Last Tuesday my daughter looked up from her book and said "I know who took the necklace." She was reading a mystery. I was reading the same book to her…
You have a ten year old at home. That child reads faster than you think. School books finish in one sitting. Library books feel too simple. The stories end before…
Nothing beats curling up with a kid and a book that screams "don't quit." I've done it a ton with my own little ones back in the day, watching their…
Late in WHEN STARS ARE SCATTERED (Dial Books for Young Readers, 264 pp., $20.99; ages 9 to 12), 17-year-old Omar Mohamed is asked to write a paper on “What It…
Like “American Born Chinese” — his groundbreaking 2006 Y.A. debut, and the first graphic novel to be a finalist for the National Book Award — Gene Luen Yang’s DRAGON HOOPS…
In Kate Messner’s resonant, necessary CHIRP (Bloomsbury, 227 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), 12-year-old Mia is on the mend — from a broken arm, after a fall from the…
MY BEST FRIENDWritten by Julie Fogliano Illustrated by Jillian Tamaki Image From “My Best Friend.” Two small girls spend a perfect day together in the park, making chalk drawings, twirling until they fall,…
The recent Iowa caucus debacle could serve as a primer on America’s not-quite-representative system of government. The malfunctioning app. The reporting delays and inconsistencies. The delegates determined by coin tosses…
Americans have always assumed that the key to undoing the all-encompassing framework of white supremacy lies, in part, in literacy. Literacy helped combat slavery in practical ways — reading and…
In the spring of 1880, in a railroad town in Dakota Territory, a girl in her 15th year bends over her sewing to help support her family. This might be…
Like many fictional families before them, the warm, vibrant Vanderbeeker family of 141st Street — 13-year-old twins Jessie and Isa, 10-year-old Oliver, 8-year-old Hyacinth and 6-year-old Laney — has developed…
This past summer bees were voted the most important living beings on earth. While I agree wholeheartedly, I also enjoy imagining this vote, conducted by scientists at the Royal Geographic…
