ARCHIVE FOR children's literature

A black and white cartoon my mother cut out of a magazine twenty-some years ago is still etched in my memory. A seemingly apprehensive young woman was about to step onto the scale. The caption read, “Please God, please! Let me weigh 110 and then everything in my life will be perfect. ” I can still hear my mother giggling. 

While there is no working scale in my home, and I haven’t frequented church since high school, the cartoon stays with me.  Throughout my life, I too have found myself pleading, “Please God, just let this happen ...

By Sophie Powell

The poem Tarantella by Hilaire Belloc has always been one of my favorites, and I learned it by heart as a child for a poem-speaking competition; Tarantella’s masterful rhyme and rhythm, evocative of a flamenco beat, are infectious and it has marvelous mystery and atmosphere.

Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site (a picture book for preschoolers) is a different genre of literature to Tarantella, nevertheless its author Sherri Duskey Rinker has the same enchanting gift with rhyme and rhythm that I have not experienced since Tarantella.  Reaching #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for children’s ...