Spring Break Reading: New Graphic Novels for Ages 7-14!

March 14, 2023 § Leave a comment

Today, I’m kicking off a few posts to help you gear up for Spring Break. Whether you’re staycationing or jet setting, a change in routine and a lack of homework can be the perfect chance to (re)engage kids with reading. Maybe you have time for a family read aloud. (I’ll have suggestions in Thursday’s post.) Maybe, while you’re all sharing a tiny hotel room, you can mandate quiet reading time before bed, a chance for you to model your own reading as your child snuggles in beside you with their own book. (A person can dream, right?)

As always, links will take you to Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA, where I’m the kids’ buyer (thanks for supporting us!), though I’m very happy for you to support an indie closer to you if you have one you love.

First up are my favorite graphic novels released in the first three months of 2023! Your kiddos should have no problem diving straight into these, a mix of realistic fiction, superhero lore, comedic horror, inspiring stories, and nail-biting non-fiction.

Before we get started, there are a couple titles not below that will likely pique the interest of your readers. First, the third in the Batpig series (ages 7-10) comes out later this month; our family are huge fans of Rob Farrell’s wildly clever series, and I believe it to be one of the best (and most underrated!) “things to read after Dog Man.” While we’re on the subject of hooking readers with humor, you’ll thank me for mentioning that the hugely popular Investigators series (also 7-10) has a new spin-off, titled Agents of S.U.I.T., which focuses on Mango and Brash’s eccentric co-workers. Oh, and did I mention the new Hilo is out?

Without further ado, the titles below are arranged from youngest to oldest, so if you have middle schoolers, scroll to the end!

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2022 Gift Guide Addendum (Or, a Last Hurrah Before Hibernating)

December 15, 2022 § Leave a comment

It’s my final blog post of 2022, and I’m closing out the year with a BANG! Today’s book was actually the first book I chose for this year’s Gift Guide, only I had to replace it when the publication date got pushed again and again…and again. For awhile there, it looked like it wasn’t going to come out in 2022 at all, but it’s finally here, and it’s very much worth the wait! So consider this your 2022 Gift Guide ADDENDUM.

I’ve previously established my kids’ obsession with polar bears, not to mention that we probably own every book published on the subject, fiction or non-fiction, so I won’t belabor that now. What I will tell you is that none of the polar bear books on our shelves—none of them!—hold a candle to this one. Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann are no strangers to spectacular narrative non-fiction. Their 2020 title, Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera, meticulously researched and brilliantly executed, won the prestigious Sibert Medal for best informational picture book of the year (plus it was a 2020 Gift Guide pick!). But consider this: honeybees aren’t actually that cute; vital, of course, but not exactly a species you’d like to cuddle. So, imagine Fleming and Rohmann turning that same artistry onto the subject of polar bears—arguably the cutest (albeit deadliest) animals alive!—and you’ll understand why kids are going to swoon over this book.

It’s not just the stunning, oversized oil paintings on every page that make this the standout title of polar bear troves. (Seriously, though, can we talk about the gatefold in the middle of the story?!) Equal parts entertaining and educational, Polar Bear (ages 4-9) is read-aloud gold. The dramatic, lyrical text puts us front and center in an epic, year-long journey of survival. It’s a nail-biter of a odyssey, fueled by instinct and love and threatened by an ever-changing landscape, as a mother polar bear shepherds her two cubs across months and miles of obstacles to find the ice they desperately need to survive. (Rest assured: they all make it.)

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2022 Gift Guide: The Middle-Grade Books (Ages 7-14)

November 22, 2022 § Leave a comment

Ask me what installment of the Gift Guide is my favorite to write, and the answer will always be the middle-grade one. These are the stories that have my heart, the same types of books that once made a reader out of me. As an adult, even if it wasn’t my job to do so, I’d still read them, because they’re that good. If you don’t believe me, I encourage you to try some of the titles below as family read alouds, or simply read them before or after your children finish them (which, by the way, your kids will love you for).

Whereas “middle-grade books” used to mean stories exclusively targeted at ages 8-12, today’s category is increasingly broadening to encompass young teens as well. The result is a kind of Venn diagram of stories. There are stories intended for kids in the middle years of elementary school, which tend to be lighter and faster paced. And then there are heavier, more nuanced stories written for readers who are entering or already tackling the middle-school years. In today’s post, you’ll find plentiful recommendations in both these younger and older middle-grade categories, and they’re presented here in ascending order.

