Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for May 7, 2024

 This author lives in Massachusetts and has over 400 published books. In the past she has competed in Madness Poetry, where 64 poets are paired up, each pair is given a word to write about, they submit their poems, and the public votes. One continues, one is out, so the field goes from 64 to 32, to 16, etc. This year I'm one of the 64! Please go to the site so you can vote--the poems are fun. The author from my home state of Massachusetts is Jane Yolen, and the word for my first poem is sangfroid. Aaagh! Voting starts May 7, Tuesday.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for April 23, 2024

 This English author/illustrator born in 1886 attended MIT and settled in New York, but in World War I he joined the British army. While serving in Flanders and France, he wrote stories to send back to his children in the US about a kindly veterinarian who could communicate with animals. An author friend convinced him to turn the stories into a book, which became a popular series. As times changed, some of his illustrations and descriptions of Black people were seen to be racist, and later editions were rewritten to eliminate the offending material. His series of books has been made into several movies. This is Hugh Lofting and his series chroinicles the adventures of Dr. Doolittle.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for April 9, 2024

 This authhor/illustrator was born April 3, 1953 and grew up as a Quaker in Philadelphia, attending Germantown Friends School and later, Yale. She studied drama at Berkely, and later described her writing as "the culmination of a lifetime spent joyfully squandering an expensive education on producing works of no apparent significance." Her writing and illustrating career began with greeting cards, and her "Hippo Birdies, Two Ewes" birthday card has sold over 10 million copies. She moved on to board books, featuring whimsical hippos, cows, chickens and more, and has turned several of her books into songs. This is Sandra Boynton, and she is currently working on a Christmas album called Cows and Holly which will feature Lyle Lovett, Yo-Yo Ma, and others.

Madness Poetry returns!

 I always love this contest, where the judges are kids and fellow writers. The event is now in it's 11th year, so the application poem had to relate to the number 11. This is my entry:

The One After Ten
The 11th commandment should be maybe...
"Thou shalt not wake a sleeping baby."
"Throweth no shoes over telephone wires,"
"No tissues or crayons in washers or dryers."
Or "Liveth ye not beyond thine means,"
Or "Feedeth not thine chihuahua beans."

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for April 2, 2024

This Chicago native wrote songs for Johnny Cash ("Boy Named Sue"), Loretta Lynn ("One's On The Way"), Dr. Hook ("Cover of the Rolling Stone") and the Irish Rovers ("The Unicorn"). His cartoons appeared in the military publication Stars and Stripes and also in Playboy. He played guitar, piano, saxophone and trombone, but it was his talent in writing poetry for children that endeared him to elementary school teachers and their students. This was Shel Silverstein, and his most famous collection is called Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for March 19, 2024

   Science was a lifelong passion since childhood for this New Jersey author. After getting her psychology degree she worked as a librarian, and it was then, 1n 1971, that she wrote her first children's book, Cockroaches. She is better known for her series of books about a passionate teacher who takes her students on incredible field trips. They become raindrops to study their city's waterworks, and red blood cells to learn about the human body. The books have won nemerous awards for the factual information they provide in a fantasy setting. They are the Magic School Bus books, written by Joanna Cole, 1944-2020.

Tuesday Kidlit Trivia for March 12, 2024

 This creator was born in New Jersey in 1956, the youngest of five chidren, in a family where art supplies were abundant. His love of drawing led him to the Rhode Island School of Design, and a career that began illustrating books by others. But it was his own wordless book Free Fall that won the Caldecott Honor Medal for illustration in 1988. His later Caldecott Medal winner featured frogs floating through a sleepy town, and in another of his books a science project sends up seedlings which fill the sky with giant vegetables.This imaginative, humorous illustrator is David Wiesner.