After seeing many tantalizing mentions of Tara Books over the last few years, I was delighted to receive Joydeb Chitrakar and Gita Wolf's The Enduring Ark and get a firsthand look at one of their creations.

It is said from time to time, the world is re-made. Ancient stories...

After receiving an advanced reader's copy of Neil Gaiman's Fortunately, the Milk, I asked my class if they'd like me to read it aloud. Now keep in mind that while Neil Gaiman may have a huge...

Claudia, so completely prepared, and  Jamie, so careful with the budget.  They are still and will always be two shrewd suburban kids who run away to a timeless Metropolitan Museum of Art to bathe in its elegant pool and sleep in its famous historical bed while investigating the mystery of...

I was delighted to see yesterday's announcement that Pamela Paul was assuming the editorship of the New York Times Book Review.  Two years ago she became the children's books editor and,  knowing many would be curious about her as she was coming...

Recently I was delighted to be part of a project considering E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, which just celebrated its 60th birthday. I think it is a masterpiece of American literature. Do you?

Recently, I went on a rant about the way the term "young adult" is more and more being used to describe books that are for children.  Well, I think there is something of that same sensibility going on with the new Hobbit movie trilogy.  The source material is...

Wondering what to give that dreamy child you know or an adult relative with a taste for beautiful books? Might I make a suggestion? Consider one of Peter Sis' unique and beautiful books, say his latest, The Conference of the Birds.

An artist who works far and wide, the...

Philip Pullman is one of the most thoughtful and creative writers of our day. Best know for the brilliant trilogy His Dark Materials, the former middle school teacher is also a longtime reteller and creator of fairy tales. While I'm partial to his lively online version of "

More and more I'm seeing "young adult book" used in popular culture as an umbrella term for a wide assortment of titles -- only some of which are actually teen books. In articles, favorites lists and blog posts, books being identified as young adult are in fact books for younger...

It was dusk -- winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold, but from dawn men had been clearing it with brooms and shovels. There were hundreds of them at...

Halloween's just around the corner which means All Hallows Read is too. When Neil Gaiman first proposed this idea of giving books for Halloween I offered some suggestions, among them Adam Gidwitz's unique take on fairy tales, A Tale Dark and Grimm.  Now Adam is back with

Bully Prevention Month has me reflecting as a veteran classroom teacher on the variations of meanness, cruelty, and hurt that children find to inflect emotional pain on each other. Not only have I observed it, but recollect well my own firsthand experiences with it as a child. Sometimes the meanness...

Chaplin the Musical is a labor of love by those who clearly appreciate, know, and get Charlie Chaplin in his complexity.  As someone who has been a fan for most of her life, shows just about every single one of his Little Tramp films to her fourth grade...

Philip Pullman, the well-known author of The Golden Compass and a forthcoming collection of Grimm fairy tales, has received many honors, perhaps none quite as unusual as his latest from the King of Redonda.

If you've never heard of Redonda or...

Writing a children's book seems to be a popular endeavor among those better known in other areas.  Models, iconic musical comedy performers, television stars, and comics have all taken a stab at it with varying results. Now along comes screenwriter (of

Natasha Trethewey was my school's artist-in-residence in 2007 and so I am absolutely delighted that she has just been named the 19th US Poet Laureate. I can't imagine a better choice. Congratulations, Natasha!

Here's a slightly updated version of what I wrote about her work...

I am a coward.

I wanted to be heroic and I pretended I was. I have always been good at pretending

So begins Elizabeth Wein's extraordinary new thriller, Code Name Verity. Set in the landscape of World War II Britain and featuring women pilots and spies,...

Even the most famous artists and writers have to cope with those who shamelessly demand that they weigh in on their own feeble creative efforts. Say the late great Maurice Sendak who, this past January in a wonderful two-part interview (available here and here),...

Last year Hervé Tullet's Press Here, a book illustrated with a whole bunch of dots in primary colors, was a great hit with children of all ages. The text consists of a series of directions requiring readers to... well..press, shake, and otherwise "move" those dots around from page to...

For the fourth year running School Library Journal's Battle of the Kids' Books is underway. Inspired by the venerable Tournament of Books featuring adult literary fiction, the BoB (as its loyal fans refer to it) pits 16 children's and YA books against each other in a...