Humor Books – Why Readers Need Them More Than Ever, by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

December 15

When I was a young child, I remember my father coming into the room where we kids were playing, and telling us that our grandfather had just died. My reaction? I laughed. I cringe even now, thinking about that moment. I loved my grandfather, and my father was clearly grief-stricken when he told us. It […]

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We Can Do Better – Gender Stereotypes, Toxic Masculinity, and Letting Kids Be Their Authentic Selves by Joanne Levy

December 08

I’m often asked where I got the idea for FISH OUT OF WATER. I think people assume I know a kid who was discouraged from doing an activity because of their gender. They want to hear that origin story. The truth is, the seed of the idea came from something much bigger: a horrible tragedy […]

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Nominations Open for the 10th Annual Nerdy Book Club Nerdies!

December 06

In the beginning, Nerdy was a community-driven book award blog, and we still hold the Nerdy Book Club Awards, the Nerdies, each winter. Each year’s list provides an overview of our readers’ and their reading communities’ most popular recommendations. The Nerdies look like a handpicked children’s bookshelf—a current mix of genres, formats, voices, and styles; books […]

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Best YOUNG ADULT Audiobooks for 2020 by AudioFile

December 02

  AudioFile’s 2020 Best Young Adult audiobooks offer a wide range of stories for teen listeners. Each are AudioFile Earphones Award winners, and they showcase the incredible talent of the narrators and creativity of the authors. Skilled narrators use their evocative performances to draw listeners into rich fantasy worlds, revisit historical moments, and to help […]

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Our Ninth Nerdversary: Social Readers in Pandemic Times by Donalyn Miller

December 01

Self-isolating and working from home for the past eight months, my reading life has been challenging to maintain. It takes more effort to settle into a book and stick with it. The six half-finished books sitting on my coffee table ooze judgement. Reading seems self-indulgent and I cannot sit still for long before I feel […]

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PLAYING WITH HISTORY by Christopher Healy

November 30

Worldbuilding may well be my favorite aspect of writing. When working on my Hero’s Guide series of fairy tale adventures, it gave me immeasurable joy simply to sketch maps of the thirteen kingdoms in which the stories would take place. I love challenging myself with the creation of  fantastical settings in which to house my tales, and […]

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NOTHING IN COMMON by Kate Hoefler and Corinna Luyken

November 25

When I think about my most recent picture book collaboration, NOTHING IN COMMON, written by Kate Hoefler, and when I am asked to describe the book, I have found myself rambling on a bit.  Not entirely sure how to describe it.  Certainly, it’s a book about two kids, an old man, and a dog.  There’s […]

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How a Makerspace Project Inspired a Book by Melissa Stewart

November 16

Back in 2018, I had a dream, and while attending a makerspace workshop led by educators Dana Kramroff and Rabecca Hester at the Keystone State Literacy Association conference in Pennsylvania, I decided to create a 3-D representation of it.   What exactly was my dream? I wanted to help educators understand a critical part of […]

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COVER REVEAL – The Renegade Reporters by Elissa Brent Weissman

November 13

When I do school visits, kids always ask where I get the ideas for my books. Well, the idea for The Renegade Reporters came from doing school visits!   When I was in elementary school, sixth graders took turns reading the morning announcements over the loudspeaker in the main office. But doing school visits as […]

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What Love Can Do by Joan Bauer

November 11

I saw the noses first.  They were poking through the gate. “Come around the back,” I was told.  “We meet in the yard.”  I was excited — I was here to begin researching my 14th novel for young people. I love dogs and these were special ones— part of a guide dog-in-training puppy playgroup in […]

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