I grew up in Pakistan, where books were scarce. My mother would drop me and my two younger sisters at the British Council library and leave on errands. We’d roam the halls all afternoon, from the colorful children’s section to the quiet and somber reference area, and back again. I remember dozing off on a […]
July
31
A Splendid and Stunning Read: A Seed Is the Start by Melissa Stewart Review by Jennifer Sniadecki
posted by CBethM
I’ve been spending my summer getting back to nature as much as possible. While I love exploring my local vacation destinations, I also wonder about nature in other parts of the world. Melissa Stewart has given me a peek into plant life from all over the globe in her new book, A Seed is the […]
July
30
I was that kid. I still write for that kid. by Kevin Sylvester
posted by CBethM
I just returned from NerdCampMI and heard Dav Pilkey (and many others) talking about “finding the right books for the right kid” and also “any reading is reading”. Dav talked about his own experience of being told he wasn’t reading the right kind of books – usually comics or silly stories. And I […]
July
28
The Great Graphic Novel Experiment by Sarah FitzHenry
posted by CBethM
I hear it often: “Kids won’t read real books anymore.” Two or three times a week, a parent— such a powerful voice in the reading life of a child— will come to my school library and roll their eyes while they ask me how to get their child to “put down the comics.” Often, the […]
July
26
Weaving with Words by Lisa Graff (A Cover Reveal for Far Away)
posted by CBethM
One of my earliest memories is of waking up on Christmas morning, only to discover that my beloved Cozy Coupe toddler car had been stolen right off our porch. I was devastated, but when mother told me that the person who took it probably didn’t have money for their own child’s Christmas present, it eased […]
July
24
Finding Inspiration by Jo Hackl
posted by CBethM
Growing up in a ghost town is the perfect childhood for a writer. When I was eleven, our family moved to Electric Mills, Mississippi. The town was one of our country’s first electric lumber mills and once had been called the “brightest town South of St. Louis.” By the time our family moved there though, […]
July
23
Read It Again…and Again by Candice Watkins
posted by CBethM
What is your favorite movie or tv show? Do you know whole chunks of dialogue by heart? Do you own it in multiple formats or have the ability to stream it on a medley of devices? Now, could you imagine someone having the audacity to tell you one single viewing of your favorite […]
July
22
WE RISE, WE RESIST, WE RAISE OUR VOICES Content Reveal + Cheryl and Wade Hudson Interview Author Tony Medina
posted by CBethM
When we asked you to contribute to WE RISE, WE RESIST, WE RAISE OUR VOICES, did you toss around different ideas for your story, or did you always have in mind that you would write a piece about immigration? When you asked me to contribute to We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices, […]
July
21
Top 10 Books that Should Have Won the Newbery (According to Me, Anyway) by Stacy Nockowitz
posted by CBethM
Each year, a group of carefully selected committee members is given an impossible task: to choose the children’s book that they deem the most distinguished written by an American author and published in the previous year. I’m a middle school librarian who previously taught middle school language arts for more than twenty years, and I […]
July
20
Kate Messner and Beth Kephart on the real-life prison break that fueled their new middle grade stories
posted by CBethM
In June of this year, precisely three years after two prisoners broke out of Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, Kate Messner and Beth Kephart published middle-grade novels inspired by the incident—BREAKOUT (Bloomsbury) and WILD BLUES (Atheneum), respectively. Kate’s book takes the form of a time capsule—a collection of letters, images, notes, and reports […]
