As we turn the corner of a new year, I’m trying to list some of the good things that have come out of 2020. For many of us, I think one benefit has been spending more time outside, either visiting with family and friends or just enjoying nature after being cooped up in the house….
This winter welcomed the release of James D. Witmer’s new mystery chapter book, The Strange New Dog. Story Warren readers might be familiar with his delightful book of short stories, A Year in the Big Old Garden, featuring tales of squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits. This one flips the script and takes us indoors, into the…
EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we are re-posting Laura’s excellent review to celebrate that Henry and the Chalk Dragon is now available as an audiobook, which you can see on Audible by clicking here. It’s not often that I read an entire book in just one or two sittings, but that’s exactly what I did earlier this…
“I’m afraid of the dark.” If you’ve ever said or thought this, would you please raise your hand? Okay, every one of you can put your hand down now, ‘cause I know you all raised ‘em. We all know the dark is scary sometimes. Literal, emotional, spiritual; there’s all kinds of darkness, and they all…
Today we’re highlighting a girl book! I’m not usually the type to reach for the pink-iest pink or the bow-iest bow, but I absolutely loved Vanessa Brantley-Newton’s Just Like Me, a book of poems for and about girls. Starting with the bright pink endpapers, this short picture book of poems is full of words and…
For me, the first years are lost. Golly, that’s a great opening sentence, isn’t it? After reading it on the first page of the new middle-grade graphic novel, When Stars are Scattered, I immediately had questions. The first years of what? Why were they lost? The only solution: keep reading. The answers that unfold on…
It’s every bookish kid’s dream job—deputy librarian! I know I loved anything that could connect me more to my church library and public library growing up; helping reshelve books, joining clubs, chatting about favorite reads with the staff. Story Warren regular Carolyn Leiloglou has penned a new picture book that looks at this joy of…
How do you choose a favorite, a best? Which would you pick before all the rest? In college, some friends of mine had a poster of Wassily Kandinsky’s “Color Study: Squares with Concentric Circles” hanging up in their room. Anyone coming for a study break or evening chat was invited to look at the poster…
The first thing to catch my eye about Corey Ann Haydu’s Eventown was the phrase “twin sister” on the inside flap. Being a twin myself, I love reading twin stories. It’s so interesting to me to see what authors imagine twin life to be like, whether it’s close to my own experience or not. I’m…
I’m constantly on the lookout for just the right book to share in my library storytimes. Sometimes these programs can be a bit chaotic: twenty or thirty people in the room, and lots of jumping and counting, clapping and stomping. With quieter groups (or to try to recover a sense of calm during a crazy…
“Everything old is new again,” so they say—a trend that I think is true of books, too, no doubt helped along by all the recent reboots, remakes, and reimaginings of old stories for new audiences at the movies. I am so excited for this coming Christmas release of a new film adaptation of Little Women,…
I’ve been thinking lately about poetry, about what sticks in our minds when we hear a poem. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the meter. I was watching TV the other day and heard some lines that I knew immediately were Shakespeare, even though I was unfamiliar with them. They just sounded like…
