Popular Posts

Academia & Education:

• Resolutions for a New Academic Year: A survival guide for higher education in perilous times. Published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 Sept. 2017.  There’s also a related blog post.
• In Search of Lost Time. On academic overwork, published in Inside Higher Ed, 3 Mar. 2014. I also published a list of Further Reading on this blog.
• Just a Shot Away. On (and against) campus carry, published in Inside Higher Ed, 12 Apr. 2016.
• This Job Can Kill You. Literally. On the need to pay adjunct professors (also known as contingent or part-time faculty) a living wage, and to treat them with dignity.
• The object of power is power: a report from today’s Kansas Board of Regents meeting, in which the Regents eliminate academic freedom in Kansas (May 2014).  There are many more posts on the unqualified political appointees who operate under the name Kansas Board of Regents (just follow the tag), from Posters for Harmony, Loyalty, and Discipline (great art from Dan Warner, May 2014) all the way back to Kansas Board of Regents Revokes Right to Freedom of Speech (Dec. 2013).
• What Do Professors Do All Week?, a week-long series in which I chronicled just how a professor spends his or her workday… by chronicling exactly how I spent each day of February 19-25, 2011.  You’ll even find an entry for each day of the week.  The sequel to this experiment (which chronicled a summer work week, May 12-18, 2012) wasn’t as popular.  I also did a kind of follow-up in Professors Get the Summers Off; or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2013).
• Professors Work Harder Than You Do, David C. Levy, a brief rebuttal to an “expert” who lacks any knowledge of his subject.
• Tenure Isn’t The Point, my response to Kathryn D. Blanchard’s “I’ve Got Tenure. How Depressing.”
• Humanities Majors Learn More, the good news that’s usually omitted in reports on Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses.  Students majoring in the Liberal Arts learn much more than students in Business, Education, Social Work, or other fields.
• Those Who Can, Teach. Those Who Cannot, Pass Laws About Teaching. It’s time to end the war on education.

Advice (much of it related to academia & publishing):

• Advice for Aspiring Academics, published in Inside Higher Ed, 19 Aug. 2015.  This piece began as Advice for Aspiring Academics: A Twitter Essay. 
• 10 Tips for Writing a Biography.
• How to Publish Your Article.  Probably the most popular post on this blog, though many people neglect to read the caveat that the advice applies to people in the Humanities….
• How to Publish Your Book
• How to Write a Book
• Prograstigrading.  One way of managing the time-hungry monster.
• Click on the “Advice” tag for more advice.

Academic Autobiography (usually containing some advice):

• How Did I Get Here? Part I: Up from Adjuncthood.  Despite its unfortunate name (I should have chosen something different, I realize), this tracks my journey from adjunct prof to tenure-track prof. Reprinted in Inside Higher Ed, 1 Oct. 2012.
• How Did I Get Here? Part II: Into Professorland.  This continues that narrative. Reprinted in Inside Higher Ed, 3 Oct. 2012.
• Professional Autodidact; or, How I Became a Children’s Literature Professor.
• Introvert Impersonates Extrovert.  As Morrissey sings in the Smiths’ “Ask,” “Shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you / from doing all the things in life you’d like to.”
• My Book About Me.  There’s not much “academic” in this one, but it does offer a glimpse of my 7-year-old self.

How to Find Good Children’s Books

• How to Find Good Children’s Books
• Emily’s Library: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and more parts to come! Books given to my niece, Emily.  Use the “Emily’s Library” tag to find them all.
• Mock Caldecott (Manhattan, KS): 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013.
• “The Boundaries of Imagination”; or, the All-White World of Children’s Books, 2014
• Click on the “Reviews” tag to find my (few) reviews on this blog.

Short Essays on Children’s Literature or Comics

• Larger subjects:
  • 7 questions we should ask about children’s literature: strategies for responding to racism in children’s books, published on The Oxford University Press Blog, 19 Sept. 2017.
  • Laughter and Resistance: Humor as a Weapon in the Age of Trump, published in The Horn Book, May-June 2017.
  • A Manifesto for Children’s Literature; or, Reading Harold as a Teen-ager, published in The Iowa Review, Fall 2015.
  • The Archive of Childhood, Part 2: The Golliwog. On the lingering influence of racist childhood toys.
  • Avant-Garde Children’s Books; or, What I Learned in Sweden Last Week. An illustrated look at avant-garde books for young readers.
  • Can Censoring a Children’s Book Remove Its Prejudices?  This is one of the most popular posts on this site.
  • Disagreement, Difference, Diversity: A Talk by Christopher Myers. Myers’ ideas (& some of my own) on how to create the space for children’s books that represent difference.
  • Fighting Rape Culture: Steubenville, Activism, and Children’s Books
  • Innocent Children and Frightened Adults: Why Censorship Fails, published on From the Square: The New York University Press Blog, 30 Sept 2015.
  • Little Rebels, Little Conservatives, and Occupy Wall Street.  See also Radical Children’s Literature Now! (handout from Julia Mickenberg’s and my Francelia Butler Lecture at the 2011 Children’s Literature Association conference).
  • More Metafiction for Children.  Includes video of me & list of recommended titles.
  • Ignorance Is Not a Virtue.
  • Why Meghan Can’t Read. A response to Meghan Cox Gurdon’s concerns about darkness in YA literature.
  • Martin Amis, Brain Damage, and Children’s Literature. A response to Mr. Amis’s ill-informed remarks about writing for children.
  • The Picture Book Is Dead. Long Live the Picture Book. A response to that New York Times piece that alleged (sans anything but purely anecdotal evidence) that the picture book sales were declining & thus the genre was in trouble.
• On individual books or authors:
  • Refugee Stories for Young Readers, published in Public Books, 23 Mar. 2017. Review-essay on Francesca Sanna’s The Journey.
  • The Book of Everything.  A few words on Guus Kuijer’s novel, which is one of the greatest books ever written.
  • Bow-Wow!  A brief analysis of Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash’s wonderful Bow-Wow books.
  • “Too Bad His Duck Is So Crazy”: Tim Egan, Seriously Funny.
  • Ferdinand at 75.  Reflections on the classic book by Munro Leaf & Robert Lawson.
  • Harry Potter, Seriously
  • Moomins!  An introduction to Tove Jansson’s most famous characters.
  • Kadir Nelson Is the Best; or, When the Caldecott Committee Strikes Out. On Nelson’s brilliant We Are the Ship.
  • Maurice Sendak’s Will. What the will tells us about the man and the artist.
  • The Most Wild Thing of All: Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012. Remembering Mr. Sendak, and featuring a brief extract from my first telephone interview with him.
  • On Reading the Expurgated Huck Finn; or, Why We Should Teach Offensive Novels.
  • Tributes to Maurice Sendak: Visual Artists Respond.
  • The Purple Crayon’s Legacy, Part 1 and Part 2. On what Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon has influenced. Part 3 to come.
  • Teaching Building Stories.  Some links and suggestions on how to teach Chris Ware’s Building Stories.
  • Click on the “Reviews” tag to find reviews of children’s books.  See also “Recurring Subjects,” below.

Short Essays on Other Subjects

• For Mom. The unconditional love of a parent is not a given. I was a lucky kid to have such a mom.
• If I Were a Middle-Class White Kid, my response to Gene Marks’ well-intentioned but poorly reasoned “If I Were a Poor Black Kid.”
• Let’s Talk About Taste. On Nickelback, Celine Dion, and the subjectivity of musical taste.  And a recommendation that you read Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.
• Regarding the Pain of Racism. On the limits of empathy when considering the pain of others.
• Running Out of Time. On the conflict between the need to create and the need to rest, the striving and the limited time we have in which to strive. First posted on my friend Alison Piepmeier’s blog, Every Little Thing.
• That’s Life. This has nothing to do with the Frank Sinatra song. It’s actually about death, occasioned by a month (May 2012) in which many children’s authors and artists died.
• Telemarketing Kills Charity. Why should one’s reward for donating to a charitable organization be telephone harassment from this same organization?

Occasional Mixes [mp3s no longer on-line, but playlists remain]

• Summertime: The Box Set.  Four mixes for the summer.
• This One’s for the Workers: Labor Songs, 1929-2010.  For Labor Day.
• Back-to-School
  • Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom: A Back-to-School Mix
  • Wordplay: A Mix About Language
• Halloween Box Set: Part I (I Put a Spell on You), Part II (That Old Black Magic), Part III (Zombie Jamboree), Part IV (Living After Midnight), Part V (Wicked & Sweet), Part VI (Season of the Witch), Part VII (People Are Strange), Part VIII (A Shot in the Dark).
• Christmas:
  • Blue Christmas.  A collection of downbeat holiday songs.
  • Essential Holiday Tunes.  A wide variety of upbeat numbers, mostly for Christmas
  • Essential Holiday Tunes, Vol. 2.
  • You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. 15 versions of one song.  Really.
• Rapture Party Mix.  Songs for the end of the world.
• For Boston: A Mix.
• Click on the “Mixes” tag to find other mixes.

Recurring Subjects

• Harry Potter: all posts tagged “Harry Potter”
• Syd Hoff: all posts tagged “Syd Hoff”
• Crockett Johnson: all posts tagged “Crockett Johnson”
• Kansas Board of Regents: all posts tagged “Kansas Board of Regents”
• Ruth Krauss: all posts tagged “Ruth Krauss”
• Race and Racism: all posts tagged “Race” and all tagged “Racism”
• Radical Children’s Literature: all posts tagged “Radical Children’s Literature”
• Maurice Sendak: all posts tagged “Maurice Sendak”
• Dr. Seuss: all posts tagged “Seuss”

Anything else I should add here?  Anything I should subtract?  Let me know.  Thanks!