A Fun Rabbit Habit
Rabbits hop all through children's books. And what's not to like about them? We hope you'll hop into the habit of rabbit books this spring.
Jacqueline Briggs Martin
Banning Books
This month we had planned to write about several books we love that have been banned, but we realized that along with giving you a list of banned books we really wanted to write about the current tsunami of book banning in our country.
Library Love
Libraries! We want to look at books about these magical places, portals to our world, our selves, and other worlds and selves we might become.
Poets and Picture Books
Poets and picture book writers both know the weight of a word, the sound of a syllable, the turn of a line, and they both know that every word matters.
All about Green in the Middle of Winter: Trees
In the cold, white of winter, we find ourselves occasionally thinking of green woods, tall trees, and the busy sounds of birds and squirrels.
Let It Snow!
In the far reaches of the northern hemisphere, snow graces the winter landscape and shapes the activities of the season. Picture books set in winter typically feature snowy backdrops. This column takes a look at five Caldecott Award-winning snow stories.
Art Will Out
This month we have been thinking about the mysteries of the visual arts—how some artists must create, no matter the circumstances.
Sharing Wonder: April Pulley Sayre
We have been thinking about wonder—about the fascination we have for the beauty, the intricacy, the mystery of the workings of the natural world.
Celebrating Black Women in the U.S.
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.
Refugees
Heard on the news: “No one wants to be a refugee.” Here's a look at four picture books that share the refugee experience with young readers.
Vaunda Micheaux Nelson: Voices from History
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.
Julius Lester
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.
Carole Boston Weatherford
Carole Boston Weatherford has been writing since she was in first grade. Her father taught printing and was able to publish those early stories. Weatherford has written dozens of picture books for young readers — and all readers. We cannot be exhaustive here, but we can introduce you to this wonderful writer.
Ashley Bryan: Brave for Life
Ashley Bryan's life has been so full of making children’s books and there are so many wonderful children’s books that we can only call out a few—a few enticements, and encourage you to take yourself on a wonderful journey into Ashley Bryan’s world.
Visual Artists, Part 1
With declining funding for arts education in schools1,2 and limited opportunities for school-sponsored class visits to art museums, Caldecott Award-winning picture books invite children to explore various media and styles of art deemed “distinguished.”3 Indeed, as professor of English and children’s literature specialist Philip Nel observes, “Good picture books are portable art galleries.”4
A number of Caldecott award books extend the art enrichment experience by introducing children to the lives and works of visual artists.
In the Neighborhood of Eloise Greenfield
Eloise Greenfield
In this season of gift-giving we want to look at the gift of poetry, specifically the poetry and writing of Eloise Greenfield. Since publishing her first poem in 1962, she has written more than forty-five books for children and was the recipient of the 2018 Coretta Scott King Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Javaka Steptoe
Though our focus this month is on Javaka Steptoe, we want to begin this column with another book by his father, John Steptoe, Daddy is a Monster…Sometimes. This book is narrated by two children, Bweela and Javaka, who begin, “We are Bweela and Javaka and we have a daddy. He’s a nice daddy and all, but he got somethin’ wrong with him… .”
John Steptoe’s Beautiful Books
This month we want to celebrate the work of John Steptoe, brilliant artist and writer, who was born on September 14, 1950. His work is a year-round birthday present to all of us.
The Very Amazing Eric Carle
Phyllis: Spring is finally here, and the pollinators are buzzing in the blossoms, so we thought we’d write about bugs this month. Plus, we’ve just finished a book with our good friend and fellow writer Liza Ketchum about the rusty-patched bumblebee, the first bumblebee to be listed as endangered. Once we started looking for buggy books, we found so many by Eric Carle, from very hungry caterpillars to very grouchy ladybugs to very lonely fireflies that we decided to look at his body of work.… more
Books about Baking Up Family Time
Jackie: We decided to honor the nation’s newfound love of baking with a column on picture books focused on baking. We still don’t have libraries (a great benefit of this confinement is the reminder of how special and necessary are libraries in our lives) so we are limited to books we can find read aloud on Youtube.… more
Just Spring
Phyllis: e.e. cummings said it best when he described the world as mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. Snow melts and runs babbling away, days lengthen, green sprouts of skunk cabbage and rhubarb poke out. This month we are looking at muddy, squishy, rainy, wet stories in honor of spring.
