Betsy Bird's Blog, page 3

You know, when I originally agreed to this interview with Craig Kofi Farmer, I hadn’t even read his latest middle grade fantasy A Method for Magic and Misfortune (out September 9th) yet. I just knew that the guy had pretty much hit it out of the park last year with Kwame Crashes the Underworld, so he seemed like a pretty safe good-interview-bet. It was only later that I actually sat down and read his new book and… holy moly. I was expecting more Kwame-esque hijinks and goofs. Instead, I got ...

When I was a kid I wanted to be a writer, but I talked myself out of it, figuring that it wasn’t a practical enough job. And since I loved books, the only other option I could even conceive of pursuing was “librarian”. It’s all worked out well enough for me, but it also occurs to me that a kid might benefit from seeing a wider range of literary occupations out there and available. Jobs like, say, editing. But if you were trying to entice kids with editorial works and wonders, how would you begin...

I hereby declare ghosts to be the picture book trending creatures of 2025. Some years we see a plethora of chickens. Other years, bears. This year the clear-cut winner is ghosts ghosts ghosts. Don’t believe me? Whether it’s I Hate Everything or The Grumpy Ghost Upstairs or The Little Ghost Quilt���s Winter Surprise or To Catch a Ghost or even the tiny ghost in Jon Klassen’s Your Forest, they are in these books and a SLEW more! But of all these titles, the ghost with the most? That would hav...

In honor of Tomi Ungerer and the current Three Robbers exhibit at The Rabbit Hole going on right now (to say nothing of their upcoming symposium celebrating The Three Robbers and Tomi���s legacy and featuring presenters from around the world on November 14 and 15, 2025), I thought it prudent to revisit Mr. Ungerer once more. And what better way to do so than to look at what may be one of his few books that has remained in print from Day One. A Reading Rainbow book and not something you’d han...

City Summer, Country Summer
By Kiese Laymon
Illustrated by Alexis Frankin
Kokila (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
$18.99
ISBN: 9780593405567
Ages 4-7
On shelves now

I don���t trust adult authors to write books for kids. Not normally. My fears, I will have you know, are well-founded. There is a perception amongst the literary community of adults that writing a book for kids is an easy affair. I recall hearing that one such adult author told a children���s books creator that he was good, but why...

If there was a theme to the last American Library Association Annual conference in Philadelphia it may have been, “I haven’t seen you in so LONG!” I think I may have uttered that exact phrase somewhere between ten and twenty times in the span of just a few days. Folks that I hadn’t seen in years and years were present and accounted for, including many of my old friends from when I lived in NYC a decade ago. And amongst them, to my utter delight, was Rebecca Stead. Of course, that made a fair...

Blurbing books is fun. Also a bit of a challenge. You want to be able to say something about a book that no one has seen in such a way as to make sure they really want it. A good blurb avoids pablum. Then again, a lot of the time you might send the publisher your blurb and they just take a snippet of it. That’s their right, of course, but it might catch the blurber by surprise. In that vein, here’s my latest:

It’s true. It did. But those of you who have read this blog… uh… ever, know that ...

As American-born sisters, neither Kate nor I grew up knowing who Action Man was or what his life entailed. None of that has stopped us from truly appreciating Mini Grey’s lovely ode to a kid, his toy, and their various adventures. Did it come out after Toy Story? It did. Was it derivative? It was not (though there are some Buzz Lightyear similarities). British to its core, Mini Grey was in the ZONE when she wrote this one!! We’ve not done a Mini Grey title since Ginger Bear, so clearly we’re...

Yeah, I dunno about that title I just wrote. It’s not mine, actually. That’s the PR coming straight out of Random House Children’s Books about the fact that Jeanne Birdsall, creator of the monumental Penderwicks series, has a new title out. The alternative they’ve been using is, “A Must-Read for a New Generation” which, in hindsight, might be a bit better. Then again, I’m the kind of person who gets attached to terms like “triumphant return”. Even when it feels like the author in question ne...

If you’re a new up-and-coming children’s book creator, what’s your goal? I mean, what level do you aspire to? Do you simply want to be able to make a living? Or do you want to make an impact on some kid’s life? Maybe you’d like to be remembered for a popular series, beloved by hundreds of thousands of kids (and maybe even more than one generation)? Perhaps you’d like to be a bit of a household name.

If you’re Dan Gutman, of course, you are all of these things at once. And that ain’t half bad....