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From top to bottom, our family is a fan of Barnett's work. Thanks for showing me that others worry and consider the gender balance in publishing.

Mine too! Thinking about these ideas, writing this article and corresponding with Barnett gave me an even deeper appreciation of his work. As always, thanks for reading and commenting!

Let me preface my comment with a little background: I am a woman who was one of only 3 women in my 300 and 400 level major classes. I wrote a paper in college about gender inequality in the math classroom. <br /><br />Now I have son, and I know if I had a girl, I would be buying her &quot;boy&quot; toys/books. Yet, there seems to be gender inequality in this area for boys, as people tend to

@Jennybell - Your comment is something that I, as the parent of two boys, struggle with and basis for a really great discussion - why do we encourage girls to play with/do &quot;boy&quot; things but not the reverse? <br /><br />My boys both had baby dolls, and they both played with their big sister&#39;s American Girl dolls on occasion. The love Miyazaki&#39;s movies, which usually have female

@Tanya - I just don&#39;t pay attention to the frowns. I just encouraged him. He has (and had) pink clothes (usually a polo type shirt). He was never &quot;into&quot; dolls (and not sisters), but he LOVES his Webkinz, which I think seem more marketed to girls. Not to say he doesn&#39;t like &quot;boy&quot; toys too. As for books, I just pull books from all the great books/homeschool literature

Pink polo shirts! Yes! That is great that he does not prefer boys as the protagonists - yet. I know there&#39;s a shift at some point in boys. Or maybe it&#39;s that the chapter books become very gender specific? Check out the TRACTION MAN picture books by Mini Grey. I have a review of the new one coming up next Tuesday. She does a great thing with boys and dolls/action figures. Also, this one is

Great tips, very helpful. We're running into these exact challenges right now with a seven-year-old daughter who reads at a very high level. She adores Harry Potter, but we're reluctant to fill her young mind with all of that dark imagery. And many of the series we see in the library are aimed at older kids with a lower reading level, and concerns she doesn't share...the quality of many of them

Hello, i enjoyed your blurb above, but i have a question. <BR/>I am currently writing an essay about how parents unintentionally retard the psychological development and overall learning rate of their children though their teaching practices (such as early age learning programs, and "advanced readers" community.) <BR/>So i guess my question is: Is a child who can read and generally understand the

As a parent and children&#39;s book seller I really wonder about this myself. I can&#39;t tell you how many times a day a parent comes into the bookstore where I work looking for a book for their child who is in (fill in the blank) grade but reads at (fill in the blank with at least 2 - 3 grades higher). I know that this can&#39;t be true and I also know that, based on the children&#39;s books

Sorry aneurinv, but it sounds like you've already made up your mind based on several flawed assumptions and a pretty sketchy hypothesis. And Tanya, surely you know that there are many kids who do read 2-3 (or more) grade levels above their age -- gifted programs across the continent are full of them, and many others who have never been officially tested or identified as gifted, but love to read.

Jeremy, I agree with everything you said, but you are also the fortunate parent of an advanced, very gifted reader who has the benefit of enormous amounts of parental care and attention when it comes to literature (and everything else, I'm sure.)<BR/><BR/>I guess my attitude comes from the perspective of book seller who is also a parent. Maybe one out of 10 parents I encounter cares as much as

Thank you so much for what you do. I homeschool my three kiddos and value your reviews. We read a lot of older books. One my kiddos really liked was Gone Away Lake.

Thanks so much for your kind words and for reading my blog! I will definitely seek out &quot;Gone Away Lake.&quot;

I found this all fascinating, both your blog and the comments. I&#39;m in England, where, certainly in the state sector, &#39;advanced&#39; readers often seem to get little encouragement at school, phonics are in and reading for pleasure is sadly out. (I generalise, obviously...there are lots of people out there doing wonderful things to combat this.) I think your advice about going for older

Lydia - Thank you so much for your thoughtful, helpful comments. How wonderful that your mother kept your childhood library for her grandkids. This is a generalization, but I think that there is a much richer tradition of quality children&#39;s literature in the UK than in the US. I suspect I am older than you, but even if my mother had saved my library, it would be very small, and I was a

Yes, Edward Eager remains another favourite - I love all his Nesbit references! And one of the lovely things about keeping a family library is seeing the names written in the books...my mother or my aunt&#39;s childish writing, so now my children can occasionally tut at their grandmother&#39;s naughty colouring-in...

Preaching to the choir here. I&#39;m not sure what the NYT was thinking publishing that article. I wrote a huge post about picture books myself and have yet to find one person who thinks picture books are on the way out. Truly, a misunderstood form.

I guess the main reason I don&#39;t buy many picture books is the cost. Unless they are released in paperback, I tend to buy them used or remaindered (is that the right term?). I will buy ones that we check out from the library at my son&#39;s request three times (he&#39;s 4-1/2). If he likes it that much, then we need to buy it. Now that he is reading himself, he gravitates to easy readers at

Great article...by you, not the one you are writing about. I have to say I do not buy many books,but we are avid users of our library. I do still encourage picture books in our home though, ones that include a good story and interesting artwork. Last week I was the parent reader for my child&#39;s second grade class and took &quot;The Curious Garden&quot; and a book I think was titled &quot;

I wrote about this too, you can read my thoughts here:<br /><br />http://brianjamestheauthor.blogspot.com/2010/10/why-world-needs-picture-books.html<br /><br />Misunderstood to be sure.

Thank you to everyone who has left a comment so far. This article is stirring up quite a storm in the kid-lit blogosphere with everyone running off on different tangents, all seemingly valid. All I can hope is that this uproar is heard by publishers as well as the book reading/buying parents out there (and I agree, these books are VERY expensive.) Hopefully we are entering into a new period of

I&#39;ve been pleased to see my girls (7 and 9) picking up picture books again now that we&#39;re plowing through them with their little brother -- they were both drawn to chapter books early on and I was really missing picture books. For a while they wouldn&#39;t even look twice picture books when I brought them home, writing them off as &quot;only for little kids&quot;. Perhaps they&#39;re

Jeremy (and everyone) thanks for sharing the picture book habits of you and your kids. I agree - I think there is a sort of &quot;I don&#39;t need training wheels&quot; period where kids turn away from picture books but eventually return to them, and that gives me hope. Maybe your independent music analogy is apt: In the future, only the big publishing houses will churn out the mainstream (ie

This is a great story. I was so sad the day my two teenagers informed me they no longer wanted to read together...I wish I had not accepted their request! what a great legacy he compiled!

Agreed! I wish that I was not too tired at night to read to my kids, whatever their ages!

Thank you for posting this! I am a 4th grade teacher and I would like to read this to my class and hear what they think about an author they adore.<br /><br />Thanks!

I would love it if you could share any of their responses in a comment! I was really struck by the realization that kid&#39;s books make up the only genre that where a book gets repeated readings and inspires readers to create physical representations of the worlds inside the pages. One of my best school memories comes from 5th grade when we were assigned 3D book reports. I was allowed to do