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On a visit with our downstairs neighbors Reach Out and Read, I learned that their CEO Earl Martin Phalen blogs for The Huffington Post on the topics of early education, literacy, and parenting.

Phalen recently interviewed National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Walter Dean Myers about literacy and his ambassadorial platform “Reading is not an option.” One of my favorite moments:

I was raised in a foster home and my mom was not a wonderful reader—she could read with her finger tracing the words. She would read with me maybe three days a week. I looked forward to that time—it was just mom and me. I wasn’t conscious of learning anything—I was just sharing the time with her. And eventually by the time I was four I was picking up words because she was reading primarily True Romance magazines. By the time I was five, I could sit there and read to her. And it was not something that I was formally learning or she was formally teaching me. It was just the time that we spent and shared together. . . . What I’m seeing is that many of the parents think you have to be a really good reader to teach your child. And that’s not true.

Read the abridged interview or listen to it in its entirety here.

From the May/June 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine:
Reviewer Christine Hepperman asks Traction Man and the Beach Odyssey author/illustrator Mini Grey about a new favorite character. Read the full review of Traction Man and the Beach Odyssey here.

Christine M. Hepperman: Will Beach-Time Brenda reappear in future books, maybe headline a series of her own?

Mini Grey: Oooh—there’s an idea. Poor Brenda might have to wrestle with some undignified situations in the ordinary world, but perhaps save the day through the power of cocktail snacks, canapés, and optimism. I can see her battling household appliances and all sorts of other horrors and having to get very very dirty. But she’d need a sidekick—or could she share Scrubbing Brush?

Robin McKinley won the 1985 Newbery for her high fantasy The Hero and the Crown, in which Aerin, the outcast daughter of the king, battles the great dragon Maur. Can you guess which of these Newbery-winning books is the author’s favorite?

a) Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi (2003)
b) Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (1990)
c) Smoky, the Cowhorse by Will James (1927)

This post is part of our ongoing game matching Newbery and Caldecott medalists to their favorite winning titles. To see more entries, click on the tag matching game.

Previously: Neil Gaiman, Erin E. Stead, Lois Lowry, Linda Sue Park, Beth Krommes, Susan Cooper, Jerry Pinkney, Paul O. Zelinsky, Russell Freedman, Sharon Creech, and Emily Arnold McCully.

Coming soon: David Wiesner and Laura Amy Schlitz.

Illustration by Devon Johnson

Startlingly similar blurbs on the ARCs of these upcoming YA titles grabbed my attention.

on Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury, August 2012):
“perfect for fans of George R.R. Martin and Suzanne Collins”

on Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes (Penguin/Razorbill, December 2012):
“ideal for fans of George R.R. Martin and Kristin Cashore”

As a serious fantasy and sci-fi nerd, I can say that I’m a fan of George R.R. Martin, Suzanne Collins, and Kristin Cashore—but I have to wonder whether there’s much overlap in YA readership among the three. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, featuring lots of gory battle scenes, incest, torture, and dark magic, is not for the faint of heart even among adult readers. The popular HBO show Game of Thrones based on the series—which wrapped up its second season last night—is, if anything, even more graphic. (Did you see Saturday Night Live‘s recent Game of Thrones behind-the-scenes skit?)

Are fans of Collins and Cashore really reading Martin, or is it the other way around?

Here are some of the first pictures of Horn Book Editor in Chief Roger Sutton and 2010  Fiction Award winner Rebecca Stead making this year’s Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards announcement. Stay tuned for more pictures and video!

photo by Philippe Matas

Neil Gaiman won the 2009 Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book, the Jungle Book–inspired story of a living boy raised by ghosts. Guess which of these titles is his favorite Newbery winner.

a) Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos (2012)
b) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (1963)
c) When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (2010)

This post is part of our ongoing game matching Newbery and Caldecott medalists to their favorite winning titles. To see more entries, click on the tag matching game.

Coming soon: Jerry Pinkney, David Weisner, and Sharon Creech.

