A guest blog post by Annie Lynn & Tonnye Williams Fletcher Annie Lynn shares: Children’s Book Week is almost here, and you are no doubt looking for fun, educational activities to share with children as a supplement to the week-long celebration. This year’s slogan, “No Rules, Just Read” is beautifully embodied in the 2024 Poster by award-winning illustrator/author, Sophie Blackall. It can be downloaded along with other resources at everychildareader.net/cbw/. Music is a great vehicle for content as well as being a wonderful motivator. It can set the tone for your classroom, your dining e ..read more

As part of our ongoing fight against book bans, the CBC is thrilled to shine a light on an important new picture book: The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale, written by Aya Khalil and illustrated by Anait Semirdzhyan, from Tilbury House Books. “The Great Banned-Books Bake Sale deserves as wide a readership as possible and should be a part of every elementary school and community library picture book collections for young readers ages 7-10.” – Midwest Book Review Of note, the book is a #1 pick by children and librarians in the 3rd -5th Grade categories of the just-announced 2024 CBC Favorites Awar ..read more

The Hot Off the Press Spotlight segment showcases new books from our current Hot Off the Press list to further assist parents, teachers, librarians, booksellers, and other book enthusiasts in finding engaging books for all types of readers. Books have many kinds of superpowers: they act as mirrors so we can see our own experiences reflected, they act as windows so we can peek into someone else’s life, they act as portals to new worlds, and they can teach us in a way that we don’t even realize we’re learning. But perhaps most importantly, books can take the ordinary and make it extraordinary ..read more

In July 2022, the CBC Graphic Novel Committee launched a new panel at the San Diego Comic-Con, titled Bans off Our Books. With a newly created logo and children’s and YA authors and illustrators speaking out about their experiences with their own books being banned or seeing the phenomena happening to colleagues, that July 2022 panel has become the template for panels in 2023 and 2024 as an essential focus of every comic con that CBC attends. Here are the panels we’ve hosted: Bans Off Our Books! Responding to Challenges (San Diego Comic-Con 2022) Discussing action items to respond to loca ..read more

The CBC wants to give a big THANK YOU to all of the Favorites Awards local coordinators. From August 2023 to January 2024, these teachers, school and public librarians, and booksellers worked tirelessly to get the kids and teens in their community to read and vote on over 300 new books. It is thanks to them and their communities that we have these diverse, exciting, and fun book lists to share nationally. Thank you to the following local coordinator locations: Ketchikan Public Library, Ketchikan, AK, 99901 Randolph School, Huntsville, AL, 35802 Riverchase Elementary School, Hoover, AL, 3524 ..read more

The Hot Off the Press Spotlight segment showcases new books from our current Hot Off the Press list to further assist parents, teachers, librarians, booksellers, and other book enthusiasts in finding engaging books for all types of readers. While prose is perhaps the most common format in which a story is written, it’s certainly not the only format. As April is National Poetry Month, it’s the perfect time to look at the imaginative and moving form of storytelling that poetry and stories in verse can provide. Children appreciate a good rhyme that engages their sense of whimsy and humor. Poetry ..read more

The CBC asks Nancy Ellwood, Publishing Director of Arcadia Children’s Books. How did your publishing house start out? Arcadia itself has been around for decades, but Arcadia Children’s Books started in 2019, after it was acquired. The new leadership looked at all the incredible local history we produce each year—for adults—and thought, “Wait a second! We’re missing a huge opportunity by not publishing for kids.” Voila! ACB was born. Where in the country is your house based? What do you love about being based there? The company HQ is in Charleston, SC, but I’m based in my home in Queens, New ..read more

The CBC is proud to partner with 4th-grade teacher and spoken word artist Toney Jackson. Toney has written an original sonnet in support of libraries and librarians, and he has also given us permission to share with the world a reading of his sonnet. You can see and hear Toney reading his powerful sonnet on these CBC platforms: Instagram Facebook Twitter/X YouTube Sonnet for the Banned, by Toney Jackson I pull up to the library with my Army of speakers. We plug ourselves in We pack the power to face and defy attempts to silence our voices or pens You see these instruments play notes of ..read more

The CBC asks Madeleine Dunphy, Publisher of Web of Life Children’s Books. How did your publishing house start out? Before founding Web of Life, I wrote picture books for Hyperion Books for Children and Millbrook Press. When my books went out of print, I decided to form my own publishing company to republish them. Since then, Web of Life has expanded to publish new books created by many talented authors, illustrators, and photographers. What is your publishing house most known for? We are best known for publishing high-quality, timeless picture books about the wonders of nature. Where in th ..read more

Guest blog post by Dr. Jeffrey Bennett, astrophysicist and author More than 30 million people live directly within the path of totality for the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, many more live within a short drive of it, and the rest of the mainland United States (and Canada/Mexico) will experience a partial solar eclipse. You don’t want to miss this awe-inspiring spectacle of nature, especially if you live in or can travel to the path of totality. To help you prepare, astrophysicist/author Dr. Jeffrey Bennett — whose company, Big Kid Science, is a member of the Children’s Book Council — ha ..read more