WHEN HURRICANE KATRINA HIT HOME Gail Langer Karwoski, illustrations by Julia Marshall Good news update! WHEN HURRICANE KATRINA HIT HOME was selected as a Notable Book for Older Readers by the Sydney Taylor Awards, the Association of Jewish Libraries. What…
Category: People & Places
A General’s Life After War: Review of The Compassionate Warrior
A growing body of literature for middle grade and teen readers explores the lives of child soldiers, young refugees, and other survivors of war. In the past, however, biographies of those who sent others to war often celebrated the feats…
CHILDREN OF THE TIPI
Children of the Tipi: Life in the Buffalo Days Edited by Michael Oren Fitzgerald Children of the Tipi is a treasure. The book shares both images and words that accomplish so well what Michael Fitzgerald describes in his Editor’s…
DAZZLING BOOK – JOSEPHINE: THE DAZZLING LIFE OF JOSEPHINE BAKER
Today is a designated day for celebrating multicultural books for children. I chose a biography – just out – JOSEPHINE: THE DAZZLING LIFE OF JOSEPHINE BAKER by Patricia Hruby Powell and illustrated by Christian Robinson, Chronicle. What fun to read…
Writing Crossing Cultural Borders-An Introduction to a new blog series
This week’s guest post comes to us via Emily Jiang. Emily Jiang is a poet, writer, & composer. She is the author of Summoning the Phoenix, illustrated by April Chu, and published by Shen’s Books, an imprint of Lee &…
Madiba, hamba kahle kwezulu….Nelson Mandela, rest in peace.
Madiba, hamba kahle kwezulu–the translation is “Nelson Mandela, travel safely to heaven.” I wanted to take a minute to pay tribute to South Africa’s most famous fighter against injustice and racism, Nelson Mandela, who died yesterday after a long bout…
The Matchbox Diary
The Matchbox Diary not only has absolutely gorgeous, realistic illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline, it has an inventive story by Paul Fleischman. The great-grandfather and great-granddaughter, not named in the story, take a journey back in time through the old man’s…
Review: Boxers & Saints
While it did not claim the top prize, it’s easy to see why Gene Luen Yang’s latest work, the two-volume set Boxers and Saints (First Second, 2013), was a finalist for this year’s National Book Award. Like in his National…
On Leadership and Social Justice: A Review of March Book One
As a college student in 1958, John Lewis read a comic-book account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the activism of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By that point, Lewis had come to question the Jim Crow measures that limited…
HOW I BECAME A GHOST
HOW I BECAME A GHOST, A CHOCTAW TRAIL OF TEAR’S STORY by Tim Tingle From Chapter 1, “Talking Ghost” “MAYBE YOU HAVE never read a book written by a ghost before. I am a ghost…I should tell you something…