The Horn Book Magazine asked Newbery and Caldecott Medalists Jerry Pinkney, Lois Lowry, Erin E. Stead, and David Wiesner (just to name a few!) to choose their favorite winning books from years past.

Over the next few weeks, we’re putting readers to the test with a Medalist matching game. For each author or illustrator, you’ll be given three possible titles. Click on the correct one and you’ll see that person’s writing about his or her fave; click on the other choices for surprises from The Horn Book.

We kick things off with 2009 Newbery Medalist and Boston Globe–Horn Book Award honoree Neil Gaiman.

To see all game entries, click on the tag matching game. Also check out the July/August 2012 Horn Book Magazine for all the answers, along with the 2012 Newbery, Caldecott, and Coretta Scott King Award speeches, The Horn Book‘s Mind the Gap Awards (books that didn‘t win), and much more!

Photo by Nicole Haley

2012 BGHB honoree Erin E. Stead received the 2011 Caldecott for A Sick Day for Amos McGee (written by husband Philip C. Stead). When Amos, a kindly zookeeper, is stuck home with a cold, his charges visit to cheer him up. Guess which of the titles below is the illustrator’s favorite Caldecott winner.

a) Sylvester and the Magic Pebbleby William Steig (1970)
b) A Tree Is Nice written by Janice Udry and illustrated by Marc Simont (1957)
c) The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1963)

This post is part of our ongoing game matching Newbery and Caldecott medalists to their favorite winning titles. To see more entries, click on the tag matching game.

Previously: Neil Gaiman.
Coming soon: Susan Cooper, Linda Sue Park, and David Wiesner.

It’s the second Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means! Notes from The Horn Book, our monthly email newsletter, is on its way to inboxes everywhere.

This month we have something special: a Maurice Sendak-only edition to remember the great illustrator and celebrate his June 10th birthday. In this issue, Roger talks with the Sendak Fellows about their mentor; we also highlight Sendak’s work across many genres.

Click here to read the newsletter online, or subscribe to have it delivered each month. In the newsletter archives you’ll find more great recommended books and author/illustrator interviews.

From the May/June 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine:
Cynthia Ritter asks A Bus Called Heaven author/illustrator Bob Graham about the idea behind his new picture book. Read the full review of A Bus Called Heaven here.

Cynthia Ritter: Was your inspiration for the book a real bus?

Bob Graham: I did see such a bus parked in the street, and I learned our granddaughter Rosie had looked inside.

I said, “What did you see, Rose?” A girl of few words, she replied, “Candles.” It was not the vehicle’s contents that inspired my first scribbling, it was the image of a child on tiptoe peering into the windows of an old bus with a package-taped sign reading “Heaven.”

Photo by Marguerite Krommes

Beth Krommes received the 2009 Caldecott Medal for The House in the Night, written by Susan Marie Swanson. Her black, white, and gold scratchboard art perfectly complements the poetic bedtime tale.  Guess which of the titles below is the illustrator’s favorite Caldecott winner.

a) Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes (2005)
b) My Friend Rabbit by Eric Rohmann (2003)
c) Owl Moon written by Jane Yolen and illustrated by John Schoenherr (1988)

This post is part of our ongoing game matching Newbery and Caldecott medalists to their favorite winning titles. To see more entries, click on the tag matching game.

Previously: Neil Gaiman, Erin E. Stead, Lois Lowry, and Linda Sue Park.
Coming soon: Susan Cooper, Jerry Pinkney, and David Wiesner.

Illustration by Devon Johnson

If you were like me, you applauded Press Here, the ingenious book by Hervé Tullet, for its anti-app bravado. If the news that there is now an app version (Chronicle, April) of the book disgusts you, please don’t be too quick to judge.

The first thing to realize is that Press Here was translated from the French, in which it was called Un Livre—”A Book”—and in most of the many languages it’s been translated into, the original title stuck. The French version of the “Press Here” app came out about a year ago and was titled “Un Jeu,” or “A Game.” In other words, it was not necessarily an app of the book but was rather Tullet’s exploration of his yellow, red, and blue dots in a completely different format.

