Do you like Ralph? We do—he's funny. Who am I talking about? Ralph Covert, the musician behind the Ralph's World CDs for children. Ralph, who also has a rock band (the Bad Seeds), leaped into the kids' music biz in...

“One person asked me, ‘Wouldn’t you have rather won the National Book Award for an adult, serious work?’ I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian — that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing Y.A.” Sherman Alexie,...

When I was in my 20s, I never dreamed that Moth Night would be the highlight of my week, but there you go. The event took place at the local nature center, and while we waited for the sun to...

This morning I went to the second day of my library's enormous summer book sale. Seasoned book-sale-goers know that second days are tough; the good stuff flies off the tables on the morning of the first day. Actually, seasoned attendees...

The big news in poetry is that Californian Kay Ryan was named the next U.S. poet laureate. See this article at the San Francisco Chronicle for details; Ryan's poem "Home to Roost" is included. (A poet laureate who knows her...

A Celebration of the Work and Life of William Maxwell—"A lively evening of discussion and reminiscence" of the author and longtime New Yorker editor, with Daniel Menaker, Benjamin Cheever, Edward Hirsch, Stewart O'Nan, and Christopher Carduff. (In between discussing and...

Back in May, Charlotte, of Charlotte's Library, tagged me with a meme of questions with five-part answers. I've changed up the format a bit to be all about books. If you'd like to pick it up and run your own...

Recommended reading this afternoon: "The Lion and the Mouse," at the New Yorker. The article by Jill Lepore is about the New York Public Library's Anne Carroll Moore and "the battle that reshaped children's literature."

Every weekend Sherry at the blog Semicolon hosts a link-fest called the Saturday Review of Books; some of the titles under consideration are for children, some not. I've already spotted a book for my son over there: Byrd Baylor's Everybody...

I've never been to Baltimore except to change planes, but I'm ready to go after reading Laura Lippman's In a Strange City, a mystery with the Poe Toaster at its center. For more than fifty years, a visitor has left...

In an obituary of the late, beloved author-illustrator Tasha Tudor, the Wall Street Journal's Meghan Cox Gurdon described Tudor's style, "a distinctive, delicately watercolored evocation of all that was tender and lovely in the lives of children of yore," contrasting...

Summer is the ideal time to hand this guide over to the 5- to 9-year-old neighborhood (or nature center) explorer. Despite an occasionally cautionary tone ("You need a grownup along for safety"), Jim Arnosky's picture book celebrates the "smallest of...

"Holy Bookworms! Superheroes Take to the Page," by Glen Weldon, at NPR. (7.3.08) Speaking of comics, the blogger known as Tangognat spies some manga sure to be "just the thing for ninja-crazed reluctant readers." Which brings us to "Snacktime," a...

Happy 4th of July and happy Poetry Friday! Today's poem is "A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky," by Lewis Carroll. Kinda melancholic for a national holiday, but still enjoyable. It's an acrostic poem, by the way. See what the first...

Christoph Niemann, who wrote and illustrated a delightful picture book called The Police Cloud, also has a monthly illustrated blog, Abstract City, at the New York Times. I highly recommend the latest (first? I'm not sure) entry, "The Boys and...