As 2025 wraps up, I will keep this post short and sweet. After four years of writing for Picture Book Builders, I am stepping away to focus on other work. Thank you for sharing your reading lives with me, and thank you especially to Jill Esbaum for being a wonderful …
As the weather chills, let’s take a look at a great picture book for winter: COME CATCH A DREAM by Brittany J. Thurman and Islenia Mil. In this story, a boy walks home every day with his mother, always passing the ice skating rink. Most of the year the rink …
I’m excited to share with you this new thought-provoking title from debut author Stacy C. Jensen and illustrator Victo Ngai. Before I Lived Here takes readers on a journey backward in time, prompting them to wonder what came before. The book opens with a young boy looking out a window …
As a librarian at a school with wide-ranging educational programming and services for students with disabilities and a neurodiverse population, I am always looking for books that represent our inclusive community. This Is How We Talk: A Celebration of Disability and Connection written by Jessica Slice and Caroline Cupp and …
What school librarian doesn’t love a first day of book? BIG KIDS by K.L. Going and Reggie Brown is one of my favorites to come out this back-to-school season. Let’s take a look. I just love how the lettering of the title stretches to the very edges of the cover. …
The American Library Association Annual Conference is a joyful long weekend of lively reunions and insightful panels, library advocacy and celebrations of outstanding books. A highlight is walking the exhibition hall, arms full of FREE books. My school library hosts an annual Free Book FAIR and the ALA giveaways, often …
I’m excited to share with you today And Then Came You by Christina Shawn and Shahrzad Maydani. This delightful book spans several years as a young child’s family expands to incorporate more members—and more love! This book brims with charm, warmth, and giggles, and I’m thrilled that author Christina Shawn …
A Season for Fishin’: A Fish Friday Tradition is the not-to-be-missed debut of author Pamela Courtney, a lovingly told tale complete with vibrant illustrations by Toni D. Chambers. It’s the first Fish Fry Friday of the year, and Chér can’t wait to join her papere for the first time to …
This title immediately grabbed me. Don’t Eat the Cleaners! sounds like a Poison Control PSA. But the eye-catching cover tells a different story. Have you ever considered how ocean animals get clean? Or how they get dirty in the first place? Susan Stockdale provides an engrossing primer on all things …
The poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “How can the biographer know when enough is known, and known with sufficient certainty? What about secrets, what about errors, what about small black holes where there is nothing at all?…And what about the waywardness of life itself—the proclivity toward randomness—the sudden meaningless uplift …