Julia Smith is an associate editor for Books for Youth at Booklist. She is a graduate of the MLIS program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is also trained in aerial acrobatics. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliaKate32.
The #MiddleGradeMania continues! Gather your maidens and library cards. Today, we’re searching the middle-grade shelves for literature’s most noble beast. Behold, the majestic unicorn! Aquicorn Cove, by Katie O’Neill and illustrated by the author Gorgeous pastel-colored artwork guides readers between day, night, and underwater in this enchanting graphic novel where a girl discovers a colony of […]
With Booklist‘s celebration of the 50 Best Middle-Grade Novels of the Twenty-First Century well underway—and our tenth annual Mystery Month fast approaching—now is the perfect time to revisit this collection of gutsy girls in middle-grade mystery novels, originally published in the January issue of Booklandia. There’s a proud tradition of girl detectives in middle-grade lit. […]
Twins Are All the Rage These Days This list originally appeared in the November 19, 2018, issue of Booklandia, our FREE newsletter devoted to young-adult and middle-grade lit (never in the same issue). The premise of List & Shout? We make a clever list of YA or MG trends, and you forward it to everyone […]
There’s a cannibalistic theme running through picture books at the moment, with several offering lessons in not eating your friends or classmates. This, of course, is plated up with humor and a side of manners, but sometimes not even the best etiquette can save the day. It’s not all heartless carnage, however. Unconventional diets are also […]
Growing up, I leapt from children’s books directly to adult novels, and found Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Peters to be marvelous company. I must admit that I was, and remain, more of a Poirot girl than Miss Marple devotee, but I’d happily lose myself in Christie’s novels whoever the detective happened to be. It is […]
The first thing you learn about Amy Krouse Rosenthal when you visit her website is that she “is a person who likes to make things.” And make things, she did: picture books, essays, films, lectures. Lucky for us, the things she made, she also shared, and with them an inspirational and inspired dose of life […]
My first job in Chicago—my first job as a college graduate, for that matter—was as a Christmas elf for Marshall Field’s in its final year of existence. My best friend and I drove here from Baltimore in a little Penske truck so that she could pursue her improv dreams at Second City. I tagged along as […]
Well, I’ve done it. I entered the Riggs-Burton time loop and emerged intact and, on the whole, pleased. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you’re clearly not among the Peculiar initiate. Yet. I’m referring, of course, to Tim Burton’s new film adaptation of Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for […]
Facts versus romance You go and call yourself the boss But we’re not robots inside a grid Text versus romance You go and add it all you want Still we’re not robots inside a grid Zeros and ones —”Science vs. Romance,” by Rilo Kiley But what if you are a robot? Are you not capable of love, […]
I have a confession. If I were to have an alter ego, it would be a punk-rock chick. I am about as far from punk rock as you can get, which, perhaps, accounts for my fascination with this culture. I love rules; I’m not very political; and I hate wearing black, though I’d happily dye […]
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