Julia Smith is a senior 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 an aspiring aerialist. Follow her on Twitter at @JuliaKate32.
Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people. This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Random House Children’s Books and Sourcebooks. We have a special installment today in honor of our yearlong Women in Focus celebration. In addition to this podcast, be sure to check out our […]
Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people. This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Capstone. In this episode of the Shelf Care Interview, Julia Smith talks to debut author V. T. Bidania, author of the Astrid and Apollo series, which kicks off with Astrid and Apollo […]
Tyler Feder’s graphic memoir, Dancing at the Pity Party, is a candid and moving reflection on the loss of her mother to cancer during Feder’s sophomore year of college. It’s also the first book she has both written and illustrated. Here we discuss her process, her hopes, and the many ways in which her mother shaped—and […]
Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people. This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Fabled Films Press. In this episode of the Shelf Care Interview, Julia Smith talks to Tracey Hecht, author of The Nocturnals book series, which began as a middle-grade series with The Mysterious […]
Welcome to the Shelf Care Interview, an occasional conversation series where Booklist talks to book people. This Shelf Care Interview is sponsored by Sourcebooks. In this episode of the Shelf Care Interview, Julia Smith talks to Australian author Chris Ferrie. Chris is an award-winning physicist, a mathematician, and popular author of science books for children. […]
I recently had the opportunity to talk to Rivka Galchen about her new children’s book, Rat Rule 79, her first novel for younger readers, despite a long-standing passion for children’s literature. She’s penned articles for The New Yorker on Mo Willems and Curious George, not to mention having taught courses on kid lit. And while […]
The writing duo behind the Hank Zipzer and Ghost Buddies series has a new middle-grade series launching this fall: Alien Superstar. In the first book (out October 1), kid alien Buddy Burger escapes his hostile home planet, only to land in Hollywood, California, where hilarity ensues. Want to know more? Check out the interview below […]
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 […]