Regardless of where on the spectrum these stories fall, they are exceptional examples of storytelling, with rich language, complex characters, and original twists and turns. For as much as they entertain us, they also make us think about the world around us in new and interesting ways.

2022 has been another banner year for middle-grade books—so much so that the titles below were all published in the second half of the year, many in just the last few weeks. In other words, this is not a “best of 2022” list, because if it was, it would include A Duet for Home, The Last Mapmaker, The Marvellers, Those Kids From Fawn Creek, Zachary Ying and the Last Emperor, Cress Watercress, and Jennifer Chan is Not Alone—all of which were featured in my Summer Reading Guide earlier this year.

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2022 Gift Guide: Graphic Novels for Kids & Teens

November 17, 2022 § Leave a comment

This is always the most requested installment of my Gift Guide, and for good reason! Designed to be read again and again, graphic novels are some of the best books to invest in. Their popularity continues to skyrocket, and with original, thought-provoking stories like the ones below (OK, one is just plain silly and that has value, too!), coupled with beautiful, arresting artwork, we can feel great about our kids losing entire afternoons to them.

We’ve never done the Icelandic Christmas Eve tradition known as Jolabokaflod in our family (though please invite me to be part of your family if you do), but we do place a wrapped book at the foot of each kid’s bed for them to open as soon as they awake on Christmas morning. The idea is to buy us, as parents, a few extra minutes of sleep before the mania begins. And let me tell you: the only books that are going to keep my kids in bed, knowing that their stockings are full to bursting just one floor down, are graphic novels.  

Whether you’re using them as bribery or for their indisputable literary merit, below are my favorite graphic novels of 2022 for gifting. I’ve omitted those I already included in the Summer Reading Guide, though it should be noted that The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza and Swim Team deserve to be in the present company.

Arranged from youngest to oldest, with selections for teens at the end. (As always, links support my work at Old Town Books, where I’m the kids’ buyer. Thank you kindly!)

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2022 Gift Guide: The Novelty Books

November 3, 2022 § Leave a comment

And we’re off and running! Today is the first of my Gift Guide round-ups, and I always like to begin with the Show Stoppers. These are the ultra gifty books of 2022 (past years have seen these and these), and I couldn’t be more excited to share them with you.

After today, we’ll move onto picture books, then graphic novels, middle-grade books, and young adult. Almost 60 titles will comprise this year’s guide in all, a mere fraction of the hundreds I read in order to cull my favorites. I like to think there’s something for everyone here (more than one, if I’m doing my job well!).

(Also PSST, it’s not too late to snag a ticket to one of my live Gift Guide events at Old Town Books in Alexandria, VA. Details here!)

One last thing before we get started: all titles are linked to Old Town Books, the wonderful indie where I work as the children’s buyer. We ship every day (locals can mark books for in-store pick up), so please consider supporting us if you don’t have an indie near you. Independent bookstores strengthen communities!

The books below are presented from youngest to oldest, kids to teens.

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When A Book Comes Along for the Field Trip

January 20, 2022 § 2 Comments

There was no shortage of grumbling when, one morning over winter break, I announced we were going to Arlington National Cemetery, a ten minute drive from our house.

“But we’ve been there a million times,” my son complained.

“You’ve been there exactly once,” I responded. “Plus, my great-grandfather was a Colonel in World War One, and he’s buried there.”

“We know, because you tell us all the time,” my daughter interjected, not to be outdone by her brother.

“Well, we’ve had a Covid Christmas and we need somewhere to go that’s outside, so that’s that,” I issued, like the authoritarian parent I am.

In my 14-year parenting tenure, there has never been an outing I haven’t been able to improve with a children’s book. In this case, I’d had one tucked away for almost a year. I knew the kids would come around. They always come around.

Jeff Gottesfeld’s Twenty-One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, majestically illustrated by Matt Tavares (don’t count him out for a Caldecott), takes us behind the scenes of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier—indisputably the most fascinating part of Arlington Cemetery. No one can help but be awestruck upon beholding the discipline, concentration, and precision of the sentinel guards who keep vigil there, every moment of every day, 365 days a year, in every type of weather.

