I walked up to the registration table at a conference for children’s book writers and illustrators. The lobby was filled with teachers talking to one another about their schools, their principals, and common core. A few talked over their manuscripts. The woman behind the table was cheerful and warm. She smiled at me like I…
The Stag Who Lived Forever by Bryana Johnson, illustrated by Zach Franzen It was a matter of great importance, and the morning wind that carries the mist and the butterflies carried the news in a kind of dance, like the laugh of the first baby, when it broke into a thousand pieces and was…
This tale is taken from Marion Florence Lansing, Esquire, and Knight, 1910. Illustration by Zach Franzen —– —– —– How St. George Fought the Dragon “And by my pen I will recite St. George’s deeds, an English knight.” Away back in the second century after Christ, many hundred years before the coming of King Arthur,…
This is an old story taken from James Baldwin’s book for children, Fifty Famous Stories. I have provided a new illustration and hope you like it. For those of you reading aloud, you can pronounce Bucephalus, [Byoo-sef-a-lus] which is easier to say than it looks. Please enjoy this first and very short installment of Story…
Kids today are offered many invitations to be shallow. Everywhere they are bombarded with proclamations that reality is self-defined, appetites are sacred, and that self-control is self-defacement. If you examine the children’s books on the shelves of your local bookstore you find that girls are afflicted with books like Teenage-ness: the Teenage years, Glitter Edition…
O! it is excellent To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant. Shakespeare, Measure for Measure Paul Bunyan, Roald Dahl’s BFG, and the Jolly Green Giant are not without their charms, but all anti-types derive their power from types. If the types become overrun with exceptions, the exceptions…
I’m adding some middle-grade cover images to my portfolio (I’m an illustrator) of stories that don’t exist but that I wouldn’t mind reading. I’ve read stories about giants eating sheep, but I’ve never…
Fantasy is a two-edged sword. It can amplify our disenchantment with the world, or refresh our appreciation of it. William Jay Smith does a great job communicating the romance of domesticity and refreshing our appreciation of life in his poem, “The Toaster.” He uses the unfamiliar (dragon) to refresh our wonder at the familiar (toaster). Tolkien…
If you want to read to your kids, but the stories you choose seem hit or miss, let me offer a few genre suggestions based on age breakdowns. This might help you to hit the bullseye a little more often. I learned this in college, and these categories seem to make sense, though it might…
Some months ago, my wife and I were reading Eleanor Estes’ charming book Rufus M. We were amazed at one story where Rufus (the youngest of the Moffats and the title character) found some money frozen in the ice. While the rest of his family were busy trying to manage a frozen pipe under the…
