ransom

My first inkling there was a thing called children’s literature came at a yard sale. I picked up a thick green textbook, Children’s Literature in the Elementary School, by Charlotte S. Huck. I marveled at the idea that people discussed and studied the books I loved and planned to write, that children’s books were literature, like Moby Dick.… more

Melanie Heuiser Hill

February 25, 2020January 21, 2020 by Candice Ransom

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

This stack is largely the Self-On-The-Shelf stack of my childhood. There would be stacks of others, as well, you understand. I was surprised how many were missing when I went to pull books for this column, actually. Where were all the Judy Blume books? Where was How To Eat Fried Worms? And, I suppose if I’m really honest, I would need to include a small stack of Guinness Book of World Records from the late seventies…I wore the covers off those books.… more

Candice Ransom

November 19, 2019November 19, 2019 by Candice Ransom

Books swept me away, one after the other, this way and that; I made endless vows according to their lights, for I believed them. (Annie Dillard, An American Childhood) It’s hard to say which came first: did I adopt traits of the main character in certain books I read, or did I gravitate towards those books because I already had those traits?… more

No Wraiths or Fetches Necessary

March 7, 2021October 3, 2019 by Candice Ransom

To celebrate our fortieth anniversary this year, we decided to take a Big Trip. My husband suggested Paris. “Cornwall,” I said. “Someplace old.” Not that Paris isn’t old. Instead of a crowded city, I wanted winkles and pasties, lost gardens and standing stones, piskies and Tintagel castle. He agreed and I began putting together a trip that would send us back in time.… more

Some Illustrator!

March 7, 2021May 3, 2018 by Candice Ransom

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

The Sameness of Sheep

March 7, 2021November 2, 2017 by Candice Ransom

Once, when I discussed my work-in-progress, middle-grade novel with my agent, I told her the character was eleven. “Make her twelve,” she said. “But eleven-year-olds aren’t the same as twelve-year-olds,” I protested. “Those are different ages.” “Make her twelve,” she insisted. “The editor will ask you to change it anyway.” I didn’t finish the book (don’t have that agent anymore, either).… more

November 2, 2017October 5, 2017 by Melanie Heuiser Hill

A couple of weeks ago I was in the basement of the Science and Engineering Library at the University of Minnesota getting a little writing in before work. It’s a good spot — there’s a nice coffee shop, nothing in the stacks is intelligible to me on that floor so I’m not distracted, and it’s quiet and out of the hordes of university traffic.… more

The Wild Flag

September 7, 2017August 24, 2017 by Melanie Heuiser Hill

Fifteen years ago this summer, I stood weeping in our local public library while making copies of letters on the public photocopy machine, dimes in one hand, folded linen stationary in the other. I remember it was fifteen years ago because I was enormously pregnant with Darling Daughter. People walked a wide circle around me without making eye contact. Which was just as well.… more

Some Writer!

May 11, 2017April 22, 2017 by Melanie Heuiser Hill

I had the wonderful good fortune of hearing Melissa Sweet talk about her work last week. It was a fascinating presentation about her process, her research, her art. I left inspired, and with a hankering to find scissors and a glue stick and do some collage myself. (Let’s be clear, things would not turn out at all like Sweet’s gorgeous works of art….)… more

Perspective

March 8, 2016February 23, 2016 by Vicki Palmquist

At Bookology, we believe the adage about “the right book for the right reader.” Those are not necessarily the books that we see in advertisements, in the bloggers’ buzz, or on award lists. Only by listening to each other, and especially to kids, talk about books do we find those gems our hearts were looking for but didn’t know existed.… more

Skinny Dip with Eileen Beha

January 19, 2016January 6, 2016 by Vicki Palmquist

What TV show can’t you turn off? I watch very little TV; I will almost always choose to read a good book instead. However, I do admit that I’ve not missed a single episode of Mad Men since the series premiered in 2007 or Downton Abbey, which will end after its sixth season this winter. Lately, I’ve gotten into this strange habit of watching old episodes of Murder, She Wrote on Netflix.… more

Skinny Dip with Amy Baum

October 20, 2015October 14, 2015 by Marsha Qualey

What keeps you up at night? The Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I had to sleep in my sister’s room for 6 months after that terrifying cartoon. What’s the first book you remember reading? Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik. I loved Little Bear and his very functional family. Also, I thought it was simply magical that all of the letters spelled out a story.… more

Heather Vogel Frederick: Borrowed Fire

June 6, 2015March 1, 2015 by Marsha Qualey

In Absolutely Truly, my new middle grade mystery set in a bookshop in the fictional town of Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire, a first edition of Charlotte’s Web goes missing. There’s a reason this particular book features so prominently in the story — it’s a nod to my literary hero, E. B. White. E.B. White and I go way back. He’s one of the reasons I became a writer, thanks to Charlotte’s Web, which was one of my all-time favorites as a young reader (it still is).… more