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A little nepotism to go with your coffee this morning? Don’t mind if I do!  As you may know, my husband Matt Bird has a book coming out this spring that is a culmination of his blog’s breakdown of what makes a good story.  Called The Secrets of Story: Innovative Tools for Perfecting Your Fiction and Captivating Readers (Writers’ Digest, 2017), Matt takes his Ultimate Story Checklist and makes it easy, accessible, and invaluable.  I’ve mentioned all this before. What’s new is that he’s now doing something that I’m personally incapable of.  Folks sometimes ask me if I ever do manuscript consultations. I don’t, but there’s a good reason for that: I’m lousy at them. Maybe not lousy, but I’m no editor and that’s the truth.  Matt, however, is fantastic at them. Now he’s offering his services to folks who are interested.  Children’s books, YA, scripts, adult novels, you name it.  Dude’s got mad skills.  And I say that as someone who can’t do the same.

All right.  ‘Nuff of that.  Let’s instead remember that the new school year is nearly upon us.  My daughter is about to step out the door and start Kindergarten for the very first time.  As such, I’ve been watching the new Kindergarten books of 2016 with a closer eye than usual. And as luck would have it, the Chicago Tribune came ah-calling recently.  Check out my favorites of the season in their piece Bumper crop of first-day-of-school books.

AND THE WINNER of the 2016 Society of Illustrators Gold Medal for Original Art goes to . . . . b.b. cronin for his book The Lost House (Penguin Random House/ Viking Children’s Books).  Hm?  What’s that?  You haven’t read it yet?  Well let me confess something to you . . . neither had I!  I’ve seen it in my To Be Read pile, but as God is my witness I thought it was a reprint of an older title.  Now it looks like I’m going to have to move it up in the ranks.  Whoops!  See the winners in full right here.

Folks ask me, what do you miss the most about New York?  It’s been a year since I left The Big Apple, my home of approximately 13 years.  I miss a lot of things.  My friends.  That sense of satisfaction you get around 6 p.m. on a workday, just sitting in Bryant Park with a good book and an iced chai latte.  And, of course, the exhibits in town.  I just heard about the Pratt Manhattan Gallery’s The Picture Book Re-Imagined: The Children’s Book Legacy of Pratt Institute and the Bank Street College of Education.  There’s even some ACM (Anne Carroll Moore) on show!  Check out this explanation of the exhibit with photographs galore.  Envious.  So envious.

Childhood Mystery Solved: I’m pretty sure I’ve zeroed in on the location of Hitler.  How’s that again?  Well, here’s the thing.  When I was a kid I was read a fair number of books.  Some stuck in my cranium.  Others didn’t.  One that did was a book that I recall because it was a collection of poems and nursery rhymes.  In one spread it showed the devil and some of his compatriots.  Amongst them was a bird with the head of Adolf Hitler.  I am not making this up.  My mother would sometimes show it to me and explain who it was and why Hitler was bad (or at least that’s my memory).  Years later I tracked down what I thought was the book (A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me by Wally Tripp) only to find that while it did have a devil in it, there was no Hitler.  It was a pretty weird thing to make up, though, so I never lost hope.  Then, just the other day, I saw this:

Okay.  It isn’t Hitler. But I remember this image perfectly (turns out gigantic Napoleons also have a way of sticking in your brain).  I am now convinced that I have relocated the book with that weird Hitler bird.  Maybe.  In the meantime, I’m beginning to believe that Wally Tripp is one of the great forgotten gems of the American children’s literary world.  He did win a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, after all.  That ain’t small potatoes.  Read more about him here.

New Magazine Alert: And I owe Julie Danielson the credit for locating this one. Called Illustoria, a new periodical is said to be, “a magazine for children that embraces the same values as the current slow-food and maker-culture trends of today, ‘a return to craftsmanship, an appreciation of quality, a celebration of curiosity, creativity, and also the people behind the scenes’.”  This sounds interesting in and of itself, but it also sounds familiar on some level.  I’m reminded of the Arts & Craft movement that occurred in America and Europe between 1880 and 1910 as a direct response to the industrial revolution. We seem to be experiencing something similar in the face of the digital revolution.  Food for thought.  In any case, learn more about Illustoria here.

I like Booklist.  Honest I do. But how long are they going to make us pay to read their articles online?  For example, in a recent edition I was very taken with Daniel Kraus’s funny, smart, and highly informative consideration of the Choose Your Own Adventure phenomenon.  In fact, I’ve never read such an interesting breakdown of the series, its popularity when I was a kid, and its fate.  Here’s the link to the article, but I hope you have a Booklist subscription ’cause that’s the only way you’ll be able to read it.

Tiny desk contest!  Not here, of course. There.  Where Marc Tyler Nobleman hangs out.  Seems he’s having a Guess the Kidlit Desk Contest.  The rules are simple.  You guess which author has which desk (and there are 18 in each subcontest).  Get ’em right, win a prize.  If nothing else, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the desk of the creative mind.  Most are far too clean and tidy, though.  I think I like this one the best:

Snapchat.  It is a thing.  I do not know much (read: anything) about.  What I do know, though, is that Travis Jonker just used it for the best. thing. ever.  Doubt me if you dare.

This just in, in the press release files from the Children’s Book Council:

We are thrilled to announce that acclaimed illustrator Christian Robinson has agreed to design the 2017 Children’s Book Week poster commemorating the 98^th annual Children’s Book Week, to take place on May 1-7, 2017. Robinson is the artist behind such beloved picture books as Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio and Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, for which he received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor and a Caldecott Honor.

Daily Image:

The representative from Illinois would like to raise an objection.  Behold, a brilliant book:

In this book, kids are encouraged to make their own dollhouses out of cardboard boxes.  There are even instructions placed under the dustjacket for that very purpose.  As the mother of a girl who is basically a human Maker Station, I recognized instantly the fact that this would be her kind of book.  I brought it home and I don’t think 20 minutes went by before she started construction on her own dollhouse.  After it was finished (after a fashion) I went online to find out if the publisher or author had a site where kids cold post pictures of their personalized dollhouses.  All I found was this promotional video.  It’s cute, but why is the mom doing so much of the work?  In any case, I would like to propose to either Giselle Potter or Schwartz & Wade that they create such a site.  In lieu of that, here’s my 5-year-old’s newest dollhouse.

And, might I note, crumpled up toilet paper really does look like popcorn.  Who knew?

Giving birth!  All the kids are doing it these days.  And you know what giving birth means, right?  It means having a little extra time to blog and get my non-work related projects done.  Though, naturally, I wrote 50% of this post a day ago and then must have failed to save the darn thing.  *sigh*  C’est la vie, kids.

• I was called upon recently to speak with a writer from the National Endowment for the Arts.  The topic?  Why Children’s Books Matter.  Done in conjunction with Leonard Marcus’s exhibit at the main branch of NYPL I answer all sorts of questions.  Mind you, it was a oral interview so I wasn’t able to parse my own speech.  Read it and you’ll get a real sense of what it sounds like to talk to me (weirdo grammar and all).

• Next up, diversity!  Last week I wrote the post We Need Diverse Books . . . But Are We Willing to Discuss Them With Our Kids? in which I discussed the role of children’s literature when talking to young children about race.  It received some great responses, including this one from Monica Edinger Talking Diversity with Young Children.  Then in other diversity news I interviewed Jason Low about the current state of multicultural books for kiddos today.

• Let’s talk exhibits again.  This time, those in Chicago.  Particularly those in Chicago involving Edward Gorey.  You lucky midwesterners.  Thanks to Mr. Schu for the link.

• And going back to the topic of NYPL, I recently interviewed middle grade author Claire LeGrand.  Claire is the organizing genius behind the upcoming Kids Authors Carnival happening this month on the 31st.  Talking with me, she answered some of my questions about the carnival, the authors who will be there, and where the idea came from in the first place.

• Lucy Liu: YA book jacket heroine?  Sure.  What the heck.  Thanks to Marchek for the link.

• Summer Reading is coming up.  Want a reading list for your kids?  ALSC came up with this one and it’s rather nice.

• Hat tip to Travis Jonker for the hat tip to my book (co-written with Jules Danielson and Peter Sieruta).  It’s coming out in August fer sure, fer sure, and Travis included it in his 10 to Note Summer Preview 2014.  Thank you, man!!

• Oh, I rather love this.  25 Movie Cameos by the Authors of the Original Books.  Because there are children’s book adaptations included that I never knew about.  Michael Morpurgo?  Louis Sachar?  They forgot Wendy Orr in Nim’s Island, Brian Selznick in Hugo, and David Levithan and Rachel Cohn in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist but no one’s perfect.  Love the snarky comment about Stephenie Meyer, by the way.  Thanks to Cynthia Leitich Smith for the link.

• Woo-hoo!  The next Kidlitosphere Conference (the greatest, biggest, best conference of children’s & YA literature bloggers) is nigh.  Nigh, I sez, nigh!  The focus is on diversity, the location is Sacramento and the guests include everyone from Shannon Hale to Mitali Perkins.  Don’t miss it.

• New Podcast Alert: Little, Brown & Company’s School & Library division has their own podcast channel?  Well, who the heck knew?  Not I, said the fly.  And then there’s the podcast Dear Book Nerd which appears to have some connection to the great and grand Brooklyn children’s librarian Rita Meade.  I am so out of it.

• Kids aren’t reading!  No way, no how, not happening.  Unless of course they are.  Common Sense Media recently decided that kids weren’t reading anymore and they went and made a huge deal about it.  Two alternate takes on the study are worth noting.  The first is from Forbes.  The second, from Liz Burns.  And quite frankly, I probably don’t have to tell you that it’s Liz’s take that I prefer.

Nothing I love more than a new children’s book prize.  Particularly when I get to help to narrow down the contenders.  The New York Historical Society was looking for great books of American history, either fiction or nonfiction for kids.  The winner?  The Lions of Little Rock by Kristin Levine.  She gets a $10,000 prize and is the inaugural winner.  Check out the other finalists here and an interview with Kristin about the book here.

The big news last week, aside from the birth of my baby Bird, was the Rush Limbaugh win at the Children’s Book Choice Awards.  It wasn’t a surprise but it did make for some good think pieces.  And Travis Jonker, bless his soul, rounded them up for you.  Amusingly, I had to miss the banquet because of back pain.  Had I attended I not only would have gotten to see that particular person give a speech but there was a fire scare that made everyone go outside.  Methinks this was not the worst year to miss.

Wait just a minute there . . . there’s a children’s literature conference in Hawaii and I’m only NOW hearing about it?  Man!  Now there’s a place I’d love to speak.  Pity I’d have to win a Newbery Honor to do it.

• Daily Image:

It was St. Martin’s Press that advertised this one originally.  I don’t know where they got it, but it’s such a brilliant display that I just had to share it with you.  Libraries and other bookstores take note (and copy at will!).