The children’s novel The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs (published 1921) provides a unique early twentieth century portrayal of a particular summer of two city teenagers spending a summer with a dull but wealthy uncle, the intrigue of the story is predictable and lacks true excitement. Children today will not be impressed with the outdated

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I love the unique style of Tomie dePaola, and I was so sad to hear that this iconic children’s illustrator passed away this year. I read Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola (Holiday House, 1992) two years when my daughter and I were learning Medieval history. In this biographic picture book, dePaola writes

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We recently listened to an amazing audiobook that surprised me by its depth and language. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin is a Newbery Honor book for good reason. By weaving Chinese traditional folktale into a modern story about a girl living in poverty, Ms Lin creates a fairy tale odyssey that

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In his note following his picture book, The Grasshopper and the Ants (Little, Brown and Company 2015), Caldecott Medalist Jerry Pinkney says the picture book is intended to be an “homage to nature.” The rich details of the summer and autumn turning in to winter certainly provide an appropriate homage. As with his richly illustrated

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Our homeschool studies took us to Australia this month! One picture book we enjoyed helped us appreciate the size of Australia and the various scenery. Are We There Yet? by Alison Lester was a child’s perspective of a month-long road trip around Australia. My four-year-old son enjoyed learning about the various landmarks and began to

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As the title and the cartoonish digitally rendered illustrations may suggest, I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat: History’s Strangest Cures by Carlyn Beccia (Houghton Mifflin, 2010) is a rather silly book. By providing quizzes along the lines of “which remedy will help you feel better?” Ms. Beccia manages to surprise the reader

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When my son and this blog were newborns, I purchased a copy of Seth Lerer’s Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History and began reading some of the classic children’s books that I loved as a child and/or that have been influential in creating children’s literature as we know it. My project through the classics in that

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Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by time. (page 1) From this beginning, Zora Neale

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My Caldecott challenge: Although these Caldecott winner and honor books are not, for the most part, books I’ve read aloud to my son, I still found them interesting. A few I had strong negative opinions of; they show that even books that earned the Caldecott award do become dated! The 1975 Caldecott winner, Arrow to

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