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Tricia of The Miss Rumphius Effect has a new blog called Open Wide, Look Inside. It’s a blog about using poetry and children’s literature across the curriculum. It looks to be an outstanding resource for elementary teachers and school librarians. Read this post at The Miss Rumphius Effect in which Tricia explains what you’ll find at her new blog.

Laura Purdie Salas, a fellow Cybils poetry panelist and a children’s poet, has news about a series of concept poetry books she wrote for Capstone Press. Read her posts My Capstone Poetry Books! and And Then There Were Eight: Poems About Space to find out more. (Note: Laura posted three of her poems from And Then There Were Eight.)

Read Jen Robinson’s article, The Power and Wonder of Children’s Books, at PBS Parents.

Jen also has an outstanding post, Helping Kids Learn to Enjoy Reading, at her blog Jen Robinson’s Book Page.

Thanks to Anne of Book Buds for news about the announcement of the 2008 Sydney Taylor Book Awards.

The January Carnival of Children’s Literature: Book Awards Edition will be hosted by Wizards Wireless. Read all about the carnival here. The deadline for submissions is January 18th.

From The Horn Book

The January Book List has titles recommended for “Reluctant Readers.”

A List of New Recommended Paperbacks

GLBTQ Fiction—a list of recommended books that received a rating of 3 or more in the Horn Book Guide

From the Children’s Book Council

An article about Jon Scieszka, our new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

Bimonthly Showcase for January/February: Mystery, Romance, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

An Annotated List of Election-Related Books in pdf format

Stop by Big A Little A. Kelly Herold is hosting the December Carnival of Children’s Literature.

Susan Thomsen, with the help of other kidlit bloggers, has compiled a fine list of Christmas picture books and chapter books for children seven and older. Check out her post Merry Reading: Picture Books at Chicken Spaghetti.

Jen has a load of links to some great posts in her Wednesday Afternoon Visits: December 19 at Jen Robinson’s Book Page.

The Poetry Friday Roundup for December 21st is at AmoXcalli.

Jules and Eisha, the dynamic duo of 7-Imp, have another great feature about children’s poetry entitled More Than Mother Goose at the Web site of the Poetry Foundation.

From the CBC Magazine of the Children’s Book Council comes Hot Off the Press: A Sneak Peek at Publishers’ Newest and Hottest Titles.

From the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC): ABC Best Books for Children (2007)

Also from ABC: The E. B. White Read Aloud Award

Horn Book Fanfare: Best Books of 2007 is now online!

The Banbury Cross Children’s Book Shop has lots of great books to recommend in its 2007 Winter/Holiday Newsletter.

Head on over to Mother Reader for the November Carnival of Children’s Literature: Tips Edition.

Check out Lunchbox Poems, an online journal feature at the website of the Poetry Foundation. The article was written by the dynamic duo of 7-Imp, Julie Danielson and Eisha Prather.

Many thanks to Heidi Estrin who left a comment at my Christmas & Hanukkah Books post. She provided information about some new holiday books: Letter on the Wind: A Chanukah Tale and Like a Maccabee. Check out Hooray for Hanukkah!, the December 2007 episode of her podcast at The Book of Life, for interviews with Sarah Lamstein and Barbara Bietz, the authors of these new Hanukkah titles. You’ll also find a complete online version (a flip book) of Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins provided by Lookybook there! The Poetry Friday Roundup for November 30th is at Two Writing Teachers.

Check out Friday Afternoon Visits: Book Plates, Book Reviews, and e-Book Readers at Jen Robinson’s Book Page. Jen’s got lots of links to a variety of interesting articles and blog posts.

Horn Book Podcast with Grace Lin and Alvina Ling. In anticipation of the Robert's Snow: for Cancer's Cure snowflake auction, Lolly Robinson of The Horn Book Magazine talks with children’s author and illustrator Grace Lin and her good friend Alvina Ling, an editor at Little Brown. Both Grace and Alvina write for the Blue Rose Girls blog.
The October 2007 Issue of The Edge of the Forest is now available online.

