2010 was not a great year for fantasies. Sure, there were plenty of books that contained small fantastical elements, but titles that plunged the reader into entirely different worlds with their own set of rules and understandings? Few and far between. I blame the absence of Frances Hardinge. Fortunately for everyone there was Stephen Messer’s Windblowne to fill an otherwise gaping void. Here you have a book that takes world… Read More
Hear ye, hear ye! I give you, my readers, until midnight tonight (12:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) to vote in the comments on this post on the one last 2010 book I review. Just list the title you prefer. At the stroke of midnight tonight (Tuesday) I will close down the comments and whatever has the most write-ins wins. Easy peasy. I’ve done this kind of thing with fancy online polls in the past, but my energy has significantly decreased as of late.
Please note that these are not all the books I read in 2010 and haven’t reviewed. … Read More
One of the most frequent requests I get from parents in my library is a desire for books on “community workers”. Which is to say, their children have been given an assignment in school on writing about the people who work in their neighborhood, and so we are charged with coming up with books about sanitation workers, doctors, bus drivers, etc. This being New York City… Read More
Kids don’t pretend to be sailors anymore. Did they ever? I think so. There must have been a time when the lure of seaside battles against a hated enemy stirred something proud and deep in the heart of your average child reader. Mind you, I suspect that it’s a British inclination. Perhaps in the heyday of John… Read More
The range of different going to school books varies wildly. This is understandable. After all, the act of attending school is one of the first moments of autonomy a child experiences. This is particularly true in parts of the world where children are trusted to get themselves to school without the constant hovering aid of their parental units. In America, much of the school year takes place… Read More
Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say. To heck with that, say I. When it comes to books for kids, nine times out of ten you’re going to end up judging a book on its cover no matter how much you try not to. That’s because kids themselves judge books by their covers and if a jacket is dull as dishwater… Read More
This is a very difficult book to review. When I review a picture book, you see, I need a “hook”. I need to latch onto some aspect of the product that strikes me as askew, or odd, or out of sorts. It sort of throws me off entirely when I have to deal with something . . . well . . . okay. There’s no… Read More
A curious thing occurs when you find yourself pregnant. I don’t mean the sudden desire to devour your neighbor or the embiggening of the belly region. I’m talking books. A person could work with children’s books for the majority of their adult life, think they know them back to front, up to down, forwards to backwards. . … Read More
I’m in a weird position. I’m tired of Steampunk, and yet if I say that word to most kids that walk into my library they’ll give me a blank stare followed by an immediate, “What’s Steampunk?” I’d explain to them that it’s this strange amalgamation of historical fiction plus futuristic gear-based clockwork technology but I know that this would not cause the blank stares to cease. They’d simply grow blanker. I’m… Read More
Parables. They’re almost impossible to do in children’s books. The problem with a parable is that if it wants to teach something it often has to say what it means. Another way of saying that is that parables for children are explicit. A good parable for kids can be subtle, but most don’t bother. They take their messages and whap children over the head with them repeatedly. Then kids… Read More
Elizabeth Bird is currently New York Public Library's Youth Materials Collections Specialist. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of NYPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. You can follow Elizabeth on Twitter @FuseEight or email her at fusenumber8.
Windblowne
