In picture-book goings-on, bloggers Julie Danielson, Betsy Bird, Travis Jonker, and Minh Lê have a seasonally appropriate discussion about creepy picture books. (And here are the Horn Book’s recommendations for Halloween reading.)
–and the New York Times Best Illustrated list is out and includes A Fine Dessert, so don’t look for that discussion to die down anytime soon.
–and I see that list does not include Jon Agee’s It’s Only Stanley, which has already won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor as well as my personal award for Book Most Fun to Read Aloud, as I am doing in the picture above, to our Dutch friends who were visiting the States last week. Kids amaze me. Lizze, at far left in the picture, remembered no English for about the first hour of our visit but it eventually came pouring out with no apparent internal translation, and it was she who delivered the book’s last word, which Agee leaves to the reader. I do love a book that leaves stuff up to us.
–Okay, I have to go buy candy for the trick-or-treaters now. The perennial debate: buy candy you love, or candy you loathe?