Check out a YouTube video at the blog of Yuyi Morales. It shows how Yuyi created Little Night: See Me Shine, a music box, for Robert’s Snow 2007.

Tricia Stohr-Hunt has a special Monday Poetry Stretch for us at The Miss Rumphius Effect. She invites blog readers to participate in writing a renga, an ancient Japanese form of collaborative poetry.
Cybils Alert!!! Nominations close on November 21st. Be sure to nominate your favorite children’s and young adult books of 2007. Don’t forget that you may nominate just one book in each category. All nominated books must have a publication date of 2007. Paperback editions of hardcover books published before 2007 are ineligible.

The Brookeshelf has moved. Here is the new address—http://brookeshelf.wordpress.com/

Found at Paradise Found: Here is a post with a list of Prizes from Robert’s Snow Illustrators. It includes links to the blogs that are offering the prizes. (Thanks to Jules of 7-Imp for this link.)

I am offering this limited edition giclee print of an illustration from Grace Lin's book Robert's Snow as a Blogging for a Cure prize!

Cynthia Leitich Smith has an author interview with Sylvia Vardell of Poetry for Children. Sylvia talks about her book Poetry Aloud Here! Sharing Poetry with Children in the Library. Sylvia is also the author of Poetry People: A Practical Guide to Children’s Poets.
Jules and Eisha have added a new page to their blog Seven Impossible Things. The new page has a comprehensive list of the Blogging for a Cure snowflake and illustrator features. It’s updated daily.

Wow! It has certainly been interesting and informative reading all the Blogging for a Cure posts about the Robert’s Snow artists so far this week. There's one illustrator who was a body builder--and the artist I interviewed, Scott Bakal, was even noted in a comment to have nice "rock star" hair. I think it's possible we could have a whole bunch of candidates for Fuse's HMOCL! What do you think? And we still have another month to go!!!

Here’s a list of blogs to visit today. Always check at 7-Imp daily for the most up-to-date links for the Blogging for a Cure posts.

Thursday, October 18

Brooke Dyer at Bookshelves of Doom

D.B. Johnson at Lessons from the Tortoise

Erin Eitter Kono at Sam Riddleburger

Sherry Rogers at A Life in Books

Jennifer Thermes at Through the Studio Door

Out & About with Grace Lin & Janet Wong (Again)

I had two outstanding days to start off my week. As I wrote in an earlier post, I spent Sunday with Grace Lin and Janet Wong. We stopped by the Child at Heart Gallery to show Janet all the gorgeous snowflakes. Here’s a picture of Grace and me at the gallery.

Then off we went to have dinner at The Grog in beautiful downtown Newburyport, Massachusetts. I didn't take any pictures at the restaurant--so here's one I took of Grace and Janet last spring.
On Monday, I cooked up a batch of potato pancakes and brought them to Grace’s. Janet came over after her visit to a school in Cambridge. We feasted on the pancakes and talked about writing. Grace read to us from a story that she has been working on. I think it would be a great book! Grace and Janet critiqued one of my poetry manuscripts and gave me some good advice.

Janet and I got see an advanced copy of one of Grace’s new picture books—Bringing in the New Year. If you are an admirer of Grace Lin’s art, you are absolutely going to LOVE this book!!! It will be out in January…along with Grace’s sequel to The Year of the Dog. The sequel is entitled The Year of the Rat—and it’s another terrific book!
Monday night we went off to Cambridge for some delicious, rich, super chocolaty hot chocolate at L. A.Burdick. Care to sip some rich, warm, velvety liquid chocolate—chocolate worthy of a poem??? Then this is the place to go!

Well, I must go care for my two cats. Suzie has kidney problems and a urinary tract infection. Abby’s got stitches in her right ear. I have a much thinner wallet and four bottles of prescription kitty medications. Lots of trips to the veteranarian with cats who have medical problems can be quite costly. We need a program like SCHIP for pets!!!

