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Review: I Am Tama, Lucky Cat

You’ve prob­a­bly seen the smil­ing cat fig­urine with the wav­ing right front paw, but have you ever won­dered why it’s there? Told from the cat’s point of view, this charm­ing 32-page pic­ture book tells chil­dren one of the pos­si­ble sto­ries behind it with straight­for­ward prose and stun­ning art­work. It can be enjoyed both for the sto­ry itself and as an

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Fans of FARTISTE

I’m a huge fan of Kath­leen Krull’s non­fic­tion books for kids, so I was sur­prised and dis­ap­point­ed to read her recent arti­cle in the Horn Book about the dif­fi­cul­ties she and her hus­band have had sell­ing their book FARTISTE! I would’ve thought a pic­ture book biog­ra­phy about a per­former who enter­tained audi­ences with his mas­tery of the art of the

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More thoughts on the speculative nonfiction debate

Roger Sut­ton put up this post on the Read Roger blog for con­tin­u­ing the dis­cus­sion about Marc Aron­son’s “New Knowl­edge” arti­cle in the Horn Book, in which Marc argues that non­fic­tion authors should be allowed to spec­u­late, draw con­clu­sions, and reveal their points of view in their books. While I found Marc’s ter­mi­nol­o­gy of “new” ver­sus “old” non­fic­tion to be pejorative,

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6 Lessons Learned from Doing the Picture Book Marathon

I did it. I wrote 26 brand-new pic­­ture-book texts in the 28 days of Feb­ru­ary! Now that I’ve had some time to relax and reflect, I thought I’d share my thoughts on the expe­ri­ence. I start­ed out with great gus­to, then stum­bled in the mid­dle and took a bunch of days off, but man­aged to sprint to the fin­ish to

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Drawing Lines in Nonfiction: “Old” vs. “New”

The March/April 2011 issue of The Horn Book Mag­a­zine is a spe­cial issue devot­ed to “Fact, Fic­tion, and In Between.” It’s a fan­tas­tic com­pendi­um of arti­cles and notes from some of today’s top writ­ers of non­fic­tion for kids, and it’s giv­ing me a lot to think about. I’ll prob­a­bly post more on these thoughts lat­er, but for now, I want­ed to

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Nonfiction Monday book review: Spiky, Slimy, Smooth

I must admit, when my own daugh­ter entered kinder­garten and start­ed the unit on tex­ture, I was sur­prised. Yes, tex­tures are all around us, but what’s to study? These kids are already experts. After all, they’ve been feel­ing tex­tures since before they were born (often with their mouths)! I soon real­ized that’s exact­ly the point, though. They are all around us, but

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February 26th is National Fairy Tale Day!

I love fairy tales. My hus­band loves fairy tales (thanks to him we own an almost com­plete set of the Pan­theon Fairy Tale and Folk­lore Library!). And of course, my kids love fairy tales. Who doesn’t? Old pho­tos of Snow White and one of her dwarfs—Hungry, maybe? While search­ing for ideas for this mon­th’s Pic­ture Book Marathon, I’ve been read­ing more

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Oodles of story ideas!

I’m behind on the Pic­ture Book Marathon and have some seri­ous catch­ing up to do, so I’m going to make this short, but thanks to this Pic­ture Book Marathon blog post, I dis­cov­ered some great new sto­ry idea resources that I just have to share! Author Rick Wal­ton has some great tips for com­ing up with sto­ry ideas here. He lists a

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hearts

Picture Book Marathon–Day 14

Last month, I blogged that I was going to to do two big chal­lenges: the pic­ture book marathon and the Word­Press PostAWeek. I’ve pret­ty much been keep­ing up with the Word­Press PostAWeek chal­lenge. I think I’ve put up some good posts so far, but I’m still a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed with the results. I was hop­ing to get a lit­tle more

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Review: Tom Thumb

TOM THUMB: THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY OF A MAN IN MINIATURE I just fin­ished an advance read­ing copy of TOM THUMB: THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY OF A MAN IN MINIATURE by George Sul­li­van (Clar­i­on; Feb­ru­ary, 2011; 208 pages; grades 5–9). Writ­ing non-fic­­tion is like putting togeth­er the pieces of a puz­zle, says author George Sul­li­van… “I like non­fic­tion because I’m

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