New Books in Children's Literature

Given the sometimes extraordinary politicization of culture, it is surprising that Sesame Street has gained acceptance and legitimacy in more than fifty countries. Sesame Street's global success raises two questions. First, how does a US icon like Sesame Street spread around the world, gaining acceptance as a local cultural product? Second, how does the nonprofit that created it, Sesame Workshop, and its partners around the world navigate cultural differences, manage conflicts, and construct shared collective representations to create Sesame Street programs that resonate with local audiences? In Sesame Street Around the World: Culture, Politics, and Transnational Organizational Partnerships (Oxford UP, 2025), Dr. Tamara Kay answers these questions using data from seven years of intensive ethnographic fieldwork and 200 in-depth interviews with Sesame Workshop staff and international partners-including their real-time interactions-from seventeen countries within four regions around the world. Dr. Kay argues that Sesame Workshop's secret is its engagement in coproduction, meaning it works with partners as a transnational team to create local Sesame Street programs together. Through coproduction, Sesame Workshop and its partners create new collective identities by constructing value to align their interests and exchanging complex cultural knowledge to both customize and build alliances. She traces the successive processes of coproduction, beginning with the imagination of the cultural product, to its disassembly, reconstitution, and dissemination. Coproduction privileges the creation of new knowledge that emerges from transnational interaction, and uses that new knowledge to create a hybrid cultural product. The Sesame Street case grapples with and illuminates culture in transnational interaction, providing insight into a range of other transnational organizational partnerships and different kinds of hybrid cultural products. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we host the wonderfully talented award-winning author-illustrator Kristine A. Lombardi and celebrate her enchanting and funny brand new book, Crouton, published by Random House, in which a cat explains how it went about adopting a human. We talk about her early career and breaking in from advertising into children's literature. We also discuss the importance of persevering and of finding the right agent (in her case Stephen Fraser). Kristine A. Lombardi has written and illustrated many other books for children, including Lovey Bunny, Mr. Biddles, My Wish for the World and The Grumpy Pets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leila Sales wears many hats. She is the author of eight critically acclaimed novels for children and young adults, including This Song Will Save Your Life and Once Was a Time. Leila is also the editor of award-winning and bestselling fiction and nonfiction books for readers of all ages. Most recently, she is Editorial Director at Kar-Ben Publishing, an imprint of Lerner Publishing Group. Leila has also managed classic children’s publishing properties including Corduroy, Angelina Ballerina, Ferdinand, The Snowy Day, and others. In our wonderfully candid interview we discuss her new role at Kar-Ben and her wish list, her own career as an author, and what makes a great picture book. We also discuss her recent book, The Museum of Lost and Found (illustrated by Jacqueline Li, Abrams, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michelle Knudsen, celebrated author of over fifty children's books (and a personal favorite) agreed to interview Mel Rosenberg on the eve of publication of the North American version of Emily Saw A Door (Orit Magia, illustrator, Random House Studio, Feb. 24th, 2026), Mel's debut picture book overseas. We talk about how Emily Saw A Door came to be, the author's journey and process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this, our second interview, I talk to Melissa Stoller about her new book Hazel and Mabel: Two Hearts Apart, Anita Bagdi (Illustrator), published by Gnome Road (2025). It's a story of two friends who were inseparable until one moved away. They keep their friendship alive through letters, but when they meet again, their interests have changed and they have trouble finding an eventual away to rekindle their friendship. Most of us adults (me included) have experienced this occurrence, but picture books about the topic are rare. After all, how do you explain it to a five year old? Melissa does a terrific job. We talk about the ups and downs of her career, and where ideas for stories seem to come out of nowhere, or everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this, our second interview with children's author Cindy Williams Schrauben, we celebrate her new book, Hank's Change of Heart (The Little Press, 2025) Hardcover, illustrations by Sasha Richards, published by The Little Press just last month (Nov. 2025). We talk about the difficulties in traditional publishing, both for those aspiring to be published, and those already published. We discuss the role of the message in the story, the joy of writing, and the pain of rejection, and the importance of obsessive perseverence in getting traditionally published. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A wonderful interview with children's author, poet and teacher of everything lyrical and rhyming, Renée LaTulippe, to celebrate her brand new book, Limelight: Curtain Up on Poetry Comics!, illustrated by Chuck Gonzales, just published (Charlesbridge Moves, 2025). In this, our second interview, we discuss the theatrical aspects of children's books and the role of lyrical and rhyming words in creating moving read-aloud stories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have never spoken to anyone like Jennifer Conrad who teaches literature to her senior high school students through picture book appreciation. In our interview, we discuss how her unique program evolved, and how her students develop and deepen their love for this genre through interaction with young children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ziggy Hanaor is the director of Cicada Books, a boutique children’s publishing company. She has also written nine books including Fly Flies, Alex and Alex and The Pocket Chaotic, which have won awards and have been translated into over 20 languages. In our conversation we celebrate her new book about the history of the universe and us, entitled, Life (As We Know It) (Cicada, 2025, Cristóbal Schmal (Illustrator), and talk about her careers in publishing and writing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature (Routledge, 2025) investigates the gender representations that French children's literature transmits to readers today. Using an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach, this book grounds its literary analysis in a sociohistorical examination of three key institutions – libraries, book clubs, and subscription magazines – that circulate reading material to children. It shows how French policies, cultural beliefs, and market forces influence the content of children's literature, including tensions between State support for unprofitable artistic endeavors and a belief in children’s right to high-quality products on the one hand, and suspicion of activism as anathema to creativity and fear of losing boy readers on the other. In addition, the notion of universalism, which asserts that equality is best achieved when society is blind to differences, thwarts a diverse and equitable array of literary representations. Nevertheless, conditions are favorable for 21st-century French children's publishers to offer a robust body of richly entertaining egalitarian literature for children. Guest Julie Fette, author of Gender by the Book: 21st-Century French Children's Literature published in October 2024 by Routledge. Dr. Fette is Associate Professor of French Studies at Rice University where she is also Rice Faculty Scholar at the Center for the Middle East, Baker Institute and a Faculty Affiliate with the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is also the author of Exclusions: Practicing Prejudice in French Law and Medicine, 1920-1945 from Cornell University Press in 2012 and the co-author of the textbook Les Français from Hackett in 2021, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on subjects from gender and professional life in France to teaching French studies in the classroom and online.  Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama. Their research is concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices