Many Nerdy Book Clubbers are already familiar with Sara Holbrook through her books of poetry for young readers, including I Never Said I Wasn’t Difficult and The Dog Ate My Homework. We also know Sara through her work with “partner-in-rhyme” Michael Salinger that helps students and teachers from around the world understand how writing poetry […]
June
24
Top 10 Yoga Picture Books for Kids by Kate Olson
posted by CBethM
Breathe in………breathe out…….now STREEETTTCCCHHH your arms up to the sky. Bring them in front of your chest and….Namaste. Just typing these words relaxes me and quiets my mind. I found yoga for the first time while training for the Chicago Marathon in 2003, and used it then as a forced flexibility practice on […]
June
23
Cover Reveal for Wizardmatch by Lauren Magaziner
posted by CBethM
Here’s the thing about my brother: we are very similar, but he’ll never admit it. We are best friends, though we fight all the time. I support him endlessly, even when I want to win. And I love him more than anything, even though he’s an expert at getting on my very last nerve. Sibling […]
June
22
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out by Rachel Rosenberg
posted by CBethM
When I was a child, I used to love lying on the floor in patches of sunlight. I’d curl up as much as I could, trying to fit into the warm rectangle, and then let the heat relax me. Childhood is fun for that reason–you don’t understand yet why things work the way they do, […]
June
20
Fenway and Hattie Up to New Tricks – Cover Reveal By Victoria J. Coe and Olivia Van Ledtje
posted by donalynm
Do you judge a book by its cover? I do. And I wonder if kids do, too. Because they’re always asking me if the covers of the first two Fenway and Hattie books are real. As if Fenway is out living these stories somewhere and all the Penguin design team did was snap a picture. […]
June
19
How Does That Make You Feel? by James Ponti
posted by donalynm
One night, as my wife was about to fall asleep, I told her I was thinking of writing a novel. She looked up at me from her pillow and with surprising clarity said, “Shouldn’t you be able to read a book before you try writing one?” This is the danger of being married to a […]
June
18
An Open Thank You Letter to Kwame Alexander
posted by CBethM
Dear Kwame Alexander, Thank you for making us openly weep last year at the ILA conference when you said, “The mind of an adult begins with the imagination of a child,” and “all kids are the good kids” When we heard you say those words and the room burst into thunderous applause, we knew […]
June
17
Where’s My Book? by Arika Dickens
posted by CBethM
“Mom, where’s my book?” A couple of years ago, my then-kindergarten son asked this question. No amount of searching could unearth the missing book from his school library, so we took $4.00 from his bank and paid the lost item cost. He was, naturally, frustrated – both that the book was missing and that […]
June
15
Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover: A Not So Scary Book About A Haunted House by Tricia Pfeil
posted by CBethM
One of the most frequent questions I get asked during book checkout is, “Where are your scary books?” I direct them to the Mary Downing Hahn section and those books often get returned with a story of a sleepless night or two. One thing I’ve discovered in my many years of teaching is that my […]
June
13
The Cost of Closure by Lauren DeStefano
posted by CBethM
I was twenty-one when my father died, rather unexpectedly. And even though twenty-one is much older than the target audience for middle grade, there’s something about loss that brings everyone, regardless of age, to the same confusing and frightening place. In the days and weeks following my father’s funeral, I had a lot of […]
