Heidi Aubrey’s 2025 picture book Ada and the Goat is full of graceful images and uses space well. For example, on the first page Ada […]
Selma
The title Selma gives no real clue what this 2026 (2025 in German) picture book is about. Indeed, American readers might think of Selma, Alabama […]
Get Me Out of This Book
Get Me Out of This Book: Rules & Tools For Being Brave is surprisingly good. I say “surprisingly” because I often find picture books with […]
Stories of the Night
I recently saw an announcement about this year’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. (Lindgren wrote the Pippi Longstocking stories, and other works.) I knew the work […]
Hey Diddle Diddle
The nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle” is hundreds of years old. Many sources say two hundred years. Some say four hundred (with possible precursors being […]
Babies on the Bus
Karen Katz’s 2011 picture book Babies on the Bus has a very simple premise: rework the children’s song “The Wheels on the Bus” to include […]
My Dog Mouse
Eva Lindstrom’s My Dog Mouse is lovely, lyrical, and touching. It gives a very real sense of what kids wants, and of dog-person relations. The […]
The Grumpy Ghost Upstairs
Mamiko Shiotani’s The Grumpy Ghost Upstairs was first published in Japan in 2020, and not in English until 2025. It won the Pinpoint Picture Book […]
The Rough Patch
I’m a fan of Brian Lies, and recently got to take part in a webinar with him. If you haven’t read/seen his 2025 book Cat […]
Well, that was interesting!
This evening I attended a webinar sponsored by SCBWI (the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators—the major professional organization for children’s book creators). Titled […]