new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Thoughts on Books, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 18 of 18
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Thoughts on Books in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
"Your
instincts as parents are correct: a minute spent reading to your kids
now will repay itself a million-fold later, not only because they love
you for reading to them, but also because, years later, when they’re
miles away, those quiet evenings, when you were tucked in with them,
everything quiet but the sound of the page-turns, will, seem to you, I
promise, sacred."
- George
I can't believe that I didn't know that Take Your Child to a Bookstore was a thing! It is! And, it's very well organized! There are over 400 bookstores participating this year with special story times and other events worth checking out. Click HERE to see a fantastic map of the US locating all the bookstores who will have fun things going on this Saturday. Click on the book on the map for
Increasingly, I find I am helping parents find good books for sensitive kids. The popularity of Harry Potter and Diary of a Wimpy Kid introduced two different but influential themes of darkness, for lack of a better word, into the realm of children's books. More and more, a work of fantasy will present themes of darkness and suspense with antagonists who are much more malevolent, sometimes
Image by Elias Ericson
The other night I was listening to Q with Jian Ghomeshi during which guests discussed the topic Does English Need a Gender Neutral Pronoun? Sweden has recently included the word "hen," a middle ground between the Swedish words "han" and "hon" ("he" and "she" in English) in its National Encyclopedia as an alternative to the gender specific pronouns. I went to a small
Why are fairy tales, in their unadulterated form, important? Or, to make this a universal discussion, why is (good) literature important? If you are so inclined, I highly recommend you read the introduction to Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, for a few good reasons why. If not, allow me to summarize it for you here. Bettelheim was a Jewish Austrian who escaped to the United
Almost two years ago, Julie Bosman wrote an article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times titled Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children. I took issue with her reporting and interpretation of statistics and wrote this piece Picture Books: A Dying Breed or Just Misunderstood? in which I shared my picture book experiences as a bookseller and mother and asked my
A few weeks ago I came across an article in the New York Times by journalist Michael Winerip, also author of the middle grade mysteries starring the young reporter Adam Canfield. A Father-Daughter Bond, Page by Page tells the story of Jim Brozina, an elementary school librarian, and his quest to stay connected to his youngest daughter, Kristen. His older daughter Kathy let Jim know she was
Happy Birthday? Happy Anniversary?BOTH!My blog turns 2 years old tomorrow, but I think that is really more of an anniversary than a birthday. However, my birthday is right around the corner and that (and the arrival of Helen Oxenbury's new book, It's My Birthday!) got me thinking. As a bookseller, I am frequently asked for kid's books that feature birthdays. Believe it or not, there are very
Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington DC. Photo by Drew Angerer/The New York Times
On Friday, October 8th an article by Julie Bosman appeared on the front page of the New York Times, under the fold. Titled, Picture Books, Long a Staple, Lose Out in the Rush to Read, the article surmises that, in addition to the effects of the economic downturn, picture book sales are falling due to
Thanks to Travis over at 100 Scope Notes for sharing this amazing site on his blog - along with the possibility of a real version of Willy Wonka's "Three Course Meal Gum". Featured on FastCoDesign, the D'Espresso coffee shop in NYC, located a block from the public library and designed by Anurag Nema and his team at nemaworkshop is an incredible, mind bending homage to its neighbor.
The
I know that the gift giving season has officially begun when The New York Times devotes almost half of the Sunday Book Review to Children's Books, including their annual list of the Best Illustrated Children's Books. This year the section is chock full of great books. Here are a few nifty titles from the review I want to share with you in case my links to the NYTimes don't work - sometimes you
As I was preparing to write my review of Mud Pies and Other Recipes by Marjorie Winslow, I stumbled across the most amazing kid's book blog I have discovered to date - Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves, created by Burgin Streetman, also the author of the blog, Scribbling in San Antonio where she writes about life as a mother and wife. Check this blog out for photos of the coolest Halloween
I feel certain that most of you reading this right now own a copy of Shel Silverstein's 1964 book, The Giving Tree. If you don't own it, I know you have read it or had it read to you at some point in your existence. I still have the copy that was given to me by my brother on my 11th birthday in 1979 and I have memories of reading it as a kid and watching the animated version made in 1973 and
Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high!How I love them! How I need them!I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Arnold Lobel from Whiskers & Rhymes
Since I have been working with, reading and loving kid's books for much longer than I have been writing about them, my hope when I started this blog was to introduce readers to older books that might not be
As the one year anniversary of books4yourkids.com approached, I decided to take a week or two to re-write and re-post some of the first reviews I wrote in August of 2008. I was surprised to find that I had reviewed no less than four of Joan Aiken's books in those first few frenzied weeks. As I sat down to add a bit of polish to the reviews I was THRILLED to find a website devoted to the life
I discovered the superb, sometimes startling, always imaginative paintings of Bill Carman when writing my review for Kate Saunders' magnificent fairy tale, The Little Secret. Bill did the cover art for the book and I was thrilled get the chance to view unused artwork for the book when I subscribed to Bill's blog. Bill's most recent post features a second painting (left) that he contributed to
How I assign reading levels to books, how the publishers do it, how schools do it and how you can help your reader find the right book at the right timeAfter recent emails and years of observing parents in the bookstore checking the back cover of books and trying to figure out the reading level (what does ages 8 - 11 or RL 2.4 really mean??) I have decided to try to write a post explaining what I
Our newest National Ambassador for young People's Literature, Katherine Paterson, begins her tenure with a provocative op-ed for the New York Daily News. Prompted by the unveiling of the iPad, Paterson shares her thoughts on the art of listening and value and beauty to be found in the way that children read.Apple's iPad is no book-killer: Author says technology is a threat to reading we can
Thanks--I stumbled across that quote and couldn't help sharing (once I managed to choke back a tear of course).
Agreed! It's nice to think that something we do that benefits our kids is also really meaningful and fulfilling for us as parents.