For the first time in 32 years, there is a new book by Ruth Krauss! Roar Like a Dandelion, with art from Sergio Ruzzier, was published on the first of the month. Krauss began writing the book in around 1960, just after she began to focus more on writing poetry or poem-plays and less on
Shaun Tan’s Rules of Summer (2013) is only one of the great Australian children’s books of the past couple of years. Here are two more. Neither appears to have found a publishing home in the U.S., U.K., or Canada. So, attention publishers of North America and Great Britain! Bring out these two books in your
There are a lot of modernist children’s books, and a fair few directly influenced by the historical avant-garde – and, yes, I am sharing images, below.  I learned about these books (and a great deal more) last week at Children’s Literature and the European Avant-Garde, a conference at Linköpings University, in Norrköping, Sweden.  You would
David Bowman – the writer, not the character in 2001: A Space Odyssey – died on February 27. Â He was 54. Â His obituary ran in this past Sunday’s Times. Â He and I have had an on-and-off correspondence since the fall of 2000. Â Upon reading his obituary, I realized (guiltily) that I’d failed to answer his
Half-way through the “Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams” exhibit at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) here in Brisbane, museum-goers encounter this: A clever riff on the Surrealist game that exploits the mysteries of accidental juxtapositions, this mid-exhibit bar also offered a welcome rest to travel-weary visitors (such as your humble narrator, who visited the