Talk about how we talk about American history seems to be everywhere this 250th anniversary year of the United States of America. Two new nonfiction books for kids bring unique and contrasting methods to exploring this doubleheader of a topic: when did what happen and how can we understand events honestly now that time has […]
American History as Style and Substance Read More »
While many associations, journals, bloggers, and libraries publish their lists of best kids’ books of the year right at calendar’s close, some important ones do arrive later in the winter and even into spring. With summer on the horizon, we want to share these with you so that you can restock your shelves for vacation
More Best Lists for 2025 Kids’ Books Read More »
Audiobooks have become a popular choice among every age group across the past half century, with rapid technology changes allowing increased accessibility and collection maintenance. Fifty years ago, children’s audiobooks were for the very young while audiobooks for adults were the purview of national services for the blind. Production values were limited and the choices
Spotlight on Live Oak Media Read More »
The game has been around for centuries, played by little kids independent of organized sports and by professional athletes in international competitions. Light on equipment and reliant on plenty of energy, along with differing amounts of team coordination, it’s internationally popular. Do you call the “beautiful game” football or soccer? Well, if you’re in most
Kids’ Books to Read Before, During, and After the World Cup Read More »
This is one in our Double Scoop Sundae series featuring a pair of thematically-related books and ideas for teachers and library program developers seeking ways to extend reading from them. Butterflies inspire people all over the globe with their silent, beautiful, often iridescent wings. They also serve as reminders of our own and nature’s fragility: they appear,
Butterflies Need Safety, Too Read More »
This is one in our Double Scoop Sundae series featuring a pair of thematically-related books and ideas for teachers and library program developers seeking ways to extend reading from them. Mathematics in its many forms—arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, and more—comes with rules that can seem daunting. In fact, those rules can be both imagination-provoking and fun! In
Cumulative tales build the way a snowball does: they get bigger as each new point in the tale passes to add another layer to the whole. Items (and sometimes people) are collected as the story moves along. “Stone Soup” is such a tale and has various versions in many cultures. Cumulative stories are sometimes rhythmic,
New Snowball Stories Read More »
For many decades, children’s picture books we see in North America that include realistic descriptions and/or illustrations of dwellings have largely featured homes that appear to be single family, often suburban with lawns. Like others around the world, however, many kids here live in homes that are apartments—whether middle class, well-to-do, or economically struggling. What
Many Doors, One Home: Apartment Living in Kids’ Books Read More »
This article was last updated 16 January 2026 What’s better than a book award? A list of best books! Why? There are more titles to choose among and to compare and contrast. While judges who determine book awards are looking at lots of competing titles critically, with a list of bests, we get to see
Best of the Year Lists Are the Best! Read More »