Especially if you’ve had the chance to read Twenty-One Steps immediately before.

Which our family had, while seated in front of my great-grandparents’ gravestone, under a brilliantly blue December sky, surrounded by thousands of wreaths placed there for the holidays. We read while we waited for the top of the hour, when we headed over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to watch the changing of the guard.

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2021 Gift Guide: Graphic Novels for Ages 7-16

November 23, 2021 § 3 Comments

Give the kids, tweens, and teens what they want! It’s the post many of you have been eagerly awaiting: the 2021 graphic novels that will make your gift-giving prowess shine. As today’s readers continue to inhale the graphic format, more and more gems are being published every week. The competition is getting stiff, my eyes are getting tired, and kids are losing their minds with excitement.

If you’re not sold on your kids reading graphic novels, you can find my top ten list of why this obsession is better than OK here. If you’ve seen firsthand the joy it brings to said children, then you’ve come to the right place. Because the graphic novels below are fan-freaking-tastic. And more than deserving of a bow.   

Please note the age ranges beneath each title, which reflect the maturity of the subject matter. There are selections for kids, tweens, and teens, in that order. And if you need more, no reason any of these or these shouldn’t be added to this list.

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2021 Gift Guide: The Show Stoppers

November 18, 2021 § 6 Comments

Those of us raising bibliophiles—or, should I say, those of us prone to over-indulging on books all year long—are sometimes stumped about what to wrap up for the holidays. What books differentiate themselves as holiday-worthy? Of course, I personally think a great book is as much at home under a Christmas tree as packed in with the groceries on a random Thursday…but I do appreciate that some books have show-stopping power.

And so, I give you these selections for kids and tweens. With a promise that parents will enjoy them almost as much.

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Remembering 9/11 with Five Books for Different Ages

September 2, 2021 § 4 Comments

Everyone has a story about where they were on 9/11, and if you tell yours, you’ll almost certainly be interrupted by someone eager to share theirs. And yet, for stories so easily accessed—seemingly lying in wait on the tip of our tongue—we go to great lengths to keep them from leaking out into mainstream conversation, or even into the privacy of our own homes, without explicit invitation. This is especially true with our children.

Twenty years have passed, but talking about 9/11 with children—especially young children—continues to makes many parents and teachers uncomfortable. I cannot begin to appreciate the trauma of those directly impacted by the horrific events of that day, but even those of us physically distanced from the attacks felt a profound terror course through our veins as we attempted to make sense of what we were seeing on our television screens, as we scrambled to contact loved ones in New York or Washington DC, as we passed subsequent days under eerily silent skies. It was a fear unprecedented for many of us, and it represented a before-and-after moment we can never un-see. Many of us would rather avoid the topic altogether, or gloss over the horrifying details, than pass along that fear to our children.

And yet, our children have spent their entire lives in a post-9/11 world—in the “after,” so to speak. The safety precautions that started in its wake are the only ones our kids have ever known. I let my ten-year-old daughter read Alan Gratz’s Ground Zero (discussed below) earlier this year after she begged, and I waited for her to set it down, to tell me it was too scary, that she never wanted to take an elevator or get on a plane again. But that didn’t happen. She absorbed the horrors in those pages as she had those in The War That Saved My Life, a gorgeous but also heavy novel about World War Two. I might say she hungered for it.

I’ve come to see that my children want us to talk about that day. They want to understand what led to our longest war in history, the tragic aftermath of which is playing out right now. They want to understand the terror we felt. They want, as I do each time I visit my mom in Manhattan, to stand in front of the reflecting pools at the 9/11 Memorial and marvel at the names, to contemplate the absence that the rushing water dies into.

I’ve come to see the value in unburdening this history—both for them and for us. We don’t know exactly where 9/11 will land in history, but we do know that our democracy was attacked that day, that our power structures were undermined, and that we were forced to take stock of the values we hold most dear. The events of that day are not only part of our cultural consciousness, they’re a reminder that we must work every day to uphold the freedom that paves the way for a more just and equitable world. (I had my own 9/11 reckoning earlier this year, when I listened to the astounding audio production of Garrett M. Graff’s The Only Plane in the Sky.)

