Welcome to my new blog, which now includes content from many of the blogs I’ve created over the years. You can now also access content via category from this one page instead of having to search for my individual blogs, which were scattered over various platforms and websites.
Barney Saltzberg is the author and illustrator of close to 50 books for children, including Beautiful Oops!, Arlo Needs Glasses, Andrew Drew and Drew, and the bestselling Touch and Feel Kisses series with over one million copies in print. Not only that, but he’s also recorded four albums of music for young people (!). See the . . .
I’ve added a new print-ready poster to my For The Love Of Reading page: You can download the poster here. For more free print-ready literacy posters, activity sheets, bookmarks and more, see For The Love Of Reading. You can also browse my full Print-Ready Archive for teachers, librarians and young readers.
“Picture books create readers from ground up. Don’t rush children out of them.” – Jarrett J. Krosoczka.
I cannot resist a middle grade novel with unique/cool technology as a hook, so was intrigued by the basic synopsis of SIX by M. M. Vaughan (Margaret K. McElderry, 2015): Parker and his sister Emma, with the help of secret advanced technology, can communicate between themselves through their thoughts. When their father . . .
I love what Stephen King said about not waiting for one’s Muse to show up. “Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn’t the Ouija board or the spirit-world we’re talking about here, but just . . .
It’s been a while since I’ve awarded the Incredibly Prestigious and Exquisitely Ephemeral Golden Marmot Award, but this week it NEEDS to go to Chuck Wendig for this wonderful tweet. In addition to following @ChuckWendig on Twitter, I encourage you to read his Terribleminds blog. (*** To those offended by strong language: be warned that Chuck embraces it. . . .
In addition to being a debut picture book author, Christian Trimmer is an editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. I love his enthusiasm for kidlit/YA on his Twitter feed, plus he’s edited some pretty amazing books. Like THE DEATH AND LIFE OF ZEBULON FINCH by Daniel Kraus (here’s what I posted about . . .
For those interested, the Font Nerd Table comic above is now available as a greeting card in my card shop. I do admit that I over-used Comic Sans and Papyrus when they first came out. Fontfaces are so much like fashion, aren’t they? You have the basic fontfaces which never seem . . .
Patricia Newman is the author of fiction and nonfiction titles, and magazine articles for children. She writes what she wants to know and has covered topics as diverse as ocean plastic, trains, fighter pilots, and Ebola. Although many of her books have received critical acclaim, she writes for the kid she . . .