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Under the leadership of Pamela Paul, the children’s book editor at the New York Times, the paper has expanded its coverage of children’s books - and has even more coverage planned.

A weekly online-only review of a picture book. It gives readers a better sense of the book’s visual style.

Short-thematic reviews that appear each Sunday.

50 percent increase in pages devoted to children’s books.

And soon, the Notable Children’s Book list will expand from just 8 titles to 25.

Read more here.

My mini-column for last week’s New York Times Magazine is on poetry and song. King David viewed them as natural companions, but these days they’re seen as distinct, unrelated arts.

Accepting Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for Letters recently, musician and poet Leonard Cohen implicitly took David’s view. He spoke of learning a progression of six flamenco chords from a mysterious young Spaniard who soon killed himself. “It was those six chords,” Cohen said, “it was that guitar pattern that has been the basis of all my songs and all my music… Everything that you have found favorable in my songs, in my poetry are inspired by this soil.”

And he expressed unease over the honor. “Poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers. So I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do not command. In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.”

Related: Christopher Ricks, Jonathan Lethem, and Lucinda Williams on the case for Dylan as poet; PEN New England’s new prize for excellence in song lyrics, judged by Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash, Paul Muldoon, and others; The Village Voice’s jokey list of contenders for the award; and, courtesy of my friend Michael Taeckens, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison. And, just for fun, Roger Miller and Dave Hickey on Hank Williams’ hooked-up verse.

Young adult author Margo Rabb has a really great article in the NYT - don't miss it.

Last week I wrote about the death of Andrew Olmsted, a military blogger who always caught me off guard with his ideas and images about the Iraq War. Meet Olmsted in his final, inspiring post.

Writers need to read and think about this war, and the writings of bloggers like Olmsted should be required reading.

Today, you should read this tribute to Sergeant Scott Lange Kirkpatrick written by my friend, Ian Daly. It's an essay about a slam poet, writer, and soldier who died in Iraq last year. In addition, Kirkpatrick's father blogged about the story here.  

According to the story (which includes this photo of Kirkpatrick), this young writer joined the military after telling his wife, “Here I am writing and analyzing and bitching about things, and I’m not doing anything.”

Now I'm not telling everyone to enlist, but all writers need to be grappling with this conflict, not pretending like the war isn't happening. It is a real issue affecting hundreds of thousands of Americans. Don't let this complicated war stay in the margins of your writing.