Children's Book Columns

    From board books to gorgeously illustrated picture books, there are plenty of ways to share the upcoming holidays with young readers.   Tomie DePaola’s “My First Passover” is simple enough to read with your toddlers.

    St. Patrick's Day may have passed, but you can continue to celebrate at home by stocking up on Irish stories and lore from the library.  Edna Barth’s “Shamrocks, Harps, and Shillelaghs” provides quirky facts and legends associated with the holiday.  Did you know that St. Patrick was not Irish himself but was born in Scotland?  Or that Americans have been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day since 1737?  (That year’s gala was held in Boston, of course.)  Along with fascinating details about Irish harps, Irish poetry and St. Patrick’s Day parades, Barth weaves in much of the history of Ireland for readers nine and up.

    Some books seem to fly under the radar.  They don’t garner the big awards or make the bestseller lists, they’re just quietly checked out of libraries over and over again.  One of my new favorites in this category is “The Thumb in the Box” by Ken Roberts.

    It begins, “This is a story about a fire truck being driven into the ocean and two people taking off their thumbs.  Don’t worry, though.  Nobody gets hurt.”  No self-respecting third grade audience will let you stop reading after that!

    What did you read during the Snownami/Snowpalooza/Snowmageddon?  Judging by the armloads of books people were checking out from the library before each of the storms, the most popular items were picture books, mysteries, best sellers, historical fiction, biographies… in fact, people were, as usual, reading everything!

    Among those armloads were plenty of graphic novels for young readers.  Defined as novels with complex storylines told in the form of a comic book, these books are finding increasing recognition in the form of awards.