The Joy of Children's Literature

 From Horn Book Magazine : Fanfare is the Horn Book’s selection for the best books published for children and teens in 2011. Publishing trends being what they are, the editors make no attempt to provide a balanced list (where’s the folklore?), but you will find the thirty choices fairly evenly divided among picture books, fiction, and nonfiction. Do note crossovers: many of the books are suggested for a range of ages, and several straddle genres: is Joyce Sidman and Beth Krommes’s beautiful Swirl By Swirl nonfiction, picture book, or poetry? The Fanfare books are selected by the reviewers and editors of The Horn Book Magazine from the more than five hundred books reviewed each year.

From The Guardian : Illustrator, author and Oscar-winning film-maker Shaun Tan (left), with Neil Gaiman. Photograph: Colin McPherson If you are a fan of Shaun Tan and Neil Gaiman, then you must read a conversation between the two in The Guardian . The two met this year at the Edinburgh book festival where Shaun was teaching a masterclass.  I particularly like the following exchange in which they are talking about writing as a way to find out what you think about something: NG : I'm going to learn something I didn't know when I began. I'm going to discover how I feel and what I think about it during the process. I will break off little bits of my head and they will become characters and things will happen and they will talk to each other. ST : Exactly, creating a character is like impersonating another being, so that you can find out what you think about something. You really find out what your style is when you diversify – setting something in a fictional l