I’ve come to see the value that good, careful literature offers in imparting this history—and in pointing us towards hope. In the face of egregious violence and horror and loss on 9/11, there were countless narratives of resilience. Of coming together. Of helping and sacrificing and supporting. Of courage in the most unlikely places. As author Jewell Parker Rhodes recently said on a Little Brown panel, “Narrative takes pain and chaos and helps us make sense of it in a way that allows us to move toward healing.”

Children’s books have a universally honored obligation to end with hope, no matter the subject. It’s what makes them so sacred. The books I discuss below—some a few years old and some published to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of 9/11—take the trauma of that day and transform it into history with grace and beauty. There’s an immensely moving and uplifting picture book that allows the smallest child to connect with the absence and loss surrounding 9/11—I would not hesitate to read it to a four year old, nor to any age for that matter—and there are chapter books that approach the subject from various angles (and with various levels of violence). There’s an outstanding graphic novel that manages a comprehensive study of the subject in just over 100 pages. As always, I provide age ranges below each title.

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Reality Trumps Fiction (Take Two)

August 5, 2021 § 1 Comment

Way back in 2013, when my kids thought all the best stories had to be “made-up,” I wrote a blog post about how, occasionally, reality trumps fiction. That is to say, sometimes a story blows our mind, not only because it’s beautiful and moving and awe-inspiring and original, but also because it happens to be true. Kids today have no shortage of options for picture book biographies, true stories about incredible individuals told with spellbinding art and captivating narratives, but when it comes to the animal world, the emphasis has historically been on information versus story.

Maybe that’s why The Elephants Come Home: A True Story of Seven Elephants, Two People, and One Extraordinary Friendship (Ages 6-9), written by Kim Tomsic and illustrated by Hadley Hooper, feels so special. It tells an amazing story—a story we’d warm to even if it was entirely made-up—but it gives us an added case of the goosies because we know from the start that it really happened. Or maybe it’s because the book straddles the animal and human world, allowing for some of the same storytelling prowess that has made picture book biographies soar in popularity. Or maybe it’s because it is stunningly executed (that paper! those colors! that art! those page turns!). Whatever the case, it’s hands down one of the best examples of narrative non-fiction I’ve ever come across. Even my daughter, age ten, has inhaled its 58 pages again and again. (If you trust me, stop reading to avoid the spoilers below and go get the book!)

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Earth Day! New Non-Fiction Celebrating Our Planet

April 22, 2021 Comments Off on Earth Day! New Non-Fiction Celebrating Our Planet

Every year on Earth Day, I smile thinking about my son at age four, who looked up at me with his big brown eyes and asked, “Mommy, aren’t we supposed to care about the Earth every day?” Yes, my boy. Same with Black history and women’s history and all the rest of these annual celebrations. But it sure is nice, now and then, to be nudged to think about our home libraries, about how we might freshen them up in a way that leads to better, richer dialogues with our children. After all, books bring with them such marvelous reminders of what a special, precious gift this planet is.

Today, I’m sharing three new non-fiction titles, targeting a range of ages. Each delivers a wealth of information—be it flowers, trees, or climate change—in clever, arresting, beautiful presentations. These aren’t the non-fiction books of our childhood, with tiny type and dizzying details. They’re a testament to a new way of presenting scientific content to kids, one which doesn’t sacrifice visual ingenuity or narrative appeal. They’re books we parents won’t get tired reading. In fact, we’re likely to learn things alongside our children. What better way to model caring for our planet than showcasing our own curiosity and discovery?

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How Will We Remember This L(o)st Year?

March 11, 2021 § 2 Comments

I’ve been accused of using these pages as a kind of glorified baby book, and if that’s true, I appreciate you indulging me. In the trappings of our busy-ness, we don’t take enough opportunities to pause and process our life experiences—the good and the bad, the big and the small—and I have found blogging to be (almost) as therapeutic as a conversation with a good girlfriend over a glass of wine.

But I would argue that children’s books themselves can be gateways to reflection—as much for us as for our kids. Sharing them offers a respite, a chance to connect with our little ones, while their content strips back unnecessary clutter, revealing something of life’s essentiality, its basic truths, through economies of words and pictures. Even when they’re not expressly representing our own experiences, children’s books reflect back the life taking place in and around us.

