Book-A-Day Almanac
Discover the stories behind the children’s book classics and the new books on their way to becoming classics.
Witches!
Elementary School, Middle School, NonfictionThe end of February can be brutal in New England. Certainly more than one inhabitant of the region has felt that powers of darkness have seized the barren land. And during the end of February 1692, the Reverend Samuel Parris and other ministers in Salem, Massachusetts, grilled two children, nine-year-old Betty Parris and her eleven-year-old […]
Award Winning, Colonial America, History, Politics, Religion/Spirituality, SibertFeatured on February 29
An American Plague
Elementary School, Middle School, NonfictionOn August 3, 1793, a young French sailor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, contracted a virulent fever, which worsened before he died. Newspaper accounts in the new nation’s capital did not even give his name, and everyone went about their usual business in the City of Brotherly Love. But from that moment on, an invisible killer stalked […]
Award Winning, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, History, Newbery, Science, SibertFeatured on August 3
The Wall
Elementary School, High School, Middle School, Picture BookOn June 17, 1969, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, ten months after the Soviet Union invaded the city with tanks, the Beach Boys gave a concert in Lucerna Hall. Although police with dogs waited nearby, in this dark time the American band provided “a glimmer of hope.” Peter Sís, recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, captured these […]
Autobiography, Award Winning, Caldecott, Cold War, History, SibertFeatured on June 17
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice
Biography, Middle SchoolToday has been designated Rosa Parks Day, marking her arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus. The incident sparked the yearlong Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott and is considered the beginning of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. But today, because of the research of author Phillip Hoose, we […]
Award Winning, Civil Rights, History, National Book Award, Newbery, SibertFeatured on December 1
Moonshot
Elementary School, Nonfiction, Picture BookToday for National Aviation Month, let’s look at a perfect book for four- to eight-year-olds that explains the Apollo 11 mission. In 1969 families and friends gathered around small television sets in households across America to watch Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin attempt to land on the moon. In Moonshot: The Flight of […]
Adventure, Award Winning, History, Sibert, SpaceFeatured on November 28
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream
Middle School, NonfictionNext for National Aviation Month, I’ve chosen a book honoring women who loved flying. When Lieutenant Colonel Eileen M. Collins became the first woman to command a spacecraft that orbited the earth, a group of women pilots had been invited by her to sit at the coveted VIP spots at Cape Canaveral. This group included […]
Award Winning, History, Sibert, Space, WomenFeatured on November 18
My Season with Penguins: An Antarctic Journal
Elementary School, Nonfiction, Picture BookOn November 17, 1820, Nathaniel Palmer and his men on the Hero became the first Americans to set foot on the Antarctic Peninsula. He was a young man, twenty-two, when he accomplished the act for which he has been immortalized. When I think of young Americans journeying to Antarctica, the book that instantly comes to […]
Animals, Award Winning, Penguins, SibertFeatured on November 17
Daily children’s book recommendations and events from Anita Silvey.
Discover the stories behind the children’s book classics . . .
The new books on their way to becoming classics . . .
And events from the world of children’s books—and the world at large.
