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3 weeks ago | 
slj.com | Kimberly Olson Fakih |Kara Yorio |Andrew Bauld
Bank Street’s Center for Children’s Literature has announced the 2025 winners of the Irma Black Award and Cook Prize. The Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children's Literature (Irma Black Award) is awarded annually to "an outstanding book for young children in which text and illustrations are inseparable, each enhancing and enlarging on the other to produce a singular whole."First and second grade jurors from around the world choose the winner.
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2 months ago | 
slj.com | Kimberly Olson Fakih |Kathy Ishizuka
Starred reviews are always good news, for what they mean and for what happens next. 10 Things I Love About Starred Reviews [Read: 10 Things I Hate About Starred Reviews]Recently I wrote an opinion piece, and the counter-arguments began to roll in immediately. Thank you, Mrs. DeWald, high school debate team coach. I really can pick a fight with anyone. Here's what I love about giving books starred reviews.
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2 months ago | 
slj.com | Andrew Bauld |Kimberly Olson Fakih |Travis Jonker
Photograph by Antonio Pantoja Tim Jones, library media specialist at John F. Kennedy Elementary School in Louisville, KY, is the 2025 School Librarian of the Year. Jones has built a connection with students and created a library space for fun and learning. In less than two years at the school, he has enacted a variety of innovative programs that draw students into the library while modernizing and expanding the collection and creating a makerspace stocked with coding toys and STEM kits.
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2 months ago | 
slj.com | Brigid Alverson |Kimberly Olson Fakih |Kara Yorio
It’s romance! It’s fantasy! It’s romantasy: The portmanteau word that designates the hottest trend in prose and graphic novels of the past few years. The word may be new, but the concept isn’t. It has long been a fan favorite category for shoujo manga, with series such as “Fruits Basket” and “Snow White with the Red Hair.”Many romantasy manga have fairy tale settings, with elaborate costumes, handsome princes, and backdrops of gossipy, backstabbing royal courts.
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2 months ago | 
slj.com | Kimberly Olson Fakih |Kathy Ishizuka
10 Things I Hate About Starred Book ReviewsDining with professional colleagues, perhaps in the aftermath of the pandemic and continuing WFH, doesn’t happen as often as it did when I first came into publishing (and I never mastered a one-martini lunch, let alone three). Still, whenever I am across the table from a publisher or editor or marketing director—or even an author or illustrator—there is only one low-hanging question that the person plucks from the air.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
slj.com | Kimberly Olson Fakih |Amanda MacGregor |Patricia Ann Morris
by (text) & illus. by Jenna Piechota . Mar. 2024. 32p. Tr $18.95. ISBN 9781771474931. COPY ISBN Gr 1-4–The cartoonish illustrations and the expressively goofy animal characters belie the serious nature of this fact book. The title question is just the opening, and the answer is “no.” “No” also answers other questions about how animals care for their bodies. For children wondering if whales get a good night’s sleep, they do not; they take power naps all day long. Do pheasants take baths?
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
slj.com | Petra Bartíková |Kimberly Olson Fakih |Amanda MacGregor |Patricia Ann Morris
. (My First Books of Nature). Oct. 2024. 28p. Tr $15.95. ISBN 9788000072821. COPY ISBN Gr 1-3–In spread after spread, Barikova’s facts about animals and Macurova’s illustrations treat knowledge like gossip, using magazine-style layouts and clipped, expressive language. Speech bubbles from the animals in the scenes add humor, but under the introduction, “How Do Animals Sleep?” is serious information—a bat hangs upside down, a giraffe curls up like the letter C.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
slj.com | Kimberly Olson Fakih
. Jul. 2024. 32p. Tr $14.99. ISBN 9780593659045. COPY ISBN Gr 1-2–Get readers ready to fall in love with a hamster named Ned. Looking very much like a small golden mango with googly eyes, Ned has been counting the days till the Great Garden Race. Hamsters from all over the world, in many shapes and colors, have come to participate, but Ned is ready. He has trained for this. He has focus. What he has not trained for are all the small obstacles along the path.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
slj.com | Kimberly Olson Fakih
PreS-Gr 2–“Monday is the best day of the week (according to Mabel, at least).” With tan skin, light brown hair in double ponytails, and purpose coursing through her, Mabel gets started on her day, pouring herself a bowl of cereal and heading somewhere to do the “cutest” thing, according to her mother. Mabel takes up her station to wait for the garbage truck.
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Dec 19, 2024 | 
slj.com | Kimberly Olson Fakih
PreS-K–In an intriguing version of ASMR for toddlers, this board book features squared-off scenes and label-like phrases or words to call out or impress upon readers, paired with associated sounds with every setting. A picture of a kitchen, for example, shows a red-haired father with pale skin giving a baby bottle of milk to the baby in a high chair while another child pours juice. The children both have brown skin.
