New Books in Children's Literature

In our interview, Melissa Edwards provides an insightful look at children's publishing from the viewpoint of a successful agent who left her legal career in order to pursue her passion for children's books. Melissa Edwards joined Stonesong as a literary agent in August 2016. Previously, she was a literary agent at the Aaron Priest Literary Agency, where she managed the foreign rights for a forty-y...

In this interview with third time author Cathy Stefanec Ogren, we celebrate the launch of her new picture book, Pew! The Stinky and Legen-Dairy Gift from Colonel Thomas S. Meacham (Sleeping Bear Press, 2023). Cathy talks about how her love for writing plays as a child led her down the path of becoming an educator and teacher. PEW is the unlikely tale of publicity-hungry Colonel Meachem who, almost...

Joni Sussman talks about her love for children's books and for everything Jewish and how she found her life's mission combining these passions as publisher of Kar-Ben, (part of Lerner Publishing Group), which is dedicated to creating great children's books related to Judaism for Jewish and non-Jewish children in North America and beyond. Now publishing over 20 titles a year, Joni shows us several...

Ned Bustard is the author of a new children’s book, Saint Patrick the Forgiver: The History and Legends of Ireland's Bishop (InterVarsity, 2023). We talked about the book, the life of St. Patrick, and the conversion of Ireland. The day after the interview, during his Ash Wednesday homily, Pope Francis said, “the Gospel is not an idea, the Gospel is not an ideology: the Gospel is a proclamation tha...

Last year I interviewed the amazing author Kirsten Larson on her picture books Wood, Wire, Wings: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane, illus. Tracy Subisak (Calkins Creek, 2020) and True Wonder: The Comic Book Hero Who Changed Everything, illus Katy Wu (Clarion, 2021). Today, we talked about her new picture book, just out, entitled, The Fire of the Stars: The Life and Brilliance of the Woman Who...

Emma Bland Smith is the award-winning author of Journey: Based on the True Story of OR7, the Most Famous Wolf in the West, as well as many other fiction and nonfiction books for children. In our interview we talk about her life and writing career and celebrate her recent book, Mr. McCloskey's Marvelous Mallards: The Making of Make Way for Ducklings (Calkins Creek, 2022). While writing and illustra...

James McGowan is literary agent at Bookends, where he represents many award-winning authors and illustrators. He focuses on illustrated projects for young readers (board books, picture books, chapter books, and middle grade) as well as adult nonfiction and mystery/suspense novels. In addition to being an agent, James is a children’s author. His debut picture book Good Night, Oppy! (Astra Young Rea...

Racism is resilient, duplicitous, and endlessly adaptable, so it is no surprise that America is again in a period of civil rights activism. A significant reason racism endures is because it is structural: it's embedded in culture and in institutions. One of the places that racism hides-and thus perhaps the best place to oppose it-is books for young people. Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden...

Jean Reidy’s best-selling and award-winning picture books have earned their spots as favorites among readers and listeners of all ages and from all over the world. She is honored to be a three-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, a Parent’s Choice Gold Award Winner, a Charlotte Zolotow Honor winner and recognized on “Best of” lists by School Library Journal, the New York Times, NPR and Amazon....

Born in Los Angeles to a Japanese mom and American Jewish dad, Debbie Bibo grew up in a sleepy suburb of Northern California. After earning a degree in Political Science at the University of California in San Diego, and working at a language school in San Francisco, she moved to Italy to teach English in 1992. After twelve years of publishing and two years of project management for a design studio...

Tammi Sauer is a full-time picture book author who has sold 35 picture books to major publishing houses (Bloomsbury, Disney, Hyperion, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Sterling) and spoken at hundreds of schools and conferences.  In our conversation, we celebrate her new picture book, The Underpants (Scholastic Press, 2022), and talk...

We shouldn’t be dismissive of the popularity of children’s literature among adults, as it is often in these works of fiction that powerful themes such as death, love, and virtue are most deeply and imaginatively explored. Guests Christina Phillips Mattson, Scholar of Children’s Literature Casper ter Kuile, Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and co-host of Harry Potter and the Sa...

Today my incredible guest is the quirky, pun-derful, award-winning picture book author, Tara Lazar who is celebrating her dozenth (!) book, Time Flies: Down to the Last Minute (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022). We talk about her path to success, her craft and her tips for aspiring writers (concentrate on the story, not the query letter; learn all about the craft, create dummy books, fi...

