This picture book is a wordless poem, written by a poet yet rendered by an artist. If that description sounds like one of the philosophical questions posed by JonArno Lawson’s poems (“can you remember / how you thought / before you / learned to talk?”), it should. Lawson conceived the book, and Sydney Smith drew
In 2013, the Kansas Board of Regents revoked university employees’ right to freedom of speech, making a fireable offense any speech that might be conceived as disloyal, impair discipline, or fall under the broad category of being “contrary to the best interests of the employer.” Now, the Kansas legislature is proposing legislation that prohibits university
George Nicholson died yesterday. He was 77 years old. He was a legend in children’s publishing. George was in the children’s literature business for over 50 years. In the 1960s, he introduced paperbacks to the children’s book industry. That’s something we take for granted now, but we owe it to George. As an agent (at
Well, as a group, the Niblings are actually two years old – we started in February of 2013. But we four children’s-lit bloggers have just become six children’s-and-YA-lit bloggers! For the official announcement, read on! The Niblings (consisting of bloggers Travis Jonker of 100 Scope Notes, Jules Danielson of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Philip Nel of Nine Kinds of
As you’ve likely heard already, Selma is a powerful film. See it. I cried a fair bit. The violence is palpable. Gunshots, people being gassed, the soggy crunch as truncheon strikes human beings, the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson. The visceral brutality of the whites in power. Watching the film, I kept thinking Ferguson, Ferguson, FERGUSON! And all Ferguson has
The second in my “Archive of Childhood” series. Trigger warning: images of a racist doll appear below. I’ve included it because this post is about racism, and I didn’t feel I could talk about the racism without displaying the doll in question. NOTE. A revised and expanded inquiry into this subject forms the Introduction (“Race,
We tend to imagine the self as an unbroken whole, but it might better be described as plural, a series of selves that, though temporally contiguous (and often overlapping) are not always the “same” self. That’s one of the conclusions suggested by Robert Krulwich in “Who Am I?,” a Radiolab podcast from 2007. It is
“Le p’tit renne au nez rouge” – Jacques Larue’s translation of Johnny Marks’ “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” – reveals the real reason Rudolph’s nose was so red. Contrary to the 1964 Rankin-Bass TV special, its glow was not caused by an incandescent bulb. The last four lines (above) tell us: His little nose made everybody laugh.
In this installment of my Emily’s Library series, I notice there are more contemporary books than usual. I didn’t plan it that way – there are certainly more classics I’d like her to have! But, as noted in earlier posts, my goal is to give my three-year-old niece a personal library of really good books, mixing
Heading to the MLA in Vancouver next month? Well, thanks to Lee Talley (for the children’s lit panels), here’s a list of all the children’s literature and comics/graphic novels panels. If we’ve missed any, then please let me know and I’ll add them! 35. The Graphic South Thursday, 8 January, 12:00 noon—1:15 p.m., 114, VCC West