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What is the ideal trim size for baby books? An average of six-by-six inches is what I see most often. It’s a good size for perusing, carrying, and even stacking by board books’ very young audience. I wonder if this convention harks back to Beatrix Potter, whose own picture books...
During the film adaptation of Wicked, the Wizard says, “The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy.” The terms “diversity” and “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion) have been recently miscast in that role, to mean unskilled people, unfairly hired or otherwise prioritized, and...
(c) 2025 by Shawn Harris. From the September/October 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. Single copies of this issue are available for $15.00 including postage and may be ordered from: Horn Book Magazine Customer Service magazinesupport@mediasourceinc.com Full subscription information is here....
Children are highly attuned to human emotions, curiously observant, and intuitively responsive to their environments. They begin to form ideas of fairness in early childhood. While they don’t yet understand all the complexities of the world, children are more aware than adults realize and could actually benefit from learning the...
I started writing books for very young children in anger. A strange admission, I know. I was receiving a wobbly stack of board books to review for Kirkus each month, and I often vented about how developmentally inappropriate many were. I got holiday titles that read like extra-thick greeting cards...
Founded in 2020, the Latinx KidLit Book Festival (LKBF) is a free, virtual annual event starting in September that celebrates Latinx authors, illustrators, and books. The following is a conversation between LKBF Educator Council members about the festival's significance to their academic work and lives. See also hbook.com/story/the-latinx-kidlit-book-festival. Growing up,...
“Where do you get your ideas?” I’ve been asked this question by children countless times during author visits, but I still love answering it. “The same place you do,” I respond. “Where do your ideas come from?” Students and I share inspirations: pets, dreams, things we experience, unexpected ideas that...
When I joined the editorial team at Charlesbridge Publishing in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 2012 as an editorial assistant, I was still a full-time graduate student at the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College (now University). I had returned to school after working fifteen years in higher...
The author's Horn Book (and other) treasures. Photo: Celia C. Pérez. I keep a storage bin filled with ephemera from my writing life. It is a treasure chest of memories that includes everything from conference badges, event programs, and T-shirts from schools I’ve visited to letters and artwork I have...
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