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Episode 10: History of Kidlit Part 2

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Caldecott & Contemporaries

Max And Moritz by Wilhelm Busch

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Episode 9: History of Kidlit Part 1

| Tibby

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Books we mention

Other resources

  • Our Patreon– join for a dollar to get access to between season bonus episodes

Here is the illustrated page from Newbery’s book Food for the Mind; or, a New Riddle-Book:

Episode 8: How to Find Books

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Award Lists

  • Association for Library Service for Children (ALSC) Award List Database
  • Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Book Awards
  • You can download lists of each of the awards at the pages linked as well as learn more about their criteria.
  • Caldecott Medal: awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
  • Newbery Medal: awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
  • Geisel Award: given annually (beginning in 2006) to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished contribution to the body of American children’s literature known as beginning reader books published in the United States during the preceding year.
  • Pura Belpré Award: presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.
  • Sibert Award: honors the most distinguished informational book published in English in the preceding year for its significant contribution to children’s literature.
  • Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production: annual award will be given to the producer of the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States
  • Coretta Scott King Book Awards: annually recognize outstanding books for young adults and children by African American authors and illustrators that reflect the African American experience.  Further, the Award encourages the artistic expression of the black experience via literature and the graphic arts in biographical, social, and historical treatments by African American authors and illustrators.
  • Stonewall Book Awards: are presented to English language books that have exceptional merit relating to the LGBTQIA+ experience.
  • Mildred L. Batchelder Award: is a citation awarded to an American publisher for a children’s book considered to be the most outstanding of those books originally published in a foreign language in a foreign country, and subsequently translated into English and published in the United States.
  • Notable Children’s Books: Each year the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) identifies the best of the best of children’s books on the Notable Children’s Books list.

Other resources

If you want to know how bad those Columbus book illustrations were here you go:

Episode 7: Beyond Books

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Magazines we mention

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Episode 6: Read Alouds

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Wood block print of a family in a kitchen ironing, cooking, and sitting at the table reading a book together.
“Family Circle”
Wood block print by Ashley Bryan

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Read Aloud Focus Suggestions

  • Orientation: the size and shape of the book, a landscape orientation has shorter height than width, a portrait orientation has a shorter width than height 
  • Dust jack: the cover that goes around a hardback, cover of the book
  • Endpapers: the pages glued to the inside of the cover of a hardback, they often feature elements of the story that add to the understanding of that story, paperbacks sometimes feature them as the first and last bound pages
  • Front matter: the cover, title page, copyright page, dedications, etc.
  • Second story: these are stories that are not written into the the text of the story, but are seen in the illustrations 
  • Gutter: the split between the right and left pages
  • Air frames: the white space around the illustrations
  • Typography: the fonts as well as how they are presented on the page
  • Single- and double-page spreads
  • Also think about how time is shown progressing in illustrations

Midseason Bonus: Book Recommendations

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Recommended Board Books

  1. Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang
  2. Sandra Boyton books– whichever float your boat on this one
  3. Julie Flett (Cree-Metis) board books such as Little You, We All Count, We Sang You Home
  4. Celebrate My Hopi Corn by Anita Poleahla (Salina Bookshelf board books)
  5. Fruits in Suits and Vegetables in Underwear by Jared Chapman
  6. Stanley Board Books by William Bee- these are great concept books for parents who like aesthetics
  7. Wordless stories such as Good Dog, Carl

Recommended Picture Books

  1. The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin (really anything by Grace Lin)
  2. Milo’s Museum by Zetta Elliott
  3. Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall
  4. The Princess and the Pony by Kate Beaton
  5. Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina
  6. Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith
  7. The Last Stop On Market Street by Matt de la Pena, illustrated by Christian Robinson
  8. The Frances books by the Russel and Lilian Hoban
  9. Chirri & Chirra books by Kaya Doi
  10. Sunday Shopping by Sally Derby Miller, illustrated by Shadra Strickland
  11. Cherries and Cherry Pits by Vera B. Williams
  12. Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder

Recommended Easy Readers

  1. The Silly Tilly books by Lilian Hoban
  2. Get the Giggles: A First Joke Book
  3. Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel
  4. You Should Meet series (for older readers)
  5. Holiday House I Like to Read series (I don’t know why this is the Kindle editions, but you can use it to find the paperbacks; see here for the reading levels of each title- remember A, B, and C are the absolute easiest)
  6. Katie Fry, Private Eye by Katherine Cox
  7. Ling and Ting by Grace Lin
  8. Benny and Penny books by Geoffrey Hayes
  9. King and Kayla series by Dori Hillestad Butler

Recommended Chapter Books

  1. Lola Levine series by Monica Brown
  2. Zoey and Sassafras series by Asia Citro
  3. Ruby Lu series by Lenore Look
  4. Museum Mysteries series by Sheila Connolly
  5. The Infamous Ratsos series by Kara LaReau
  6. City Kids series by Zetta Elliott
  7. Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake (excellent themes of friendship)
  8. The Stories Julian Tells by Ann Cameron (there are more of these books than listed in the series, be sure to look at your library for all of them)
  9. Juana and Lucas by Juana Medina
  10. The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis

Recommended Middle Grade

  1. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia (I clearly didn’t remember this book as well as I thought. My description is generally correct, but the details I shared aren’t totally accurate.)
  2. The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
  3. When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
  4. Mr. and Mrs. Bunny Detectives Extraordinaire by Polly Horvath
  5. X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon
  6. Lumberjanes by ND Stevenson (although you might find them under Noelle Stevenson)
  7. The Gauntlet by Karuna Riazi
  8. Dactyl Hill Squad by Daniel Jose Older
  9. The Greenglass House by Kate Milford
  10. The Witch Boy by Molly Ostertag

Episode 5: The Picture Book

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Surveys of the Publishing Industry

Book Photos: Shrek

Book Photos: Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus

Book Photos: They All Saw a Cat

Books we mention

Other resources

“We’re comfortable with the idea of a child’s verbal intelligence growing with and by means of literature. But we tend to take visual intelligence for granted…We know there is value in the intelligence of the eye, we have big museums dedicated to it, but we’re not sure how to teach it. How do you teach color, form, line? You do it the same way you do words and sentences and ideas, by slowly increasing the level of complexity, depth and multi-layeredness.” -Chris Raschka

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