Radical Children’s Literature Now! (video)
The 2011 Francelia Butler Lecture: “Radical Children’s Literature Now!” by Julia Mickenberg and Philip Nel
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The problem with a blurb from Neil Gaiman on a cover is that, invoking Gaiman, it inevitably diminishes the book by comparison. This is not the book’s fault. Gaiman is one of our most gifted contemporary writers. Catherynne M. Valente may not be, but I wouldn’t even be thinking about the comparison if Gaiman’s endorsement
Radical Children’s Literature Now!
Many folks who attended Julia Mickenberg’s and my “Radical Children’s Literature Now!” lecture today at the Children’s Literature Association Conference in Roanoke asked: “I didn’t get a handout. Â Could I have one?” Â Since we only made 200 copies, here is that handout. Â (The entire lecture will be on the Children’s Literature Association’s website in the
Paper Call: MLA, January 3-6, 2013, Boston
Each year the Children’s Literature Assocation is guaranteed one session at the MLA and can submit proposals for up to two more.* If you would like to propose a session topic, by June 17th please send the ChLA/MLA Liaison (Philip Nel: philnel@ksu.edu): (1) a short description of your proposal idea, and, if relevant, (2) the
Bow-Wow!
A dog. A bug. A walk around the block. From this simple premise comes one of the great picture contemporary picture books – and, while we’re on the subject, great picture books, period. With a spare, clean design and plenty of humor, Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash’s Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug (2007) is a pleasure
Keywords for Children’s Literature: Meet the Blog!
To introduce Keywords for Children’s Literature (forthcoming in June), we – Lissa Paul, New York University Press, and myself – are pleased to announce the Keywords for Children’s Literature blog. In our new post over there, you’ll find links to both the Table of Contents and our Introduction.  Lissa and I say a few words about
How to Find Good Children’s Books
I’m thinking, in particular, about how to find the good new ones, from among the many thousands of children’s books that appear each year. Â This is a question I’m often asked, but it’s a question of particular interest to my Literature for Children classes right now, since their third paper requires them to find a
Vandalizing James Marshall
The only edition of James Marshall’s The Three Little Pigs (1989) currently in print has been vandalized by its publisher, Grosset & Dunlap. In reprinting the book at 8” x 8” instead of its original 8.5” x 10.5”, the publisher has truncated images, altered the layout, changed the typeface, and removed the final illustration. Here’s
Chris Van Allsburg’s True Story
His first non-fiction work, Queen of the Falls (2011) is also one of Chris Van Allsburg’s best. Indeed, in some ways it marks a return to form. After writing and illustrating a picture book each year for about 15 years, Van Allsburg stopped producing picture books for a while. Following Bad Day at Riverbend (1995),
It Looks Like Snow
As winter continues its assault, let’s turn to a classic book about winter: It Looks Like Snow (Greenwillow, 1957), Remy Charlip‘s picture-book tribute to John Cage. Like Cage’s 4’33” (1952), Charlip’s piece makes the audience’s experience the subject of its experiment. The primary difference of course is the specific sense through which we apprehend the art