children’s literature
-
Life Lessons from Children’s Literature
The stories we read as children often stick with us for a lifetime, and so children’s literature can have a far greater impact on readers than books written for adults. Writing in Plougshares, Annie Cardi explains how children’s literature influences young…
-
Pink Books and Blue Books
Across the pond, the Let Books Be Books campaign is circulating a petition calling on publishers of children’s books to stop labeling books according to gender and to “allow children to choose freely what kinds of stories and activity books interest…
-
Absent Characters
People of color have been largely excluded from children’s literature. Of the 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, only 93 featured black characters. In his essay, “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature,” Christopher Myers speaks out against the trend of allowing…
-
Grimm Fairy Tales Just Got Grimmer
British art giant David Hockney is best known for pop-art paintings like A Bigger Splash, but he has also worked in many other mediums—including, it seems, illustrations for children’s books. Over at Brain Pickings, Maria Popova highlights a recently reissued collection…
-
A Helpful Guide to Writing Children’s Books
If it’s always been your secret ambition to write a children’s picture book, Buzzfeed Books can help you get started with this handy-dandy thirteen-step guide, illustrated by the Rumpus’s own Jason Novak (with a little help from his daughter Gertie). There’s some golden advice…
-
Children’s Books Still Dominated by White Boys
We’ve blogged before about the issue of representation in children’s and young-adult literature. This post by Soraya Chemaly looks at the numbers and finds that kid-lit books feature twice as many male protagonists as female ones (three times as many…
-
The Wild Thing With People Feet Was My Favorite
The one with people feet, I thought, had once been human, but had changed. He grew wild. Everyone grew wild at times…
-
From Computer Geek to Children’s Poet Laureate
Children’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…
-
The Next Letter for Kids: Irene Latham
Exciting news: The next Letter for Kids, going out this Thursday, is from Irene Latham! Poetry editor of the Birmingham Arts Journal, Irene has written two novels for kids: Leaving Gee’s Bend and Don’t Feed the Boy. Dear Wandering Wildebeest, forthcoming in 2014, is…
-
Literary Black History Month Resources for Kids
Looking for a literary way to celebrate Black History Month with the kids in your life? Reading Rockets has a wide-ranging list of resources, from children’s book recommendations to writing activities to interviews with black writers and illustrators. There are…
-
Kid Lit Before It Was Kid Lit
A recent Slate Explainer details what children read before the advent of “children’s literature.” The answer: “Epic poems, religious literature, romances, and Aesop.” Looks like English kids had it better than most, with their stories about adventurous knights and talking foxes,…
-
Followup: Beyond Dora
In response to the New York Times‘ article about the lack of Latino characters in children’s literature, Aurora Anaya-Cerda, owner of East Harlem bookstore La Casa Azul, compiled a list of books that do feature Latinos. They range from elementary-level storybooks to…