Of all the books that I read growing up, one of my favorite types to read was what I’ll generally call “animal stories.” James Herriot, Marguerite Henry, Sounder, Julie of the Wolves, Where the Red Fern Grows, Shiloh, My Dog Skip. It wasn’t until I was older that Because of Winn-Dixie was published, but I…
Your friendly neighborhood children’s librarian here, stopping by with a recommendation that caught my eye a few weeks ago. I love finding new writers and artists to add to my mental folder of “folks whose work I love and will keep an eye out for,” so I was very pleased to discover illustrator Benji Davies…
Are you acquainted with the Lupine Lady? She lives in a small house overlooking the sea, and goes by the more proper name of Miss Alice Rumphius. I’ve known her since I was a child, and I love introducing her to new friends. The Lupine Lady is the central character in the picture book Miss…
A thing I appreciate about picture books is how they can give us the ability to consider big topics in small ways. As an adult, if I were to just sit down and start pondering a Big Idea and how to teach it to a child—maybe contentment, materialism, a fair distribution of resources, needs vs….
Reading picture books as an adult is fun for lots of reasons, but one reason I’ve found is that I appreciate the different styles of illustration much more than I did as a younger reader. These days I’m especially finding myself drawn to paper collage illustrations, and one artist who always catches my eye is…
The library at my church growing up wasn’t very large, but I do remember the children’s section being jam-packed with biographies of notable Christians from history. It’s where I first encountered some of the names you might expect when you think about that type of book; stories about Elisabeth Elliot, Ben Carson, Eric Liddell, Corrie…
“It was a dark and stormy night.” Everyone knows that cliché’d opening sentence, but I’ve always kind of enjoyed it. Cliches generally exist because they’re somewhat effective at what they’re trying to do, and therefore get overused. And a storm really is a great way to start a story! Storms are dynamic and interesting; they…
How would you describe a picture book in its most basic form? If you’ve read enough of them, you’ve probably picked up on the standard 32-page format; usually full-page illustrations, sometimes a double page spread with the picture spread out across the middle fold. You start at the beginning, turn the pages from right to…
“What if…” said Mandy to herself, “what if I pretended this cottage were mine? I could sort of adopt it. Who would know? Who would care? Nobody lives here. I’m sure of that, now. And somebody needs to take care of it. And oh, I could take care of it.” She sprang to her feet….
If I were to create a grab-bag of elements that I thought would endear the Story Warren audience to a particular tale, and then randomly choose some and start to write, it’s certainly possible that I would come up with something like this: a middle-grade novel in which girl moves overseas with her family to…
As new books for summer begin to roll into my library, I’m starting to see more and more picture books that specifically address the COVID-19 pandemic, and I wanted to highlight a few for Story Warren readers. An article I read in graduate school about the importance of children’s books really stuck with me—it emphasized…
“Once upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children.” Oooo—doesn’t that sentence send a little shiver down your spine? Read it a little slower, maybe in a bit of a British accent. It feels almost like the beginning of a mystery/fantasy epic, in which a brave band of beauty-seekers goes out…
