Children’s Literature and Comics/Graphic Novels at MLA 2013

For those heading to the MLA in Boston (3-6 January 2013), here’s a handy list of panel sessions on either children’s literature or comics/graphic novels.  I compiled the list below by searching the MLA’s program for children’s literature (so, I may have missed some), and by re-posting the comics/graphic novels sessions from the MLA Comics/Graphic

Mock Caldecott 2012: Manhattan, Kansas Edition

With thanks to the Children’s and Adolescent Literature Community (ChALC) for organizing the event and the Manhattan Public Library (especially Melendra Sanders) for hosting it, we held a Mock Caldecott at this afternoon. We weren’t able to get all of the books we wanted to look at, and we likely overlooked other Caldecott contenders.  But, based on what we did get to review, here

A Brief Inquiry Into the Paradoxes of Academic Achievement

When I started writing what was then a biography of Crockett Johnson (back in the late 1990s), I thought: When I finish this, I really will have achieved something. Even as I wrote other books, I continued to think of the biography – which became a double biography of Johnson and Krauss – as The

Barnaby on stage, version 2.

After a failed stage adaptation and one failed radio version, Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby headed for the stage a second time.  Adapted for children’s theatre by Robert and Lilian Masters, this Barnaby made its debut in Terre Haute, Indiana, in May 1948.  Looking ahead to the publication (in February 2013, I am told) of The Complete Barnaby, Vol.

Crockett Johnson in New York: A Walking Tour, in Honor of his 106th Birthday

David Johnson Leisk was born 106 years ago in an apartment at 444 East 58th Street, New York City.  If you’re in New York today, you might give yourself a walking tour (aided by the subway) of where the creator of Harold and the Purple Crayon (1955) and Barnaby (1942-1952) grew up.  Dave Leisk –