In its English translation of Un Livre, Chronicle Books chose a title that emphasized the book’s interactive nature. For obvious reasons, when Chronicle made the English-language version of the “Un Jeu” app, they chose to stick with the book’s title. A bit confusing, n’est pas?

Unlike the book, pressing dots in this app actually does make something happen, but what that is may not be what you were expecting. Tullet makes up his own rules and the player’s goal is not to win but to figure out what those rules are. There are fifteen separate games, each using the hand-drawn dot motif of the book. But to call them games is a bit deceptive. They start out seeming like little puzzles to solve, but in fact most have no fixed conclusion.

They are more like little scientific explorations perfectly suited to  2- to 5-year-olds. And adults. Remember those non-competitive games that became popular in the 1970s, intended to encourage youth groups and corporate retreaters to enjoy the journey rather than aim for a destination? That’s what Tullet does here.

The home screen shows five rows of three dots, lined up like app icons and jiggling around a bit. Pressing a dot reveals a game title. Press again and you enter that game (or diversion, experience, puzzle — whatever you want to call it). In each, the player must explore by tapping and dragging dots and blank screens. In some games, tapping a dot changes its color. In others, it makes the dot larger. One game gives the dots magnetic properties. You can make fireworks, play foosball (without numeric score), play with “rain,” test your memory with a lotto game, and more.

My personal favorites are the ones that create music. I still haven’t completely figured out what they are doing, but I find that playing around with them is both engrossing and relaxing. The game called “Music Box” has something to do with gears and old records. You tap to add dots that will connect to some extra-fancy dots (little round doodles) and when you have connected a certain number of them, music begins to play. As you connect more disks, more layers are added to the music — repeated bass riffs, treble, etc.

The other two music games are called “Many Roads” and “Free Play.” In the first, three open dots or circles (blue, yellow, red) are seen. Pressing on each plays a bit of music: blue is clarinet, yellow is oboe, and red is flute. As you press longer on the initial circles, additional dots fill in a grid and the music becomes more complex. When the music dots reach an impasse, a boing sound signals the star

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, editor Holly Thompson, a YA author (Orchards, a 2012 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults book) and a longtime resident of Japan, became especially concerned about teen survivors of the quake and tsunami. She decided to collect YA short fiction from writers and translators connected to Japan either by heritage or experience, offering stories that would allow readers worldwide to “visit” Japan.

The thirty-six stories of Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press, March) cover a wide range of genres (prose, verse, graphic narratives) and feature nine stories translated from the Japanese. With the exception of Graham Salisbury and Alan Gratz, most of the authors, many of whom write for adults, will be new to American teens. The book was published in March to mark the one-year anniversary of the disaster, and proceeds will go to Hope for Tomorrow, which provides educational expenses, mentoring, tutoring, and foreign language support to high school students in the hard-hit area of Tohoku.

In honor of National Poetry Month and Poem in Your Pocket Day, we’ve put together a booklist of verse narratives across audience age and genre. Want a historical fiction verse novel or a picture book in poems? Look no further. These books were all published in the last few years and recommended by The Horn Book Magazine.

We’d love to hear from you—what are your favorite stories in verse?

Children’s Book Week is May 7–13, 2012. Visit the Children’s Book Council’s website for events and information.

You may also get a kick out of these early ads for Children’s Book Week. They came to us courtesy of K. T. Horning whose article in the upcoming July/August 2012 Horn Book Magazine examines the old-as-the-hills arguments about popular vs. distinguished when awards season rolls around.

Our May Notes from The Horn Book newsletter, featuring an interview with illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky, is out! Here’s what else you’ll find in this issue:

- animal behaving badly in picture books
- nonfiction bug books
- mystery novels for middle-graders
- sci-fi and fantasy YA sequels

View the newsletter online, or subscribe to have it delivered each month. Make sure to check out our newsletter archives for more great recommended books and author/illustrator interviews.

Ellen Levine, award-winning children’s author and tireless advocate for social justice, has passed away. Here are some Horn Book reviews of her most influential works.