From governesses with supernatural powers to motor-car obsessed amphibians, the iconic images of English children's literature helped shape the view of the nation around the world. But, as Translating England into Russian: The Politics of Children's Literature in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia (Bloomsbury, 2021) reveals, Russian translators did not always present the same picture of Englishnes...

In this conversation (one of my favorite interviews ever), I talk with Noah Askin of the University of California at Irvine about why some popular children's books, songs, and movies seem to last forever. Is it because the successful ones are similar but different? Is it a fluke? Is it the marketing? Or is it the story that the song/book/movie/anything tells, or is, or is it perhaps the story we m...

When she finds a feather, Grandma Dot adds it to her collection. Feathers, she tells her two granddaughters, remind Grandma Dot of people she’s lost. At first, the girls see the feathers as fun to play with. But soon, Grandma Dot’s feathers take on larger meanings – of comfort, remembrance, and love. A Gift of Feathers (Feiwel & Friends, 2023) will inspire readers of all ages to make memories and...

Julia Richardson is an award-winning children’s book author. Today we talk with her about her debut picture book, Little Dandelion Seeds the World (Sleeping Bear Press, 2021), which won the Growing Good Kids Book Award from the American Horticultural Society and the Junior Master Gardener Program for connecting children to nature. When Julia was young, she was in the lowest reading group and wrote...

Helen H. Wu is a children's book author and illustrator, author of Tofu Takes Time, illustrated by Julie Jarema (Beaming Books, 2022) and Long Goes To Dragon School, illustrated by Mae Besom (Yeehoo Press, 2023). In this, our second interview, we talk about her role as publisher of Yeehoo books, and the challenge of creating books that appeal to both Chinese and American children and culture. Mel...

In this interview, Mel Rosenberg discusses his love for children's literature, what makes for a memorable picture book, and the company he created, Ourboox. Ourboox is a free site that allows people to create online flipbooks and picture books. Mel's collection is available here.  Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's...

In our exciting conversation with author-agent Jonathan Rosen we talk about his recent anthology, Coming of Age: 13 B'nai Mitvah Stories (Albert Whitman & Company, 2022), his funny and scary middle grade horror book, Night of the Living Cuddle Bunnies, and his new career as a literary agent for the Seymour Agency, where he helps other writers achieve the same dream of publication that he has fulfi...

Carrie Finison writes picture books with humor and heart, including Dozens of Doughnuts (Putnam, 2020), a Junior Library Guild selection, Don’t Hug Doug (Putnam, 2021), an ALA Notable Children’s Book, which received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and Lulu & Zoey: A Sister Story (Running Press Kids, 2022). In our interview we talk about her career and celebrate her most rec...

Today I speak with Annette Bay Pimentel about her writing career, and celebrate her new book, Before Music: Where Instruments Come From (Abrams, 2023). Annette grew up mostly in Utah in a large, boisterous family. She graduated with an undergraduate degree from University of California Berkeley and a graduate degree from Brandeis University in English literature. She and her husband raised six mus...

Shelli R. Johannes is the prolific author of almost twenty books for youngsters (and more on the way!). In our interview, we celebrate the recent launch of Theo TheSaurus and the Perfect Pet (Viking, 2022), the second in her Theo TheSaurus series. We discuss her path to writing success, her creative process, and her sage advice for aspiring authors. Other books by Shelli include the Cece Loves Sci...

The Day I Became a Hurricane (Hooked on Books Jamrock, 2022) is a children's educational book on hurricanes written by Dr. Rose-Ann Smith. Based on current research on natural disasters and disaster risk management, the book aims to educate children on the development of a hurricane and its impacts. It introduces them to hurricane preparedness while seamlessly interweaving an underlying story abou...

Bea Birdsong is the author of I Will Be Fierce! (illustrated by Nidhi Chanani), Sam’s First Word (illustrated by Holly Hatam), How to Spot a Best Friend (illustrated by Lucy Fleming), and several forthcoming books, including Boop! (illustrated by Linzie Hunter) and Goat Is the Goat (illustrated by Kelly Murphy). In our interview we talk about her life, her writing career, her books and her tips fo...