The Daily Rumpus
Get Our Overly Personal
Email Newsletter
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 […]
...moreHow do you share your favorite books with your kids when those books aren’t quite G-rated? Over at Mashable, Chuck Palahniuk performs a reading from his nonexistent book, Fight Club 4 Kids.
...moreThere are a number of picture books with strong girl protagonists, however the majority of them are drawn in skirts and dresses. At the Guardian, Julia Eccleshare calls for more children’s books with “girls in trousers,” in order to campaign against this “sexual stereotyping.”
...moreGabriel 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 […]
...moreThe 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 […]
...moreOver 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 […]
...moreSince 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 […]
...moreThe Oxford Junior Dictionary takes the forefront this week in the debate over the pedagogy of reference books, as 28 authors join a public campaign to reverse changes that have ousted entries from the natural world in favor of those from the digital. Oxford defends the changes as reflections of a young population increasingly unfamiliar […]
...moreA seven-year-old in California scored a big win for the little guy (or, in this case, the little girl) by convincing Abdo Publishing to stop marketing their Biggest, Baddest Book of Bugs exclusively to boys. Young reader Parker Dains took umbrage with the title, and the other titles in the same series, writing: You should […]
...moreFor the Guardian, Alison Flood reports that a British publisher has purchased a translation of Patrick Modiano’s only children’s book. The news comes after the author’s Nobel Prize piqued the interest of English readers worldwide.
...more
1982 was a shitty year. I was 9 years old and in the 4th grade in Appleton, Wisconsin. My parents were going through a nasty divorce, the kind of thing you see on Jerry Springer.
...moreAfter 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 […]
...moreAt the New York Times, writer Terry Pratchett discusses what he’s reading, who inspires him, and what makes a good fantasy novel. He also reveals one of his favorite childhood books and what made it so great: I found a book called “The Wind in the Willows,” by Kenneth Grahame, and I just exploded. There were rats […]
...moreFor those who fondly recall reading Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, you may be taking a trip to the movies. The Los Angeles Times reports the Newberry Award winning book will be adapted for film by the director of Disney’s Frozen, who was a fan of the novel as a child.
...moreThe 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 […]
...more
Comic publishing pioneer Françoise Mouly discusses bringing comics to the mainstream, life at The New Yorker, and the burdens of being legendary.
...moreIn the story, a young girl, Nancy, mysteriously receives a single Christmas gift – the steamroller. She takes the gift out for a ride and flattens many things along the way, one of which was human, as I recall. I believe the human popped back up, unrealistically. The complaint was that it was too violent […]
...moreThe 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 […]
...moreThe Little Prince is one of those books which just as easily affects adults as children, and it’s hard to go long without encountering it. Still, the story remains a bit of a mystery. In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik tries to solve bits of it: For all of the Prince’s journey is a journey of exile, […]
...moreChildren’s poetry is typically not more than one page or two pages long. And yet, within that one or two pages, kids can get a really strong positive emotional response that encourages them to want to read another poem. Time has a brief, sweet write-up on Kenn Nesbitt, America’s new Children’s Poet Laureate. If nothing […]
...moreSylvia Plath wrote a children’s book…and apparently Jim Carrey is going to as well? Brain Pickings has scans of the text and charming illustrations of Plath’s book, a story about young Max Nix and his bright yellow It Doesn’t Matter suit. As for Jim Carrey? “I’m going to self-publish, because that’s just the world right […]
...moreChildren’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 […]
...more