MOCKINGBIRD (National Book Award, 2010), (Crystal Kite Award 2011) In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now…
Category: Environment
Ruth and the Green Book
This book is a good primer about Jim Crow for young readers. Probably many of us who were alive at any point during the span of that apartheid can hardly believe such a system existed during our lifetimes. For…
Notable Books for a Global Society
A Sweet List Of “well written books…bringing stories that are engaging and compelling,” sometimes startling. The Notable Books for a Global Society (NBGS) is a relatively new list. Many may ask, why do we need another list? First a quote:…
Call for Manuscripts
The Journal of Children’s Literature has a “call for manuscripts” on “Exploring issues of social justice through children’s literature” for the Fall 2012 issue. Manuscripts are due Feb. 1 2012. Manuscripts are to be submitted to: Miriam Martinez, Jonda C. McNair…
Looking at the poverty of silence in Lauren Myracle’s small town
Best-selling middle grade and young adult author Lauren Myracle has a moral compass and she wants to pass that on through stories, usually stories of adolescent and teen girls, that grip her heart and imagination. “I don’t want…
THIS THING CALLED the FUTURE
THIS THING CALLED THE FUTURE by J.L. Powers Look for a full review in the Horn Book Magazine, July/August 2011 This magical novel looks closely at life in the contemporary shantytowns of modern South Africa. Witches live there. Romance happens…
To Play with Barbie or Not to Play…
The following post is a guest post by Lauryn Macy Roberts, a graduate of Mount Mary College’s graduate writing program. Lauryn recalls growing up with Barbies and raising a daughter to play with the iconic doll — but not without at…
SHAUN TAN
Courage, audacity, wonder – Treat your eyes to surrealistic images, your brain to ideas, and your heart, be ready to hold your heart. Three delights are waiting within the cover of one collection: LOST & FOUND THE RED TREE…
Learning to Die in Miami offers insight into how governments create political orphans
Carlos Eire was only eleven, and his brother Tony only 13, when their parents gave them the one thing they would never get in their Cuban homeland: freedom. As part of the Cuban airlift of children called Pedro Pan,…
The cover of Elmer and the Hippos (David McKee, Andersen Press USA) made me predict an allegory about diversity, specifically about homosexuality. Elmer is a patch-work elephant–of delightful colors–and I suspected he would be mistreated, isolated, perhaps banished. That story…