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Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden

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In May, the Association of American Publishers celebrates Get Caught Reading Month—publicity for the event includes posters of famous people  each absorbed in a good book. Certainly, any book featured on the Almanac over the past year would be great to be caught reading. But I’d like to showcase a series that not only engages […]

Adventure, Dystopia, Survival
Featured on May 20

The White Mountains by John Christopher

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On April 16, 1922, John Christopher was born as Samuel Youd in Lancashire, England. Leaving school at sixteen, Christopher began writing adult science fiction novels, but then a British publisher asked Christopher if he would try his hand at a science fiction novel for young readers. Quite naively Christopher believed that writing a book for […]

Adventure, Dystopia, Quest
Featured on April 16

City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

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March has been designated Write a Letter of Appreciation Month. I always say that the Children’s Book-A-Day Almanac is my daily love letter to an author. So today I want to write an almanac letter of appreciation to Jeanne DuPrau for her magnificent novel, The City of Ember. At the beginning of The City of […]

Adventure, Dystopia
Featured on March 5

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

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On March 12, 1963, the New York Times wrote “A housewife and an artist today won the nation’s top awards for the most distinguished children’s book published in 1962.” This statement doesn’t even hint at the truth—that the most courageous committee in the history of the Newbery and Caldecott Awards had just announced its results. […]

Adventure, Award Winning, Newbery, Other Worlds, Science
Featured on March 12

Stuck on Earth by David Klass

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If you live in New Mexico, today you can celebrate Extraterrestrial Culture Day—established by a congressman from Roswell, New Mexico, to celebrate and honor all past, present, and future extraterrestrial visitors. And if you don’t live in New Mexico, the day sounds so cool that you probably want to celebrate it anyway. No matter where […]

School
Featured on February 8

The Giver by Lois Lowry

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“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” With these words Lois Lowry opens the best novel for children of the 1990s and one of the greatest science fiction works of all time—The Giver. In the early ’90s Lowry found herself a frequent visitor at a nursing home. There her mother, going […]

Adventure, Award Winning, Dystopia, Newbery
Featured on December 3

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Illustrated by Keith Thompson

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The genre of science fiction has always provided endless opportunities for writers—as well as endless memories for the young people who read their work. Today marks the first interracial kiss on TV, between Captain James Kirk and Lt. Uhura of Star Trek. Tomorrow in 1963 the BBC broadcast the first episode of Doctor Who, the […]

Adventure, Technology
Featured on November 22

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.