This is Abby. She is a real character! She makes us laugh.

This is Suzie. She is really gentle and has a sweet disposition.

Here is a link to The Problem with the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus from NCTE Inbox. I think you’ll find this interesting reading.

Now look at an article from DA, District Administration: The Magazine for K-12 Education Leaders, about online reading comprehension and learning skills. Click here to read The New Literacies by Zach Miners and Angela Pascopella.

Jack Prelutsky has written an article for the Poetry Foundation about award-winning children’s poet X. J. Kennedy. Click here to read An Xceptional and Xuberant Poet.

Here’s a link to a post at Bottom Shelf Books that’s too good to miss. In his post entitled Corduroy, Minh discusses “Key Moments in the Descending Decency of Toys.” I think you’ll get a chuckle out of it.

The Three Silly Chicks are In the Coop with Adam Rex. Click here to read their interview.

The snowflake that multi-talented Blue Rose Girl Linda Wingerter created for Robert’s Snow 2007 is a sight to behold. Check out Linda’s three posts at Antinomia about her creation for this year’s auction: Robert’s Snow Angel, In the Details, and Angel in Transit.

Grace Lin is back blogging at Blue Rose Girls today with a lovely thank you note to everyone.

Grace has also started posting at her new personal blog, A Solitary Grace.

Jules has a F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S interview with G. Brian Karas, one of my favorite picture book illustrators, at 7-Imp.

Jen Robinson has a great roundup of links in her Tuesday Afternoon Visits: Snowflakes, Halloween, and Comfort Books post.

Tricia has another Monday Poetry Stretch for us at The Miss Rumphius Effect. This week she’s picked the limerick. Care to take the challenge?

From the Chidren’s Book Council: Hot Off the Press: A Sneak Peek at Publishers’ Newest and Hottest Titles. (Last updated on September 17)

In case you missed last Friday’s Poetry Roundup because you were off at the First Annual Kidlit Conference, here’s a link to Poetry Friday: Turtling at Whimsy Books.

Interested in reading some tasty tidbits about last weekend’s Kidlit Conference? Then read Sara Lewis Holmes’s post Gossip Column at Read Write Believe.

Head on over to Mentor Texts and More. The Second Picture Book Carnival is here!

Jules has 7 Picture Book Kicks for us this week at Seven Impossible Things.


At A Year of Reading, Mary Lee has plans to update the blog’s list of books about books and reading in her post Books About Books and Reading-Revisited. Maybe you’ve got a title or two that you’d like to add to this great list.

Tricia has some great suggestions for children’s books about animal adaptations and animal migration for us at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Check out the following posts: Those Amazing Animals! and Thematic Book List-Animal Migration.
In her post Poetry Stretch Results-List Poems, Tricia provides links to the list poems that bloggers wrote after taking up her poetry challenge.

The upcoming Picture Book Carnival: Celebrating the Start of School will be hosted by Mentor Texts. The deadline for submissions is noon on August 29th.

MotherReader is hankering to make up a list of the kidlitosphere’s favorite children’s books of the year. Read all about it in her Best Books of 2007 (So Far) post.

The Poetry Friday Roundup for August 24th is at Book Mine Set.

Some bloggers may be interested in reading Children’s Galleys to Grab by John Sellers, an article from Publishers Weekly (8/20/2007). Included in the piece are books listed under he following headings: Some Don’t-Miss Debuts, Sequels of Note, New from Favorite Authors, and Adult Authors Turn to YA.

From the Cooperative Children’s Book Center: Publishing in 2006 by Megan Schliesman and Merri V. Lindgren.

There’s going to be an exhibit of original artwork from Leo Landry’s book Space Boy, which will be released this fall. The Space Boy art exhibition opening will be held on September 9th at The Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts. Read more about it at Leoland.

