The new year gives me a chance to turn over a new leaf (like this one, created for our January 2007 cover by Lois Ehlert) and get back to a more regular schedule with this blog.

We have several posts ready to share with you, some of which have been waiting in the wings for a few months. Since I also work on the Calling Caldecott blog, we'll try to alternate dates with them. If Calling Caldecott posts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, then we will post on Tuesday and Thursday.

Calling Caldecott will sign off for the season about a week after the ALA award announcements in early February. Following close on its heels, we will launch the return of our Virtual History Exhibit celebrating the Horn Book's long history starting with the opening of the Bookshop for Boys and Girls nearly 100 years ago. The VHE made its first appearance in 1999 for the Magazine's 75 anniversary, was revamped and expanded in 2005, and then disappeared in 2011 when our website moved over to a new platform.

In the past, teachers enjoyed using the VHE as an example of primary source material that would appeal to even the youngest students. We have original letters from Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beatrix Potter, Arna Bontemps, and others. Thanks to the WordPress platform of our current website, we will be able to reinstate the guestbook feature that was so popular in our first incarnation but too difficult to implement in 2005. Teachers used to send their students on an online treasure hunt of sorts, asking them to sign the guestbook on their way out to show what they had found.

Over the next few weeks I will be working hard on the VHE and preparing for the Children's Literature class I teach in the spring. But I also aim to keep up with this blog more consistently than I have over the past few months.

The children's lit class (Feb. 26 to April 9) will once again use this blog for its book discussion. There will be a mix of old and new books, and I will post our reading schedule sometime before the first class. As before, we find that our book discussions are greatly enriched by the participation of other readers of this blog. I'll be sure to share those results here. I'm also planning something new: some mock awards sessions culminating in final deliberations and a vote during our last meeting on April 9. Depending on class size, we will have either two or three committees: Caldecott, Geisel, and possibly Sibert. We may ask for your input on those lists, too.

So watch for the return of regular posts here starting early next week.