Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for October 8, 2024

 This Pennsylvania illustrator loves drawing the natural world and is particularly good with pumpkins. She illustrated one of my favorite non-fiction picture books, Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson, about how a cactus is host to numerous desert creatures even after it collapses. Her beautiful pumpkins appear in Linda White's Too Many Pumpkins from 1996 and aso the preschool Halloween classic, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams from 1988, which was a Publishers Weekly seasonal bestseller for many years. This is the illustrator Megan Lloyd.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for September 24, 2026

 Sept. 22-28 is Banned Book Week. My favorite book, Charlotte's Web, was added to the banned list in Kansas in 2006, when a group of parents declared that the idea of talking animals was "blasphemous and unnatural." Can you guess which banned book this quote came from? "Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children...let's get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him to preserve our family line..." A.) Beloved by Toni Morrison B.) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck C.) Dracula by Bram Stoker D.) none of the above. The answer is D, because the quote is from the Bible, Genesis 19:30.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for September 17, 2024

 Today's trivia celebrates Haitian picture book writers. Carline Smothers is a first generation Haitian who couldn't find books for her young  daughters about Haitian culture, so she wrote some. Two of her titles are Fanmi Mwen (My Family) and Mmmmmm! Soup Joumou, written in English and Haitian Creole. Jinica Dauphin is Haitian/American and an elementary school teacher in Florida. Her book Haitian Flag Day, Fleurina's Way tells about a little girl learning about her heritage as she plans a perfect celebration. Author M.J. Fievre was born in Port-Au-Prince Haiti and now lives in Miami. Her book Haiti A to Z  is "a bilingual book about the Pearl of the Antilles." Preshoolers will learn about Haitian traditions as well as the Creole alphabet sounds. It's always a good idea to learn to appreciate other cultures, but particularly Haitian culture, especially now.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for September 10, 2024

 As a child, this Long Island author/illustrator drew on every piece of paper she could find. She enrolled in the Art Students League in New York City at age 18, where she met and married Swedish artist Karl Larsson. Their daughter Hilma's experiences as a child exploring the city led to her 1929 book All Around the Town, and family pets were featured in her series of books about Angus, a curious young dog. While writing Angus and the Ducks she learned about Peking ducks along the Yangtzee River. She chose not to illustrate The Story About Ping and instead asked an artist who had lived in China to create the pictures of the young duck and his adventures. This book is still popular today and remains her greatest contribution to children's literature. This is Marjorie Flack.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for August 27, 2024

    We admire authors whose works are still cherished after 100 years. But this man's stories are still being told and they were created in the 6th century B.C.! The creator was a Greek slave, and he probably never set them down in writing himself. Similar tales existed even earlier in Mesopotamia, but Aristophanes, Plato, Herodotus and other prominent Greeks all credit this man with the stories that have stood the test of time. The tales were not originally meant for children, but became part of school curriculums as moral lessons that children enjoyed. These are the fables of Aesop.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for August 20, 2024

 Having a bear in my downtown back yard reminded me of this author/illustrator and his Moonbear series of books. He taught at a public school in India, and also in the US at a Montessori school. He was born in New Jersey, lived in Vermont with his family and retired to Hawaii. His heroes growing up were Roy Rogers, Bob Dylan and Maurice Sendak, and Professor Pritchard at art college. This author urges young writers to "have fun putting words on the paper," as he has done in more than 80 books, often sitting under his "thinking tree." This is dog lover Frank Asch, who lived from1946-1922.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for August 13, 2024

 This Swedish-born author created a character in her 1950 book that was very unlike the good little girls in school books and tv shows. This girl had no parents, was strong enough to lift up a horse, had an endless supply of gold coins, and decided school was not for her. The author grew up on a farm, and when a teacher suggested she should become a writer, she vowed that would never happen. But later, she made up stories for her daughter and decided to write them down in a book as a gift to her.. She tried sending the book to a publisher, but it was rejected. The next year, though, it won first prize in a contest, got published and became an international succes. The author went on to write over 100 books for children. This is Astrid Lindgren, and her heroine was Pippi Longstocking.