It has been exactly one year since I sat around a table with my daughter and her classmates to lead what would be our last in-person book club. Several of the children knew almost nothing about the coronavirus that would shut down their school—and life as they knew it—just twenty-four hours later. When I arrived to pick up my daughter the next day, teachers threw hastily gathered notebooks and supplies into the back of our car, and my daughter and her carpool group climbed into their seats looking shell-shocked. Some giggled nervously. One started crying.

How do we want to remember this last year—a year that took so much, that has produced a kind of cumulative weariness we’d like nothing more than to shed, but was also not without moments of profound beauty and growth?

As it turns out, I have the perfect book for memorializing this time, for helping children of all ages process what they’ve seen and felt, done and not done. LeUyen Pham’s astute and gracefully executed Outside, Inside (Ages 3-103) is one that might find its forever home on a shelf beside baby books and photo albums. A book our children might someday take down and share with their own kids—let me show you what it was like when “everybody who was outside…went inside.” Amidst the many new children’s books tackling the subject of lockdown, this one rises to the top. Many would have us believe it was all rainbows, but this one holds the sadness alongside the wonder, the uncertainty alongside the hope. Outside, Inside reminds us that a new day is dawning, but we will never forget how we got here.

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2020 Gift Guide: Favorite Graphic Novels for Ages 6-15

November 5, 2020 § 7 Comments

Back by popular demand: an installment of my Gift Guide devoted entirely to my favorite graphic novels of the year! Graphic novels make some of the best gifts. Not only are they coveted among emerging readers, tween readers, and teen readers alike, but they invite repeat readings. I’ve watched my kids race through a new graphic novel as soon as they get it, then a few days later start it over again, spending more time on each page. After that, they might set it down for a few weeks or months or years, only to pick it up again with fresh eyes. It’s no wonder many of the graphic novels below took over a year to create; they are packed with visual nuance, literary allusions, and layered meanings. Like treasured friends, graphic novels grow with their readers.

I read dozens and dozens of graphic novels in preparation for this post. Below are the ones that rose to the top in originality, beauty, fun, diversity, or impact. A few of these you’ll remember from a blog post I did earlier this year, but they bear repeating because they’re that good. There are others, like the new graphic adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches, which my daughter was horrified wasn’t included here. I simply had to draw the line somewhere.

The list begins with selections for younger kids and concludes with teens. Enjoy and happy gifting!

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2020 Gift Guide Kicks Off: My Favorite Chapter Book

October 15, 2020 § 2 Comments

Yes, it’s time! With supply chain challenges predicted towards the end of the year, and reading one of the few escapes we’re allowed these days, I’m kicking off this year’s Gift Guide a few weeks early, and you can expect weekly posts through Thanksgiving. There will be lots of round-ups with lists for all ages, littles through teens. (And yes, there will be one exclusively on graphic novels.) But I’m beginning today by highlighting one verrrrrry special book that came out this week. Usually, I kick off my Gift Guide with my favorite picture book of the year (and we’ll get to that, I promise), but I’m turning tradition on its head (it’s 2020, after all) and we’re going to start with a book for older readers and listeners. If you keep your eyes on my Instagram this week, you could even win a copy!

Let me start by saying that I am not, by nature, a nonfiction fan. Let me add that I don’t think my ten-year-old daughter has ever picked up a nonfiction book of her own volition. (She rarely lets me read the Author’s Note in a picture book!) Then there’s the fact that this book chronicles a story whose ending most of us already know. In fact, it’s one our family has already encountered in two previous kids’ books. So, how on earth did this nonfiction book—229 pages before the additional 40 pages of footnotes—end up a favorite 2020 read of our entire family?

I remember like it’s yesterday: picking up my son at camp the first week of July, 2018, and having him greet me every afternoon with, “Are they out yet?” Since June 23, our family—like millions around the world—had been glued to the news coverage of the twelve young soccer players and their coach, trapped inside a rapidly flooding cave in Northern Thailand after a field trip went wrong. The successful seventeen-day rescue mission that followed, where thousands of rescuers from around the world tackled one seemingly impossible obstacle after another, captivated people not only because of its tremendous scope and scale, but because at the center was a group of sweet, soccer-loving kids.