Mud by Mary Lyn Ray, illustrated by Lauren Stringer, begins, “One night it happens.…… more
Tree Talk
We have been thinking of trees — green, leafy, blooming, buzzing trees. It’s not that we’re tired of winter. We love winter. Phyllis even has snowshoes — and uses them! Jackie loves walking in the snowy quiet and the nearly monochromatic landscape. We both love candles, sweaters, and hot soup. But every now and then we think of green.… more
A Blizzard of Snow Books
We’re snowed under right now, what with teaching and writing and, well, snow, so we thought we’d offer up a blizzard of books about the white stuff that falls from our skies. Curl up with a child, a cup of warmth, and enjoy winter in the pages of a book.
The Snow Party by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers and Bernice Myers
A lonely woman who lives with her husband on a Dakota farm wishes for a party. … more
Celebrating Winter Celebrations
Phyllis: Winter has come down like a snowy blanket, and animals in our world have migrated, hibernated, or are shivering their way through the months ahead. But animals in picture books have other ideas. Why not be a part of December’s celebrations of Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice or help a friend in frozen need? These books make us feel as cozy as a cup of tea, a lighted tree.… more
Cookies
Jackie: November is a month to celebrate food and family, to celebrate making meals and eating together. Phyllis and I both love pie. And we often review pie books in November but we are running out of pie stories. (Writers out there: more pie stories, please.) So, this year we decided to look for cookie stories. Who doesn’t love a cookie?… more
Celebrating the Square Pegs
This month the two of us are actually in the same place at the same time, and we’re having a conversation about square pegs.
We are all not just square pegs and round pegs. We are triangles, pentagons, hexagon, oval, rhomboids, stars. There are shapes for everyone and places, too, where each of us fits best. But we all know what being a square peg means.… more
Friends, Friends
Jackie: We two friends have been doing this blog since 2015. Yet, we’ve never done a column on books about friends. We know there are many, and many classics, such as the always-satisfying Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel, or William Steig’s Amos and Boris, or James Marshall’s George and Martha. But today we want to look at three, one by one of our favorite writers Lucille Clifton.… more
Making Something Out of Nothing
Jackie: We are in cold, cold winter. Too cold to read seed catalogs – spring just seems too far away to imagine fragile green. We are confined to cabin. What to do but think of repurposing, making something out of nothing, or next to nothing?
Stone Soup by Marcia Brown has always been one of my favorite something-out-of-nothing (or at least something out of stones) stories.… more
Bim, Bam, Bop … and Oona, an Interview
Poor Oona — she’s always the last duck to the pond…. But then her frog friend Roy reminds her: you’re good with gizmos… And so Oona the duck goes to work in the barn on her gizmos, pouring her creative and determined self into getting to the pond before the faster ducks. Along the way, she learns there is more to life than just being fast and getting somewhere first.… more
Knit One, Purl Two
Phyllis: Two sticks and some string. That’s the most basic definition of knitting. The sticks might be metal or wood. The string might be yarn or flax. But in the hands of a knitter, even an unskilled one such as I, they become magic.
