Elissa Gershowitz

Massachusetts

Editor-in-Chief at The Horn Book Magazine

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Articles

Librarians with Superpowers Redux 2025

14 hours ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz

Find more great Horn Book content at these links: Interviews with authors and illustrators Recommended books: reviews and themed booklists App and e-book reviews Movie reviews Event news and recaps Events calendar We often talk, somewhat tongue-in-cheekily, about "Librarians with Superpowers," but it's not really a joke: this profession requires smarts, compassion, AND fortitude...
Acoustic Rooster on PBS Kids

3 days ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz

Find more great Horn Book content at these links: Interviews with authors and illustrators Recommended books: reviews and themed booklists App and e-book reviews Movie reviews Event news and recaps Events calendar GBH Boston's latest, lively, book-to-show offering is Acoustic Rooster based on the 2011 picture book by Kwame Alexander...
Mother's Day 2025

6 days ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz

Welcome to the Horn Book's Family Reading blog, a place devoted to offering children's book recommendations and advice about the whats and whens and whos and hows of sharing books in the home. Find us on Twitter @HornBook and on Facebook at Facebook.com/TheHornBook Mother's Day is this Sunday, May 11. Here are some recommended books, articles, and blog posts featuring moms, grandmoms, mother figures, and Mother’s Day...
Roger Sutton and Harry Bliss at Harvard Book Store

6 days ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz

Photo courtesy of Elissa Gershowitz. On a rainy evening earlier this week, Roger Sutton and Harry Bliss packed the house at Harvard Book Store for a conversation about Bliss's book (for adults) You Can Never Die: A Graphic Memoir. The two first met "at Maurice's farm" in 2014 when Bliss was a Sendak Fellow. You Can Never Die is Bliss's "reflections on life and his relationship with Penny, his beloved dog," a mainstay of his cartoons, who passed away.
Once a youth services librarian...

6 days ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz

Photo by Shawn Miller, Library of Congress. The best youth services librarians are a special character of human. Warm, smart, creative, curious, patient, constant, strong; shaped by their service to young people, their appreciation for books and reading, the courage of their convictions, and their professional expertise in a challenging field.
Editorial: Stranger than Fiction (May/June 2025)

1 week ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz

One year ago, we were putting the finishing touches on our special issue highlighting “Our Centennial” during a yearlong celebration of The Horn Book Magazine’s hundredth anniversary. If you haven’t seen it recently (or at all), please check it out; commemorative copies are still available for purchase, and you’ll find links to the content at hbook.com/page/horn-book-centennial. Though some details were elusive — is it really founder Bertha Mahony Miller’s chair?
Table of Contents: May/June 2025 Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: Perception and Reality

1 week ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz |Celia Perez |Adrienne L. Pettinelli

FeaturesBetween Fiction and Reality by Cathryn M. MercierThe playground of metafiction in picture books. Reality ReimaginedWe asked fourteen sci-fi/fantasy authors how reality shapes their work.
2025 Summer Reading Recommendations

2 weeks ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz

Downpour. © 2025 by Yuko Ohnari and Koshiro Hata. As longtime readers know, pleasure reading is a core value of the hundred-plus-year-old Horn Book, and Summer Reading provides an opportunity to follow that bliss. Or to discover a new type of bliss. Or to have your bliss challenged.
Review of Once for Yes

2 weeks ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz |Adrienne L. Pettinelli |Sarah Ellis |Martha V. Parravano

Once for Yes by Allie MillingtonIntermediate, Middle School Feiwel 272 pp. 3/25 9781250326980 $17.99e-book ed. 9781250326973 $9.99Millington’s debut (Olivetti, rev. 5/24) was about a sentient typewriter, and this offering begins with the observations of the Odenburgh, an apartment building and one of several narrative perspectives in a quirky and affecting novel. A year after the death of her sister Lina, Prue Laroe is dreading her own upcoming birthday.
Ekua Holmes and Autumn Allen at MassArt: "Connected Legacies"

3 weeks ago | hbook.com | Elissa Gershowitz |Emily Schneider

On April 17, the Horn Book was invited to staff a table at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's (MassArt) Hellerstein Literary Reading and Lecture Series. The theme was "Connected Legacies: The Making of Children’s Books" and featured talks by two wonderful Friends of the Horn Book: Ekua Holmes and Autumn Allen.