Best picture books for kids including Caldecott and other award winning books for children.
In Japan, the crane (tsuru) is a symbol of peace, good fortune, and longevity. It is a bird of happiness and spreads good luck. It is believed that folding 1,000 paper cranes (senbazuru) will help to bring about hope, healing, and peace. These children’s books featuring origami cranes also send a message of hope and…
In Conversation: Mia Wenjen and Jolene Gutiérrez Mar 31, 2026 Mia Wenjen and Jolene Gutiérrez both grapple with the cruelty of internment and family separation in their new picture books Barbed Wire Between Us and Unbreakable: A Japanese American Family in an American Incarceration Camp, respectively. The two authors spoke about depicting difficult subject matter for young readers,…
Please welcome my guest author, Charlotte Offsay, with her list of 8 Summer-Themed Picture Books. Summer will be here before you know it, especially where I live on the East Coast, where we go from Spring to Summer in about 9 seconds. We are giving away a copy of The Quiet Ocean. To enter, please…
We are thrilled to announce that Barbed Wire Between Us received its 3rd Starred Review, this time from School Library Journal: Gr 2-5–Set in Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, Barbed Wire Between Us uses verse poetry to tell the story of how Fort Sill was used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World…
Thank you to the National Council for the Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council for selecting The Traveling Taco as a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People! The Traveling Taco: The Amazing and Surprising Journey of Many of Your Favorite Foods by Mia Wenjen, illustrated by Kimberlie Clinthorne-Wong, and published by Red…
Marilyn Singer invented the reverso poetry form with her seminal picture book, Mirror Mirror. In this Read Brightly article, Marilyn Singer describes her new poetry form. Here are some excerpts: A reverso is a poem with two halves. In a reverso, the second half reverses the lines from the first half, with changes only in…
I am so happy to announce that We Sing From the Heart is a Pennsylvania Mountain Laurel Book Award Nominee 2026-27. The purpose of the Mountain Laurel Book Award Program is to promote reading of quality books by young people in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to encourage teacher/librarian collaboration in young adult and children’s literature,…