As it turns out, Thai-American children’s author Christina Soontornvat was visiting family in Thailand at the time, her plane touching down the same day the children went missing. We may have been riveted by the story on our other side of the globe, but the Thai people were consumed by it. Life as they knew it was temporarily suspended. Schools were closed; vigils were held. Farmers voluntarily sacrificed their land to the drainage operation, while others led drillers through the wild jungles surrounding the cave, and still others cooked food for volunteers. The experience for Soontornvat was such that, a few months later, she returned to Northern Thailand to spend time with the rescued boys and their coach, paving the way for an exhaustive undertaking of interviews with nearly all the key figures in the rescue.

In All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys Soccer Team (Ages 10-16), Soontornvat has written a chapter book that reads like fiction while telling the most textured, suspenseful, holistic version of this incredible true story to date. If there was ever a year when we needed a story that showcases the very best of humanity—the strength, ingenuity, and kindness exhibited when we come together as helpers—it is 2020.

Give this book to the tweens and teens in your life. If they won’t pick it up, read it to them, because there’s a particular power in hearing Soontornvat’s words spoken aloud. My teenage son inhaled this book on his own, but I read it aloud to my daughter, and it was she who kept exclaiming, “I know what’s going to happen, and I’m still on the edge of my seat!” I’ve often heralded how fun it is to learn alongside our children, and All Thirteen is a brilliant example of a book that has something to teach us—about Thai culture, about science and engineering, about the nail-biting niche of cave diving, and about the nature of teamwork and the human capacity for survival—on every single page.

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Concluding Black History Month on the Train

February 27, 2020 Comments Off on Concluding Black History Month on the Train

Every year, once in the fall and once in the spring, I take each of my children on a mommy-and-me trip to New York City for a long weekend in the city where I grew up. We board the train in Alexandria, Virginia and make stops in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; Newark, Delaware; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and, finally, New York City, Penn Station. My kids have come to enjoy the train ride almost as much as the destination itself, glancing up from their books to watch the changing scenery speeding by—there is something innately lolling and contemplative about train travel—and anticipating the stops to come.

These same train stops come to life against an important and fascinating historical backdrop in Overground Railroad (Ages 4-9), a new picture book by superstar husband-and-wife team Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome, whose Before She Was Harriet I praised around this same time last year. “Isn’t it supposed to be “Underground Railroad?” my daughter asked, when I picked up the book to read it to her. Admittedly, I was equally stumped. As the Author’s Note explains, most people are familiar with the covert network known as the Underground Railroad, which assisted runaway slaves on their journey to the North, usually on foot. Lesser known but often equally secretive, the Overground Railroad refers to the train and bus routes traveled by millions of black Americans during the Great Migration, a time when former slaves opted to free themselves from the limitations and injustices of sharecropping to seek out better employment and educational opportunities in the North. Faced with the threat of violence from the owners of these tenant farms, who relied on the exploitation of sharecroppers for their livelihood, those who escaped often had to do so under cover of night.

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Better Together (Maybe for the Apocalypse, Too?)

February 6, 2020 § 1 Comment

A year or so ago, I was at a summer garden party, all twinkling lights and umbrella drinks, when the conversation took a dark turn. Several folks, none of whom I knew terribly well, began to discuss and debate the provisions they had stored away in the event of an apocalypse. I sat quietly, picturing my own basement with its boxed wedding dress, foosball table, and toys I’d stashed hoping my kids wouldn’t notice so I could gradually move them to the donation bin, and realized how far a cry this was from the scene being described. No crates of non-perishable food, no industrial sized jugs of water, no iodine pills in the event of a nuclear attack, no walkie talkies, no axes, definitely no guns to take down squirrels that could comprise my protein quota.

“Don’t you worry about how you’re going to protect your family?” someone said to me, after I tried to make a joke about my foosball table. I conjured up an image of myself, defending my children against other crazed survivors—all of us presumably reduced to looters or murderers—and I said, only half joking, “In the case of an apocalyptic event, I think it would be best for the future of humanity if my family made a quick exit.” To put it mildly, living off the land in the dark and cold for an extended period of time isn’t really in our wheelhouse.

