New Books in Children's Literature

Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A significant reason racism endures is because it is structural: it's embedded in culture and in institutions. One of the places that racism hides-and thus perhaps the best place to oppose it-is books for young people.Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books (Oxford UP, 2017) presents five serious critiques of the history and current state of children's literature tempestuous relationship with both implicit and explicit forms of racism. The book fearlessly examines topics both vivid-such as The Cat in the Hat's roots in blackface minstrelsy-and more opaque, like how the children's book industry can perpetuate structural racism via whitewashed covers even while making efforts to increase diversity. Rooted in research yet written with a lively, crackling touch, Nel delves into years of literary criticism and recent sociological data in order to show a better way forward. Though much of what is proposed here could be endlessly argued, the knowledge that what we learn in childhood imparts both subtle and explicit lessons about whose lives matter is not debatable. The text concludes with a short and stark proposal of actions everyone-reader, author, publisher, scholar, citizen- can take to fight the biases and prejudices that infect children's literature. While Was the Cat in the Hat Black? does not assume it has all the answers to such a deeply systemic problem, its audacity should stimulate discussion and activism.Philip Nel is University Distinguished Professor of English at Kansas State University. His many books include Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children's Literature (UP Mississippi, 2012), Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature (NYU Press, 2008, co-edited with Julia Mickenberg), The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats (Random House, 2007), and Dr. Seuss: American Icon (Continuum, 2004).Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jean Reidy’s best-selling and award-winning picture books have earned their spots as favorites among readers and listeners of all ages and from all over the world. She is honored to be a three-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, a Parent’s Choice Gold Award Winner, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor winner and recognized on “Best of” lists by School Library Journal, the New York Times, NPR and Amazon.Originally from Highland Park, Illinois, Jean earned a BBA from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from New York University. She spent the first years of her professional career in Chicago, New York and Denver before leaving the business world to raise her family and to write. Jean has four children, five grandchildren and hordes of nieces and nephews who provide her endless inspiration. And over several years, she also had four foster children filling both her home and her heart.In our conversation we talk about her 'not run of the mill' path to being a highly successful picture book author, and celebrate her newest books, including ‎ A Grand Day, Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books (July 5, 2022).Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in Los Angeles to a Japanese mom and American Jewish dad, Debbie Bibo grew up in a sleepy suburb of Northern California. After earning a degree in Political Science at the University of California in San Diego, and working at a language school in San Francisco, she moved to Italy to teach English in 1992. After twelve years of publishing and two years of project management for a design studio, she founded the Debbie Bibo Agency in 2011. The agency represents leading children's books illustrators and authors, and has sold titles to publishers in numerous countries. In our interview we talk about her career and vision in selecting those selected books and illustrators which she is excited to represent.Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tammi Sauer is a full-time picture book author who has sold 35 picture books to major publishing houses (Bloomsbury, Disney, Hyperion, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Sterling) and spoken at hundreds of schools and conferences. In our conversation, we celebrate her new picture book, The Underpants (Scholastic Press, 2022), and talk about as many of her wonderful books as possible, including Wordy Birdy, The Bear Came Back, her new book No Bunnies Here and her very first book, Cowboy Camp. Tammi shares her road to success, with tips for authors at different stages of their journeys.Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We shouldn’t be dismissive of the popularity of children’s literature among adults, as it is often in these works of fiction that powerful themes such as death, love, and virtue are most deeply and imaginatively explored.Guests Christina Phillips Mattson, Scholar of Children’s Literature Casper ter Kuile, Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and co-host of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text MG Prezioso, Contributing writer for Harvard Political Review Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today my incredible guest is the quirky, pun-derful, award-winning picture book author, Tara Lazar who is celebrating her dozenth (!) book, Time Flies: Down to the Last Minute(Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022). We talk about her path to success, her craft and her tips for aspiring writers (concentrate on the story, not the query letter; learn all about the craft, create dummy books, find critique partners who can teach you, make a digital note of all your ideas, never give up). Tara is also the creator and motivator of Storystorm, the highly successful free initiative in which authors come up with thirty story ideas throughout January. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From governesses with supernatural powers to motor-car obsessed amphibians, the iconic images of English children's literature helped shape the view of the nation around the world. But, as Translating England into Russian: The Politics of Children's Literature in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia (Bloomsbury, 2021) reveals, Russian translators did not always present the same picture of Englishness that had been painted by authors.In this book, Elena Goodwin explores Russian translations of classic English children's literature, considering how representations of Englishness depended on state ideology and reflected the shifting nature of Russia's political and cultural climate. As Soviet censorship policy imposed restrictions on what and how to translate, this book examines how translation dealt with and built bridges between cultures in a restricted environment in order to represent images of England. Through analyzing the Soviet and post-Soviet translations of Rudyard Kipling, Kenneth Grahame, J. M. Barrie, A. A. Milne and P. L. Travers, this book connects the concepts of society, ideology and translation to trace the role of translation through a time of transformation in Russian society. Making use of previously unpublished archival material, Goodwin provides the first analysis of the role of translated English children's literature in modern Russian history and offers fresh insight into Anglo-Russian relations from the Russian Revolution to the present day. This ground-breaking book is therefore a vital resource for scholars of Russian history and literary translation.Polina Popova is a Ph.D. student at the history department of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this conversation (one of my favorite interviews ever), I talk with Noah Askin of the University of California at Irvine about why some popular children's books, songs, and movies seem to last forever. Is it because the successful ones are similar but different? Is it a fluke? Is it the marketing? Or is it the story that the song/book/movie/anything tells, or is, or is it perhaps the story we make of it. Noah Askin is Assistant Professor of Teaching Organization and Management at UC-Irvine in the Paul Merage School of Business. Prior to his arrival in Southern California, he was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, where he directed and taught multiple Executive Education programs in addition to teaching the organizational design and leadership core course in the MBA program. He has a popular TEDx talk on what makes popular songs succeed.Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When she finds a feather, Grandma Dot adds it to her collection. Feathers, she tells her two granddaughters, remind Grandma Dot of people she’s lost. At first, the girls see the feathers as fun to play with. But soon, Grandma Dot’s feathers take on larger meanings – of comfort, remembrance, and love.A Gift of Feathers (Feiwel & Friends, 2023) will inspire readers of all ages to make memories and traditions part of their own family stories.ken Schept received his MFA from Columbia University, enjoyed a successful career as a journalist and business writer, and now writes children’s books and literary fiction.Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press, 2020). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Julia Richardson is an award-winning children’s book author. Today we talk with her about her debut picture book, Little Dandelion Seeds the World (Sleeping Bear Press, 2021), which won the Growing Good Kids Book Award from the American Horticultural Society and the Junior Master Gardener Program for connecting children to nature. When Julia was young, she was in the lowest reading group and wrote every letter upside down and backwards. Today she is an established author with another new book just out, and hopefully many more on the way. She also shares her advice for upcoming authors hoping to break into the traditional publishing world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices