Posts Tagged: children’s lit

Vast Questions About Our Humanity

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Alexis Deacon and Vivian Schawrz’s ” groundbreaking philosophy book for toddlers,” I Am Henry Finch, just won the 2016 Little Rebels Children’s Book Award. The award recognizes children’s books that address social justice and equality for youth: Their picture book is about a young finch called Henry who branches out from the sameness of his flock in order […]

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Intergenerational Cycle of Crap

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Gabriel Roth has some hard truths about The Poky Little Puppy, and he’s not wrong. Millions of people enjoyed The Poky Little Puppy as children, because it was cheap and because, being children, they had no standards. They grew up to be parents, remembered the book fondly from childhood, and purchased it for their own children. It’s […]

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Finally, a Seuss Museum

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The world’s first museum dedicated to the life and work of Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, is set to open in his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts as soon as 2016. The venture will be a welcome addition to the museum circuit of western Mass, already home to the Art Picture Book Museum, the Norman Rockwell […]

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Diverse Books by the Numbers

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Over at FiveThirtyEight, Amy Rothschild explores the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, and the many strategies advocates are using to make a lasting change in the landscape of children’s literature. While 2014 showed a hopeful bump in books penned by and depicting people of color, institutional challenges will likely make change a slow process; Rothschild cites an overwhelmingly […]

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Why Matilda Got Her Measles Shot

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Since much of the rhetoric around recent outbreaks of the measles revolves around concern for the well-being of children, perhaps the strongest advocate to answer our concerns is a beloved author of children’s literature. The Guardian shares an emotional letter from Roald Dahl, who lost his seven-year-old daughter Olivia to the disease at a time […]

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Book With No Pictures

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After publishing a collection of short stories earlier this year, B.J. Novak has just released his first book for children, Book With No Pictures. The title is pretty self-explanatory—as an interview with Novak in the Atlantic puts it, instead of traditional pictures, …words form statements like, “My only friend in the whole wide world is a hippo […]

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House of Library Catalog Cards

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The New York Public Library owns an absolutely peculiar collection: a 6000+ cards  catalog of hand-typed children books reviews, written by librarians over the years. Lynn Lobash, NYPL reader services overseer, explained to Quartz that, “There’s about a billion card catalogs in the library, but these are special in that they were used as a […]

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“The Duck Quacketh”

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The Public Domain Review gives a glimpse at what is widely regarded as the first children’s picture book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, and its author, John Comenius. Published in 1658, Orbis is over 140 chapters and covers everything from the sound a duck makes to Judgment Day. As the master says to his young pupil, “Come…learn to […]

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Economics for Kids

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Children’s books are teaching all kinds of lessons and not just the morals-heavy, value-driven ones that are meant to stave off latent delinquency. Read between the lines of children’s lit and you can brush up on some conceptual economics. One can begin to understand  economic efficiency by reading Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, or […]

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