We, in the children’s literature world, and we, as readers of children’s literature, have lost something, and that something is the willingness to accept uncertainty. I might simply call it a loss …

Durant ses soixante ans de carrière, le musicien, qui fut aussi, à ses heures, peintre, poète et penseur, laisse en héritage Mozart, Beethoven et surtout Schubert, dont il fut le medium privilégié. Il est mort le 17 juin, à l’âge de 94 ans.

Both of my children found cats in a toy store. They looked to me like stuffed animals on a shelf, but my children, each of them as they were emerging from babyhood to toddlerhood, set eyes on a cat…

When Tomie dePaola died, he left behind a world of loss. When Tomie dePaola’s dog, Brontë, died, Brontë left behind a grieving Tomie. And, so, when Tomie died, he also left behind a manuscrip…

There is a grand total of one thing that I don’t like about this book, which is that styling the title in writing is a little irritating. Here Is a Book is what makes most sense, but then you…

The book would have been perfect at any time, in any age. Despite the nicely labelled dates (example: Saturday, June 7, 1986), it doesn’t feel stuck on any day of any month of any year. And t…

In November 2017, I wrote a not particularly good but, I recall, intensely felt post about The Wall by Peter Sís. I recall the fear and agitation of the time vividly, and, of course, not much has c…

Dear Lucy, For you, it’s Lent, now, and for me, it’s right between Purim and Passover. Oh– excuse me while I go get mugs for tea. I need to decide, by the way, whether I’m n…

“I FOUND MY CALDECOTT PICK!” I shrieked on the way into my husband’s study and I think he was in a meeting but let’s pretend he wasn’t. I was excited. I had been a bit…

I was going to move on from Canadian book shops after my first post focused exclusively on the wonderful book shops of Atlantic Canada, right over here. I want to talk about other book shops I love…

I did not grow up with the usual Uri Shulevitz books: Snow, for example, I only saw when I was older. The book I associate most strongly with Uri Shulevitz is not his beautiful, Caldecott Medal win…

I think most of those who read my words here are Canadian or American, and I wonder… Have you heard of Kazuo Iwamura? The two countries where I met his books were not on this continent; I met him i…

[a last word on foreign affairs]

[—or not]