Scholars of Children’s Literature, Young Adult Literature, Children’s Culture! Â Attention! Here are some calls for papers, for the 2015 Modern Language Association, held from January 8 to 11, 2015, in Vancouver, British Columbia. All are sponsored or co-sponsored by the MLA’s Children’s Literature Division. Send in a proposal to one of the organizers! Â Come to
Welcome to another installment in my ongoing list of the Best Books for Young Readers. Admittedly, any such list will reflect the list-maker’s (in this case, my) idiosyncracies. But, since people often ask me about great books for small humans, I’ve been creating the “ideal” library for my nearly three-year-old niece, Emily, and writing about
With thanks to Craig Svonkin for assembling the children’s literature panels list and Charles Hatfield for assembling the comics panels list, here’s a list of panel sessions on either children’s literature or comics/graphic novels at the Modern Language Association Conference in Chicago, 9-12 January 2014.  Is there anything missing here?  Drop me a line, and I’ll
Time again for the Mock Caldecott Awards, at which we convene not to mock Caldecott-winners, but to predict what the winners will be. This year, we’re of course predicting the 2014 awards, which will be announced next month. A big thanks to Kansas State University’s Children’s and Adolescent Literature Community (especially Allison Kuehne and Melissa Hammond)
My fellow Niblings (Betsy Bird, Julie Walker Danielson, Travis Jonker) and I decided a few months ago that it’d be fun to coordinate some blog posts today in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Where the Wild Things Are. It’s 50 years old, having been originally released in Fall 1963. After some research, we figured out that its release
When will the next book in the series be published? This was my first thought upon finishing S. S. Taylor’s The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man’s Canyon (McSweeney’s McMullens, 2012). It’s a mystery-adventure-fantasy set in a dystopian parallel universe, where four children seek the answers to a mysterious map, as they evade agents of
A brief report on the 2013 International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) conference (held this year in Maastricht), including: Dutch children’s literature, street signs, and a loss of confidence in cut flowers. Tow-Truck Pluck and other tales by Annie M.G. Schmidt I first read of Annie M. G. Schmidt in Guus Kuijer’s masterpiece, The Book
It looks like the collected works of Maurice Sendak have exploded all over my office… because I’ve just finished a draft of an article on Sendak – one of many pieces I agreed to write this summer (and one reason why this blog has been so quiet lately). He was one of our most articulate
In the 58 years since its publication, Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon has appeared in 14 languages, and inspired many artists. This blog (which takes its name from a line in the book) presented The Purple Crayon’s Legacy, Part I: Comics & Cartoons… nearly three years ago. It is at last time for
Those of us who read, create, study, or teach children’s literature sometimes face skepticism from other alleged adults. Why would adults take children’s books seriously? Shouldn’t adults be reading adult books? There are many responses to these questions: Children’s books are the most important books we read because they’re potentially the most influential books we