The Joy of Children's Literature

I posted a picture earlier today from my front yard to show the phenomenal amount of snow we received today in VA (yes, it's STILL snowing!). This picture is from the backyard...my son and our puppy (a Yorkie). How cute are they??!!!!

This is the view from my front door! I've lived in Virginia for 10 years and this is the first time it's snowed like this. Sure, there's been a few inches in the past and times when it's iced over, but nothing like this! AND, it's still snowing. It's so beautiful...the perfect day for a hot cup of coffee and a good book. I'm finishing The Ask and the Answer (2nd book in the Chaos Walking trilogy) and starting  Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg . I hope you are enjoying your day wherever you are in the world.

J.D. Salinger, Author of 'The Catcher in the Rye,' Is Dead at 91 J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, has died in Cornish, N.H., where he lived in seclusion for more than 50 years, his son told The Associated Press. He was 91. Mr. Salinger's literary reputation rests on a slender but enormously influential body of published work: the novel "The Catcher in the Rye," the collection "Nine Stories" and two compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional Glass family: "Franny and Zooey" and "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction." Read More: http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na

For the second consecutive year, the National Book Foundation will award prizes of up to $2,500 each to individuals and institutions—or partnerships between the two—that have developed innovative means of creating and sustaining a lifelong love of reading. The most important criteria for selecting winners are creativity, risk-taking, and a visionary quality, as well as a novel way of presenting books and literature. The Prize is less focused on the promotion of basic literacy and the pedagogy of reading than on the promotion of literary reading. To apply, visit www.nationalbook.org/innovations_in_reading.html . All applications must be postmarked by February 17, 2010

-- Publishers Weekly , 1/25/2010 Picture Books My Garden by Kevin Henkes Greenwillow, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-06-171517-4 Spring colors of lilac, daffodil yellow, pale blue, and leafy green bloom in Caldecott Medalist Henkes’s fanciful account of the great outdoors. “My mother has a garden. I’m her helper,” explains a girl, who wears a petunia-pink dress and a golden straw hat. She dutifully waters and weeds, “but if I had a garden,” she says, things would be less predictable. Gazing up at sunflowers, she giggles to imagine them colored in dots and plaids. She picks a flower and, in her perfect garden, another pops right up. Seashells and jelly beans sprout, disliked vegetables are invisible, and pests are not a problem: “the rabbits would be chocolate and I would eat them.” At this, the girl nibbles a bunny, surrounded by cocoa rabbits wearing telltale ribbons. Henkes gives the young storyteller a matter-of-fact voice and a sly sense of humor, while dewy watercolors and ink pic...

If you are a fan of the 39 Clues series, you will enjoy this interview with Peter Lerangis, author of The 39 Clues book 3 The Sword Thief and book 7 The Viper's Nest from onourmindsatscholastic . In the interview, he answers the following 5 questons: 1. What happens in The 39 Clues book 7? 2. What's your favorite part about writing for The 39 Clues series? 3. After writing book 3, what's it like to start up again at book 7? 4. Have there been any particular fan comments that really stood out to you? 5. What's on your mind?

From Inside Higer Ed (1/25/10) The Texas Board of Education, worried that a scholar's book about Marxism might infiltrate a portion of the state's third grade curriculum, accidentally has removed from an approved list work by the author of the popular children's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? , The Dallas Morning News reported. The intended target was Bill Martin, a professor of philosophy at DePaul University, who offended some Texas board members with his book Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. But the board accidentally removed work by Bill Martin Jr., author of Brown Bear. When things like this happen, doesn't it make you wonder....???