Book-A-Day Almanac
Discover the stories behind the children’s book classics and the new books on their way to becoming classics.
A Crooked Kind of Perfect
Elementary School, FictionToday I am recommending a book to chase the holiday blues away. Sometime during this joyous, or not so joyous, season, people find themselves a bit depressed. When that feeling comes upon you, make sure you have a copy of Linda Urban’s A Crooked Kind of Perfect nearby. Urban’s first novel, published in 2007, provides […]
Family, Humor, Music, SchoolFeatured on December 17
John’s Secret Dreams
Biography, Elementary School, Picture Book On July 6, 1957, in Saint Peter’s Parish Church in Woolton, England, a young musician performed with his band, The Quarrymen. Another young guitarist attended the event. As Elizabeth Partridge writes in John Lennon: All I Want is the Truth, the guitarist “was dressed to kill. He’d come to the garden fete hoping to pick […]
History, MusicFeatured on July 6
Charlie Parker Played BeBop
Elementary School, Picture BookOn April 30, 1941, over seventy years ago, the first commercially recorded work of Charlie Parker was cut at Decca Records. Born in 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas, Charlie Parker began playing the saxophone at age eleven without formal training. In 1939 he headed to New York City, where he teamed up with Dizzy Gillespie […]
Jazz, MusicFeatured on April 30
Simms Taback
Babies and Toddlers, Elementary School, Picture Book, PreschoolToday marks the birthday of one of our most innovative illustrators and Caldecott winners, Simms Taback. When Simms won the award in 2000 for Joseph Had a Little Overcoat, so many members of the illustration community delighted in this news not only because they had long admired his work but also because he had worked […]
Art, Award Winning, Caldecott, Humor, Jewish, Multicultural, MusicFeatured on February 13
Christmas in the Trenches
Elementary School, Picture Book On December 24, 1818, a Christmas carol with a beautiful melody and words of peace—one created by an Austrian priest and a headmaster—was first performed in the Church of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, Austria. Of all my own childhood memories, the ones of singing this song, known in English as “Silent Night,” remain the most […]
Christmas, History, Holidays, Music, Social Conscience, World War IFeatured on December 24
The New York Philharmonic
Elementary School, Picture BookOn December 7, 1842, the first concert of theNew York Philharmonic, the first symphony orchestra founded in America, was performed. Over the years, the Philharmonic has performed more than 15,000 times and tonight will play a program of Beethoven and Mahler in Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center. Since many families attend formal events involving singing […]
Music, New YorkFeatured on December 7
The Cricket in Times Square
Classic, Elementary School, Fantasy More than fifty years ago a down-on-his-luck, New York City playwright who had graduated from Yale wandered into the Times Square subway station late at night and heard a cricket chirp. It reminded him of his childhood in Connecticut when his life had been more optimistic and innocent. Because he knew how to write scenes […]
Animals, Award Winning, Cats, Classical, Insects, Mice, Music, New York, NewberyFeatured on October 30
Daily children’s book recommendations and events from Anita Silvey.
Discover the stories behind the children’s book classics . . .
The new books on their way to becoming classics . . .
And events from the world of children’s books—and the world at large.
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