Jarrett Krosoczka, talented picture book author and illustrator…and good friend of the Blue Rose Girls, recently posted images of his “punk farm” snowflake for the Robert’s Snow 2007 and the owl he created for the Keene State College Festival Owl Project at his blog. Check out his cool creations.

Interested in writing an essay about connecting children and books? Check out Writing for the Horn Book: Field Notes at Read Roger.

Susan Thomsen has links to all the posts of the Australian Book Tour (via American Bloggers) at Chicken Spaghetti.

I got this link to a new Mock Newbery blog called Sharon’s Mock Newbery thanks to Fuse.

Cynthia Leitich Smith of Cynsations has returned to the world of blogging after a two month hiatus.

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect is offering a Poetry Stretch every Monday. She’s trying out different forms of poetry. This week it’s the cento. Care to join her?

MotherReader has a great logo for BACA and a few more thoughts about celebrity authors of children’s books in her post BACA Off Again.

Here’s a “Back to School” book list I missed in my Book Lists: School Stories post on Monday. This list is the September/October 2002 CBC Showcase: Back to School.

The Summer Issue of The Edge of the Forest is here with a profile of Peter Reynolds, interviews with author Linda Buckley-Archer and blogging writers Greg Fishbone and Kim Winters, and a report from MotherReader on her 48 Hour Book Challenge.

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect brings us the 5th Edition of Learning in the Great Outdoors.

Some of you may want to check out the July-August 2007 Bimonthly Showcase, Math and Science in Fact and Fiction, at the Children’s Book Council website.

Thanks to Roger Sutton for announcing a list of “starred school stories.” Find them at Monthly Special: Back to School at the Horn Book website.

Guess what Susan Thomsen of Chicken Spaghetti went and got herself? Some chickens…that’s what! Read all about it in her post Let There Be Chickens.

Got a favorite children’s book that you wish you had edited or written or illustrated? Stop by Blue Rose Girls and tell Alvina Ling. She’d like to know.

Linda Wingerter is back at Blue Rose Girls. Read her post Green Again, which includes an image of the first painting she has done since she broke her hand late last year.

In Snow in July at Blue Rose Girls, Anna Alter posts a picture of the snowflake she created for the Robert's Snow 2007 auction.

In My Snowflake for Robert's Snow, Elizabeth O. Dulemba shows us her process for creating her snowflake for Robert's Snow 2007. In An Ode to Harry, Elizabeth posts an original poem about Harry Potter.

At Leoland, Leo Landry gives us a Sneak Peek at the front cover and two illustrations from his forthcoming book Friends and Pals and Brothers, Too, which will be published in April 2008.

At Read Roger, Roger Sutton provides us with a list of the books that have been awarded starred reviews in the September/October issue of the Horn Book Magazine.

Head on over to Mentor Texts & More for the very first Picture Book Carnival.

News from the Library of Congress: Librarian of Congress Appoints Charles Simic Poet Laureate.

At American Indians in Children's Literature, Debbie Reese has posted a "provocative essay" by Beverly Slapin entitled How to Turn a Traditional Indian Story into a Children's Book (for fun and profit).

Read all about MotherReader's Summer Contest for Cassie Was Here. Check out her follow-up post Summer Poem, Summer Contest, too!

Nancy at Journey Woman is also having a contest to celebrate her first anniversary as a blogger. Check out the contest rules here.

The Poetry Friday Roundup for July 20th is at Mentor Texts & More.

The Play's the Thing! July 2007 Carnival of Children's Literature is at Saints and Spinners.

The next edition of The Edge of the Forest will soon be published.

Check out the new photos and updates in Joyce Sidman's nature journal Nesting with Robins.

Anna Alter, one of the Blue Rose Girls, shows us a work-in-progress from her future book What Can You Do with an Old Red Shoe. See how Anna went from this sketch of a bunny

to this final draft of a full color illustration.

Thanks for letting us in our your artistic process, Anna!

Stop by the Planet Esme to read her post about the Sydney Taylor Awards: Sydney Taylor Awards Kick Tokhes! Here's a link to a pdf list of the Sydney Taylor Book Award Winners and Notable Books.

Head on over to the website of The Children’s Book Council to check out their Summer Reading Extravaganza 2007.

Travel over to Planet Esme for her “rocking” recommendations of nonfiction books for children.

Carnival Reminder: Alkelda of Saints and Spinners will be hosting the July Carnival of Children’s Literature: The Play’s the Thing. Deadline for submissions is July 20th.

Robin Brande has a hotel update for people planning to attend the 1st Annual Kidlitosphere Conference.

Stop by and wish Jules and Eisha of the fabulous 7-Imp a Happy First Blogiversary!

The irreverent Mother Reader has done it again—written a hilarious post you won’t want to miss reading entitled The Tinkerbell Policy.

Becky has the Poetry Friday Roundup for July 6th at Farm School.

Sections of the July/August issue of The Horn Book Magazine are now available online. Check out Michael J. Rosen’s column My Search for the Wrong Title. It’s a riot! You can also read profiles of Newbery and Caldecott Medalists Susan Patron and David Wiesner.

Have you heard about the 1st Annual Kidlitosphere Conference that will be held in Chicago on October 6th? If not, get yourself over to Robin Brande’s blog and read all about it. You may also want to check out the RSVP list.

Literacy Teacher of Mentor Texts & More is starting a Picture Book Carnival. The deadline for submissions is July 31st.

Stop by The Miss Rumphius Effect to read Tricia's Joyful Education post, which includes a link to Educational Leadership (Summer 2007/Volume 4).

Mitali Perkins has announced the winners of the Fire Escape’s 2007 teen poetry and short fiction contest.

The Poetry Friday Roundup for June 29th is at Shaken & Stirred.

Joyce Sidman, winner of the Cybils Award for Poetry, found a robin’s nest in a hanging plant on her porch. Read all about it in her online photo-journal Nesting with Robins.

Join the other readers who have left comments at Susan Thomsen’s post Multicultural Books, or Is “Whacking the Pinata” Necessary?

That was some blogging vacation I took. I returned home from Vermont on Saturday afternoon and had planned to get back to blogging by Sunday…but the weather was so perfect that I spent the day sitting outside reading and writing. And yesterday? I was just plain lazy! Here’s what I have for you today.


I guess the QuickMuse has been around since 2006—but I just read about it in the Living/Arts section of The Boston Globe this morning. As stated on the QuickMuse website:

QuickMuse is a cutting contest, a linguistic jam session, a series of on-the-fly compositions in which some great poets riff away on a randomly picked subject. It's an experiment, QuickMuse, to see if first thoughts are indeed the best ones. We're not entirely sure about this, but we suspect QuickMuse will bring readers closer to the moment of composition than they have ever been before. Best part: our "playback" feature lets you watch the poems unfold, second by second. Or as Thlyias Moss says, it's "the chance for a poem to find its/audience fast," in which words don't "have as much/time to stale, pale/lose the relevance of the moment" to which they belong.

Included among contributors of the Most Museworthy are former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Roy Blount Jr., Pulitzer prizewinner Paul Muldoon, and Thylias Moss.

Mary lee and Franki bring us The Good News in the Kidlitosphere: The June Carnival of Children’s Literature at A Year of Reading.

Anne at Book Buds has added an occasional new feature to her blog called Off the Shelf. You’ll see this feature whenever she feels the need to rant about something. Read her first Off the Shelf posting about Jack Prelutsky entitled Resting on His Laureates.

Cloudscome has the Poetry Friday Roundup for June 22nd is at A Wrung Sponge.

Jules has a great Picture Book Round-Up at 7-Imp today.

The Three Silly Chicks are In the Coop with Dori Chaconas this week.

I’m leaving today for a week’s vacation with family in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont. I doubt I’ll be posting again until after I return home on June 23rd. Happy Summer Solstice!


