Time Magazine’s 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time

The list includes books we have reviewed here: Extra Yarn, Journey, The Day The Crayons Quit, The Snowy Day and Press Here. Where the Wild Things Are, The Cat in The Hat and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day and Madeline are also included. Since this is a list of picture books it is a puzzle as to why Out Of My Mind, a very worthy book, was on this list.

Beautiful Children’s Books

Apartment Therapy  (who knew?) writes about the  20 Most Beautiful Children’s Books. There is a  blog favorite on the list, Sleep Like A Tiger. Lots of classics like Where the Wild Things Are, Madeline and Good Night Moon plus newer classics like Olivia and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Since this is a decorating article, there were also links for ways to display your children’s books to entice them to pick up a book and read. 7 Ideas for Making a Forward Facing Book Display and Little Readers: Most Appealing Book Displays of the Year give you plenty of ideas for interesting and pleasing ways to display books.

Hat tip: Jump Into A Book

NYPL Top Children’s Books of the Last 100 Years

The New York Public Library (NYPL) presented its first ever list of the Top Children’s Books of the Last 100 Years. Many of the books are no surprise: Cat in the Hat by Dr Seuss, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. Some have been featured on this blog: Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, Holes by Louis Sacher and The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. There are books that I loved as a kid: Charlotte’s Web by E B White, Madeleine by Ludwig Bemelmans and The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien. A generation later my children loved: Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. My grandchildren love: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J K Rowling .  Check out the  complete list at School Library Journal.

Happy Birthday Maurice Sendak

Today, June 10, 2013 would have been Maurice Sendak’s 85th birthday. Today’s  Google Doodle honors him with an animation. Enjoy!

Happy Children’s Book Week!

Children’s Book Week is the longest-running literacy initiative in the United States. This is the 94th annual celebration. This year’s poster is by Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick, author of  The Houdini Box, The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck (see reviews here). Selznick’s artwork celebrates Maurice Sendak and Remy Charlip. Both authors died in 2012. Look for my review of a reissue of a book illustrated by Maurice Sendak and written by Janice May Urday in 1959 later this week.

 

Remy Charlip was a multi-talented man. As well as being a children’s book author and illustrator  he was a dancer, choreographer and a director at the National Theater for the Deaf and a founding director at the Merce Cunningham Dance Theatre. His books include:

He was also Brian Selznick’s model for the drawings of filmmaker Georges Melies in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Maurice Sendak 1928-2012

Maurice Sendak died today at the age of 83. His 1964 Caldecott Medal Book, Where The Wild Things Are, has been a childhood favorite of generations of children.

  

You can listen to Maurice Sendak read his book at BN.com. When this book was published in 1963, most books featured well behaved children (or animals)whose problems were solved by the end of the book. Perhaps taking cues from his own childhood, Sendak’s characters had untidy emotions and unsettling inner lives. He understood that children do not live in cocoons protected from everything happening around them.  In an interview he said, “. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.”