Children's Literature

Featuring work from early luminaries such as N. C. Wyeth and Marcia Brown to more contemporary illustrators like David Wiesner, Mary GrandPré, Christian Robinson, and Jillian Tamaki, this beautiful collection showcases the conceptual and iconic images that have defined children's books for generations of young readers.

While the posters within these pages are linked in their resounding advocacy for young people's literacy, they are distinguished by the styles and mediums of their creators and by the historical, social, and cultural influences of their times. Renowned historian Leonard S. Marcus traces these developments in the children's book field with incisive descriptions to accompany each poster.

Children's Book Week has grown over the past one hundred years from a modest grassroots effort to a full-throttle nationwide annual celebration of literacy and the pleasures of reading. The posters in this book beautifully emphasize Book Week's mission, with slogans such as Build the Future with Books, Get Lost in a Book, and One World, Many Stories.

A Family of Readers is the definitive resource for parents interested in enriching the reading lives of their children. It's divided into four sections:

1. Reading to Them:
Choosing and sharing board books and picture books with babies and very young children.
2. Reading with Them:
Launching the new reader with easy readers and chapter books.
3. Reading on Their Own:
Exploring what children read--and how they read--by genre and gender.
4. Leaving Them Alone:
Respecting the reading privacy of the young adult.

Roger Sutton knows how and why children read. He must, as the editor in chief of The Horn Book, which since 1924 has been America's best source for reviews of books for young readers. But for many parents, selecting books for their children can make them feel lost. In this essential resource, Roger Sutton and Martha V. Parravano, executive editor at the magazine, offer thoughtful essays that consider how books are read to (and then by) young people. They invite such leading authors and artists as Maurice Sendak, Katherine Paterson, Margaret Mahy, and Jon Scieszka, as well as a selection of top critics, to add their voices about the genres they know best. The result is an indispensable readers' companion to everything from wordless board books to the most complex and daring young adult novels.

This new edition includes a preface by the author covering Sendak's life, work, and cultural impact in the years since 1994.

Over the course of more than ninety books, in a career that spanned six decades, Maurice Sendak became the most influential and, at times, the most controversial creator of works for children. Each of the books in his trilogy--Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There--was precedent setting, dramatically expanding the boundaries of subject matter and images that have been conventionally accepted in books for younger children. In this first comprehensive reading of Sendak's key works, John Cech considers the symbolic child who was developed in Sendak's books and who remained at the center of his vision.

By fusing biographical, historical, cultural, and literary materials with the insights of depth psychology and archetypal theory, this study traces the evolution of Sendak's work--from its first, bold steps in the 1950s, to its liberating breakthroughs of the 1960s and early 1970s, to the rich complexity of his later books. Cech concentrates on those books that Sendak has both written and illustrated. In these books, we can see most clearly the alchemy of his creative process, which wove together the remembrances of his own things past, the spirit of his times, the history of children's literature, and Sendak's animating concern with the archetypal figure of the child--a symbol of creative potential, emotional vitality, and spiritual renewal.

This gorgeous collection of art (and the artists behind it) includes work by some of the world's most renowned children's book illustrators--Mitsumasa Anno, Quentin Blake, Ashley Bryan, Nancy Ekholm Burkert, Eric Carle, Tomie dePaola, Jane Dyer, Mordicai Gerstein, Robert Ingpen, Steven Kellogg, Leo Lionni, Petra Mathers, Wendell Minor, Barry Moser, Jerry Pinkney, Alice Provenson, Robert Sabuda, Matthew Reinhart, Maurice Sendak, Gennady Spirin, Chris Van Allsburg, Rosemary Wells, and Paul O. Zelinsky.

It's a remarkable and beautiful anthology that features twenty-three of the most honored and beloved artists in children's literature, talking informally to children--sharing secrets about their art and how they began their adventures into illustration. Fold-out pages featuring photographs of their early work, their studios and materials, as well as sketches and finished art create an exuberant feast for the eye that will attract both children and adults.

Self-portraits of each illustrator crown this important anthology that celebrates the artists and the art of the picture book. An event book for the ages.

Proceeds from the book will benefit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA.

Staff Pick

This vibrantly illustrated graphic novel anthology brings to life the childhood experiences of beloved artists and illustrators such as Wanda Gág, Maurice Sendak, and Jerry Pinkney. Stylish illustrations paired with small vignettes and anecdotes from the artists' early lives helps illuminate the hard work, triumphs, failures, and inspiration that helped forge their successful careers.

What makes an artist? What sparks their imagination? Where do their creativity and unique style come from? Striking illustrations and a graphic novel format bring to life this anthology of legendary artists and their childhoods. Featuring beloved artists such as Wanda Gág, Maurice Sendak, Tove Jansson, Jerry Pinkney, Yuyi Morales and Hayao Miyazaki, these stories capture the childhood triumphs, failures, and inspirations that predated their careers.

Children will see themselves in these portraits and wonder if they, too, might have it in them to make art. A celebration of creativity, this collective graphic biography is sprinkled throughout with writing wisdom and inspiring quotes.

Look for the companion book Before They Were Authors: Famous Writers as Kids.

From The Gashlycrumb Tinies to The Doubtful Guest, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny and deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in innumerable ways, from the works of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman to Lemony Snicket. Some even call him the Grandfather of Goth.

But who was this man, who lived with over twenty thousand books and six cats, who roomed with Frank O'Hara at Harvard, and was known -- in the late 1940s, no less -- to traipse around in full-length fur coats, clanking bracelets, and an Edwardian beard? An eccentric, a gregarious recluse, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes -- but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscar Wildean pose?

He published over a hundred books and illustrated works by Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Edward Lear, John Updike, Charles Dickens, Hilaire Belloc, Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, Gilbert & Sullivan, and others. At the same time, he was a deeply complicated and conflicted individual, a man whose art reflected his obsessions with the disquieting and the darkly hilarious.

Based on newly uncovered correspondence and interviews with personalities as diverse as John Ashbery, Donald Hall, Lemony Snicket, Neil Gaiman, and Anna Sui, Born to Be Posthumous draws back the curtain on the eccentric genius and mysterious life of Edward Gorey.

Part fun- and information-filled almanac, part good book guide, the Children's Book-a-Day Almanac is a new way to discover a great children's book--every day of the year!

This fresh, inventive reference book is a dynamic way to showcase the gems, both new and old, of children's literature. Each page features an event of the day, a children's book that relates to that event, and a list of other events that took place on that day. Always informative and often surprising, celebrate a year of literature for children with The Children's Book-a-Day Almanac.

Children's Picturebooks, Second Edition is the revised edition of a bestselling title that carries invaluable insight into a highly productive, dynamic sector of the publishing world. Featuring interviews with leading illustrators and publishers from across the world, it remains essential reading for students and aspiring children's book illustrators and writers.

Aimed at arts and literature students as well as aspiring children's book illustrators and writers. This book covers everything from the change in children's picturebooks over time to a breakdown of the children's publishing industry including, the editorial process, approaching publishers and literary agents and the printing process.

With 15 new case studies from well-known illustrators like Jon Klassen, Oliver Jeffers and Beatrice Alemagna and publishers such as Puffin Picture Books, Thames and Hudson and Enchanted Lion Books, this revised edition also includes a brand new chapter devoted to non-fiction, especially the rise of both narrative non-fiction and big books.