Susan Thomsen of Chicken Spaghetti has written a fine article about Poetry Friday in the kidlitosphere for Poetry Foundation.org entitled Thank Goodness It’s (Poetry) Friday. Great job, Susan!

Jules and Eisha have a stellar interview with Adrienne of What Adrienne Thinks About That (WATAT) at 7-Imp.

You may want to stop by The Miss Rumphius Effect to read Tricia’s Reflections on China post.

Alvina had an interesting post and a poll for blog readers at Blue Rose Girls early this week. Stop by and leave a comment for her.

Check out the beautiful new website of illustrator and Blue Rose Girl Linda Wingerter.

The irrepressible Three Silly Chicks have another contest to celebrate the launch of Laura Durango’s new book PEST FEST.

The Poetry Friday Roundup this week is at The Simple and the Ordinary.

Both Liz B. at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy and Jen at Jen Robinson’s Book Page have posted the schedule of the Summer Blast Blog Tour at their blogs. Thanks, ladies!

At A Wrung Sponge, Cloudscome has information about a haiku contest sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation. (The deadline is June 30th.)

I have been a bit remiss with my Out & About posts lately—so I have some links to one or two blog articles that may be a bit dated. Nonetheless, I am including them in case you’ve missed them along the way. I know I have a difficult time keeping up with all the things being written about in the kidlitosphere. That’s one reason I always check Jen Robinson’s Book Page for her roundups.

The Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards have been announced.

Anne at Book Buds has a challenge for readers. Read about it in her Another Cosmic Giveaway post. If you’d like to win a copy of COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AND MARS, Douglas Florian’s new collection of space poems, you'll want to check it out.

If you haven’t been to the Carnival of Children’s Literature No. 14: The Fiesta Edition, get on over to Chicken Spaghetti.

You may want to stop by the Creation Museum Carnival, too. (Thanks to Becky at Farm School for the link.)

Read 7-Imp’s interview of fiction writer Libby Koponen, the last of the Blue Rose Girls to reveal interesting tidbits about herself. It’s a sad farewell for us girls. I’d like to send my thanks to Eisha and Jules for making the interview experience so easy and so much fun.

The Poetry Friday Roundup for June 1st is at Adventures in Daily Living.

Tricia has returned from her grand adventure and has posted a bunch of great articles about her travels this morning at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Cloudscome at A Wrung Sponge has a link to a slideshow of 24 photos she took for Project 365. Check out her Project 365: A look at May post for a glimpse of some of her wonderful pictures.

In her Poetry Friday post at A Year of Reading, Mary Lee gives us a couple of letter poems her students wrote recently. She plans to share the poems with her new students in the fall to give them a glimpse of what their school year in her classroom will be like.

Grace Lin has news about her next book project at Pacyforest.

I am really going to be OUT today. I’ll be in Somerville, Massachusetts, at Grace Lin’s Bon Voyage Party. I’ll be celebrating Grace’s birthday and the launch of her new book, Lissy’s Friends, with the other Blue Rose Girls, friends of Grace and Robert, and bloggers from the Boston area. Grace will be leaving tomorrow for San Antonio! You can read all about it here at Grace's personal blog Pacyforest.

Get “in the swing” with the Poetry Friday Roundup this week at Big A, little a.

In the “Say it ain’t so” or “too weird to be true” category—Kelly Herold has a post about a book entitled Latawnya, The Naughty Horse Learns to Say “No” to Drugs. Do check it out!

At The Miss Rumphius Effect, Tricia keeps updating her blog journal to keep us apprised of her experiences in the Far East.

At Mitali’s Fire Escape, Mitali has a great overview of the Paper Tigers May/June issue for Asian/Pacific Heritage Month.

At 7-Imp, Jules has gone hogwild with her Picture Book Round-ups! Click here for Part One…here for Part Two…here for Part Three…here for Part Four…and here for Part I’m-Gonna-Stop-Counting.