Last month brought a fresh wave of worry for those of us working hard not to picture End of the World scenarios. We were on the brink of a war with the Middle East. The continent of Australia was burning. A mysterious and deadly virus was (is) rapidly spreading out of China. If we believe apocalyptic-themed fiction, it’s not long until we will be wandering alone in the dark and cold, assuming we are unlucky enough to survive.

And yet, at a time when the news threatens to send us into an ethos of fear and anxiety—to fathom ways of constructing safe houses around our loved ones—children’s literature is there, reliably, with a hefty dose of optimism, a welcome respite from the dark and cold. Especially where gems like Hannah Salyer’s debut picture book, Packs: Strength in Numbers (Ages 5-9), are concerned, we would do well to remember that the animal kingdom has always survived when it turns towards, not away, from one another.

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Never Too Old to Learn

January 30, 2020 § 6 Comments

Last week, I flew to Boston to see my 101-year-old grandmother for what will likely be the last time. Her lucidity came and went throughout our few hours together, and at times she seemed to look at me and see a much younger version of her granddaughter. “What are your studying in school?” she asked.

“I’m not in school anymore,” I answered. “I’m all grown up! I have kids in school now.”

“That’s no excuse!” she exclaimed, in a playful but insistent tone I recognized all too well.

Perhaps she was simply covering up her mistake. But perhaps not. My paternal grandmother may have attended college for only two years, but she spent much of her adult and geriatric life chasing down knowledge wherever she could. She read biographies voraciously. She traveled the world. She referred to herself as a “news junkie” when you came upon her studying a newspaper. When she moved into her retirement home at 88, she signed up for every class they offered, from Buddhism to World War Two. “I’m taking a fascinating class about the decision to drop the atomic bomb,” she reported on the phone one day. “It has me quite disturbed, actually.”

On another call: “I’m reading E.O. Wilson’s new book. He’s an absolutely brilliant biologist. I’m not sure I’m understanding a word of it, but I suppose some of it might be sneaking in!”

Learning as something to be seized and cherished is a value I will always credit to my grandmother. Still, learning is a luxury not afforded to all, and nowhere is this more painfully evident than in the stories of American slaves. Rita Lorraine Hubbard’s new picture book biography, The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read (Ages 6-10), movingly illustrated by collage artist Oge Mora, tells the incredible true story of a former slave who achieved her lifelong dream of learning to read at the astounding age of 116.

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2019 Gift Guide: Nonfiction Favs for Ages 4-14

December 5, 2019 § 8 Comments

Our children are blessed to be growing up at a time when kids’ nonfiction is being published almost as rapidly as fiction—and with as much originality! On this comprehensive list you’ll find new books for a range of ages on a range of subjects, including geology, biology, astronomy, art, World War Two, American History, survival, current events…and even firefighting. (Psst, I’m saving nonfiction graphic novels for the next post, just to give you something to look forward to.) Hooray for a fantastic year for nonfiction!

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When is a Stone a Story?

September 12, 2019 § 5 Comments

If we want our children to entertain different perspectives when they get to middle or high school—to become critical thinkers and contributors—then they should have opportunities from an early age to consider that there is more than one way to see the world.

Picture book author-illustrator Brendan Wenzel is making something of a name for himself when it comes to creating books for young children about perspective and perception (his groundbreaking debut, They All Saw a Cat, received a Caldecott honor). His newest, A Stone Sat Still (Ages 4-7), similarly rendered with richly textured, mixed-media art and spare, poetic language, stole my heart from the moment I opened it (do yourself a favor and remove the jacket cover, because WOW). Even my children, well outside the target age, were captivated. This is visual storytelling at its best, where every page asks the reader to engage: to wonder, question, and understand. « Read the rest of this entry »

Taking Up Space (A Black History Month Post)

February 21, 2019 § 2 Comments

In her modern dance classes, my daughter cherishes above all the few minutes devoted to “sparkle jumps.” One by one, the dancers crisscross the studio at a run. As each one reaches the middle, she explodes into a leap, arms reaching up and out, head tall, like the points of a star. For one perfect moment, my daughter takes up as much space as her little body will allow.

“I love watching you take up space,” I tell her. « Read the rest of this entry »

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