In the chilly months, we bundle up in cozy sweaters, snug mittens, hats that hug our heads.… more
Winter Extravaganza
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
My Little Love-One, What Shall I Sing:
Looking at Lullabies
Phyllis: Winter in the north is made of longer and longer nights. What better time to think about lullabies, those songs we sing to our babies to help them sleep? Research has shown how similar lullabies are all around the world in the sounds and rhythms they use to soothe babies. So we thought we’d take a trip with some of those lullaby books, and a few more besides.… more
Pie and Gratitude
November is a month of gratitude — and, for us, a month to celebrate Pie. We all have a favorite. Many of us have childhood memories of good times and pie. We all wait for the days when we can eat pie for breakfast. So we two thought this would be the perfect month to look at picture books about pie.… more
Lucille Clifton: All About Love
Poet Lucille Clifton in a 1998 interview “Doing What You Will Do,” published in Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival, said, “I think the oral tradition is the one which is most interesting to me and the voice in which I like to speak.” Asked about the most important aspect of her craft, she answered, “For me, sound … sound, the music of a poem, the feeling are most important.… more
Taking Time for a Close Look
Jackie: Phyllis is on the road with her beautiful and informative new book Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers. [While Phyllis is out of the room, I will say that I love this book. It makes me want to get out and find flowers. Iowa has many plants in common with Minnesota and I look forward to tromping with Phyllis and Kelly.)… more
Summoning Spring
Jackie: Spring is a little late coming to the Midwest this year. But we can remember sunny days with violets and trillium blooming and rainy days that turn the grass green (instead of the snow we continue to get in mid-April). Rainy days make us think of ducks and we are going to beckon reluctant spring with stories of ducks.… more
Dearie Darling Cuddle Hug: A Tribute to Wendy Watson
When our children were young we both spent many hours with them pouring over Wendy Watson’s illustrations for her sister Clyde’s rhymes in Father Fox’s Pennyrhymes and delighting in the sounds and the silliness of the rhymes themselves. We felt as though we had lost a personal friend when Wendy Watson died, even though we had never met her.… more
Spend the Day with Arnold Lobel
Phyllis: February is the month of valentines and lovers, and we spent a day (through his books) with someone we love: Arnold Lobel.
He wrote easy reader stories that help children crack the code of reading, give them fun stories with characters who remind us of people we know and that give readers of all ages plenty to think about.… more
Let It Snow!
Phyllis: The first real snow has fallen overnight, and the quality of light when I wake up is luminous outside the window. Solstice approaches, and we’ve turned our thoughts to books about winter and snow. So many to choose from! Here are a few.
When my grown daughter saw a copy of Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton on my bookshelf, she cried, “Oh!… more
Pie Season
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
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
The Funny and the Heart
Jackie: Recently Phyllis and I read a heart-breaking column in The New York Times, written by author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who wrote many children’s books, and a couple of books for adults.
The column, written as a love-note to her husband from a dying wife, was heartfelt, sad, and funny all at the same time. We both wished we had known Amy Krouse Rosenthal.… more
Chef Roy Choi’s Story
Every time I re-read this book, it makes me happier. I’ve grown quite fond of the books being published by Readers to Eaters and I eagerly anticipate each new book.
Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix is another food artisan biography from Jacqueline Briggs Martin, this time co-written with June Jo Lee. Jackie writes the flavorful essence of the artist in an irresistible recipe of words.… more
Bookstorm™: Creekfinding
We were very excited to read Creekfinding: a True Story because it tells the story of restoring a long-ago creek in an Iowa prairie setting. Just imagine: bringing back the burbling waters, the fish, the insects, the grasses … everything that makes up the health and character of the land. It took bulldozers and determination, partners and imagination, but it was a project that brought ecological success!… more
Creekfinding with author Jacqueline Briggs Martin
A stewardship for our one and only Earth are an abiding concern for many of our planet’s inhabitants. When an author finds an opportunity to share with the world of readers her own passion for conserving our ecosystems, the book Creekfinding: A True Story is created. We hope you’ll find inspiration for your own exploration and conservation in this interview with Jacqueline Briggs Martin.… more
Our Hearts Will Hold Us Up
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
The Books in the Night
Phyllis: Night means many things: the terrifying darkness behind the garage where I had to carry the garbage after supper as a child, the dark night of the soul that depression brings, the hours between sunset and sunrise that grow longer and longer as our earth turns into winter. But night holds comfort as well as fear, and this month we want to look at books about the gifts that night and darkness can bring.… more
William Steig and Transmogrification
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