Leo Dillon has passed away. Over a career that spanned five decades, the formidable illustrator, along with his collaborator and wife Diane, won numerous awards, including two Caldecott Medals (Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, 1976 and Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, 1977), a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, and several Coretta Scott King Honors.

Editor Phyllis J. Fogelman shares her thoughts about the Dillons in a 1976 piece in The Horn Book Magazine.

In this entertaining article from a 1977 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, Leo and Diane pay tribute to each other — and son Lee talks about them both.

The Dillons in 1977. Photograph by Kenneth M. Bernstein.

The Dillons at the Eric Carle Museum in 2008. Photo by Deborah Hallen.

Help! There is an onion trapped in this book, destined for certain death! It is up to us to save her from the Big Fry, the greatest fear of onions everywhere. But this onion has hope: “Yet I have been told / That there’s a way out / For an ONION who challenges, / Questions and doubts.”

All pretty mystifying and just plain weird, but readers interested in existential philosophizing may be tickled by the onion-like layers of meaning in Sara Fanelli’s interactive book The Onion’s Great Escape (Phaidon, May).

The book has no qualms about jumping into fundamental questions from the first peel. At the start of the volume, an onion’s face emerges from a series of solid red-washed double-page spreads. “WHO AM I?” the onion asks, soon followed by “WHO ARE YOU?” Faced with her imminent death, the onion leads us through an exploration of deep concepts like fear, time, memory, reality, imagination, and morality.

As we move from contemplation to contemplation, we punch out the onion’s perforated silhouette.

With each poignant question, we shed one more layer of the onion—or something like that.Then as we think about the onion’s thoughts and ask ourselves those same questions, we gradually free the onion from the book, and from her fate. (How exactly? I’m not entirely sure.) Then we can make a 3-D model of the onion that we’ve liberated from the prison of her pages.

Mechanically speaking, it’s hard to re-read the book once the onion has been freed, because a lot of relevant text and images appear directly on the form of the now-flown onion. But the self-actualization is worth it—at least to the onion.

"Who are you?"

When I came across this book, it made enough of an impression for me to want to mention it well past its August 2011 publication date. Peter H. Reynolds’s I’m Here (Atheneum) is a welcome addition to the growing body of (mostly mediocre) children’s literature dealing with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and Asperger’s Syndrome in particular. This one addresses the topic in what I find the most effective way: without explicitly mentioning it—unless you count the jacket flap, which explains that Reynolds wrote the book “to help us all reach out, embrace, and appreciate children in the autism spectrum, as well as anyone who is different from ourselves.”

Several YA books, especially Francisco X. Stork’s Marcelo and the Real World and Katherine Erskine’s Mockingbird, deal stirringly with the realities of Asperger’s. But—not to point fingers at many well-meaning authors who have attempted to address this tough topic—this is the first picture book I’ve seen that’s a story lending insight into the complexities and nuances of ASD, rather than an overly didactic teaching tool.

Reynolds depicts scenes familiar to many a kid coping with ASD in sparse, simple text: “They are there. I am here.” is accompanied by a gulf of white space between a group of kids playing and one boy who just looks, well, confused.

And he is: despite his loneliness, he has no idea what to do to connect with his peers. Ultimately he’s distracted by a paper sailing by. Befriending the paper (“No worries, friend. I am here.”), he folds it into a paper airplane and sends it off. When it returns, it is in the hand of a girl who approaches, ready for friendship.

I love this book. I love, love, love this book. I love it because the boy finds a way to connect, and because it really isn’t so hard for him, after all. I love it because the girl actually wants to be friends, because the pair have found a common interest and not because an adult has explained that she must be tolerant of other kids’ “differences.” I love the airy lines and soft pastels of Reynolds’s  art, his effective use of white space and the natural separation of the gutter.

And as the parent of a child with Asperger’s, I love it because it speaks to my son, to his brother who must deal with him every day, to me and my husband, who don’t understand what it’s like to be him, try as we might. Reynolds manages to speak to us simply and beautifully, without needing many words at all.