Sometimes people ask me if I have a favorite among the books I’ve edited. I always tell them no. Asking me to pick a favorite book is a bit like asking a parent to pick a favorite child. All my projects are my babies. Having said that, there’s usually a book or two each season […]Read more "A Favorite"

Read this. I have said before, and I now feel more confident in saying it again: electronic picture books prove just how high tech paper picture books actually are and the conversion from print to digital is way trickier for picture books than for just about any other form. I think Shatzkin’s excellent overview is […]Read more "Trifurcation"

Unshelved is a webcomic by librarian Gene Ambaum and cartoonist Bill Barnes. Book lovers, librarians, and teachers (that is to say, most of Lerner’s audience) will appreciate this light hearted look at every day life at the library. Every Friday their Unshelved Bookclub reviews a variety of books (there are usually a few graphic novels […]Read more "Humor for Librarians"

I have a special fondness for classic romance comics. It’s a genre that has long since died out, but in its hey day (the late forties though the early fifties) it was HUGE. In 1949 romance comics, comics made for girls and young women, outsold all other genres. It’s a fact that is missing from […]Read more "A Little Holiday Reading"

<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/-lQMkHPJe8GQ/TvIZxTROhoI/AAAAAAAAAlE/3znAO87boas/video2b62539c7a2a%25255B3%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('ccb4fe72-77fe-4667-aeee-3d29d39b1e9f'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = " http://www.youtube.com/v/uwGfeh7NQTo&hl=en“;” alt=””> Okay, so I said I wasn’t going to post on the 27th, but I saw the Bolshoi’s Nutcracker last week via HD transmission and was completely transfixed. I hadn’t seen this ballet since I was in high school, and it felt […]Read more "Magic"

Lily Renée, Escape Artist was included in this past Sunday’s Bookshelf in The New York Times Book Review. Reviewer Pamela Paul had this to say: “This graphic biography, illustrated in a retro comic book style that befits its subject, describes the life of Lily Renée Wilheim, a Jewish Kindertransport refugee who became a graphic artist of superwomen […]Read more "All The Comics Fit to Read"

John Lennon was killed thirty-one years ago this month, so I asked Alison Marie Behnke to share her thoughts about writing Death of a Dreamer: The Assassination of John Lennon for TFCB’s Spring 2012 season. When I began writing Death of a Dreamer: The Assassination of John Lennon, I considered myself a Beatles fan. (Doesn’t […]Read more "Imagine"

This has to be one of the odder titles I’ve ever given a blog post, but I really do have something to say about rhyming picture books today. Finding words that rhyme is not hard. Writing a good rhyming picture book is extremely hard. Anyone who wants to write in rhyming verse should read a […]Read more "Rhyming Picture Books Are Not Like Hymns*"