I’m really excited to be judging Graphics (as in graphic novels) for the 2013 Cybils! What am I excited to read? Graphic novels that tell a great story, get kids excited to read, and have beautiful illustrations doing some of the heavy lifting of storytelling. I’d also love to discover more graphic stories for younger…
Author: Pragmatic Mom
Monsters In the Closet Picture Books: The Dark
I started haunting our local bookstore to read picture books but I always feel guilty using it like a library so I make sure to buy a small stack. When it comes to picture books, I am the pickiest purchaser ever because I am buying for myself! The Dark made my purchase pile. I had…
Happy Birthday to My Mom: 90 Years Young!
Today my mom turns 90 years old! Oops, I mean 90 years young! Happy birthday Mom! She was born in San Francisco’s Japantown in 1923. Her parents immigrated from Japan and I have that story here along with our Japanese family crest. During WWII, she was forced to relocate with her family. She ended up in a remote…
My Son’s 2nd Grade Hopes and Dreams
PickyKidPix and I had a good laugh when we reflected on the summer camp choices that her siblings made. I let each of them pick one inconvenient (and overpriced) week of day camp. Grasshopper and Sensei picked Hot Glass Blowing. PickyKidPix picked a week of soccer camp run by FC Barcelona, our favorite professional soccer…
Roald Dahl Day is Today, September 13!
Grasshopper and Sensei and PickyKidPix both discovered Roald Dahl in third grade. I think it was the first chapter book author they really fell in love with. Now that my youngest is in third grade, I hope that the magic of Roald Dahl happens again for him and his class. In honor of Roald Dahl…
13 Children’s Books Set in Boston
If you have ever been to Boston (and everyone should go there at least once), you will know that as a city it is a bewildering mixture of modern improvements and the relics of antiquity, and it is interesting, for example, to come out from buying plastic clothespins and chocolate-strawberry-marshmallow-banana splits in a department store…
Writing Revision Tips for Kids: Why Writing is All About Revising
Please welcome my guest blogger today, middle-grade author Karen Day. She happens to live in my town and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her at the dog park as well as on the soccer field when Grasshopper and Sensei was in 3rd grade — her youngest daughter was on the same team. She’s been…







