I am excited to introduce you to two newly expanded collections in the Children’s Room: Read-Along Audiobooks and Spanish Language Picture Books. The read-alongs are picture books that come with a CD that reads the book aloud. Tones indicate when the pages are to be turned, so the child can follow along with the text. [...]
Because Amelia Smiled by David Ezra Stein This is a book about how one smile can affect a whole world. Amelia smiled and Mrs. Higgins saw her and smiled too. She was so happy that she baked some cookies for her son, who sang a song to his class, who inspired a dancer… The books [...]
In the three years that we’ve had this blog, we have never had a post explicitly about siblings. Which is surprising given that siblings are such a dominant part of childhood and an enormous part of almost all children’s books. So here are five siblings books from J Fiction that, with their mixed-up and conflicting [...]
As April showers give way to May flowers, we’ll be making visits to 4th and 5th grade classes to talk up our amazing Personalized Reading List (PeRL) program. I know I am biased, but there probably isn’t another public library out there that offers such an outstanding service for readers of any age. (Sorry adults, [...]
Rachel Carson and Her Book that Changed the World by Laurie Lawlor This beautiful new picture book tells the story of Rachel Carson’s life, from her nature-loving childhood through her 1962 publication of Silent Spring, the book that launched modern environmentalism. Carson was a biologist by training at a time when few women entered scientific [...]
One Gorilla by Anthony Browne In this oversized counting book, Anthony Browne presents one of the most lusciously beautiful picture books that I’ve seen in a long time. The brightly colored, richly saturated portraits of chimpanzees, mandrills, baboons, macaques, and other members of the primate family fill each page, compelling the reader to pause and [...]
April was declared National Poetry Month 17 years ago by the Academy of American Poets. I’m lucky enough to know Jennifer Benka, the Academy’s executive director, and I was thrilled to hear her on PBS the other day. I was excited that she didn’t focus on all the reasons that poetry is important! meaningful! crucial!. [...]
Now that Women’s History Month is nearly history, I would like to add my two cents to March’s month-long celebration of women and girls. It’s my contention that protagonists in fiction are no less influential than the real people in biographies. While growing up during the 1960s, my heroes were Louisa May Alcott’s Meg, Lewis [...]
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