Babble

Richard Dawkins hates fairies. That's not a homosexual slur. He also hates "wizards and magic wands and things turning into other things." And he's not sure if children should be exposed to such ideas. From the New York Times: Having sufficiently inflamed the passions of his adult readers...

Felicity Dahl, the widow of the beloved children’s book author Roald Dahl, rarely gives interviews. 18 years after Dahl’s death, she finds it difficult to speak about her husband without crying. But in an interview with the Sunday Guardian , she spoke candidly about her husband's writing and personal...

Sometimes a book for kids is just a book for kids. There is no existentialist reason for being hidden within the words. There is no parallel to the White House's poor handling of the economy in a parent denying their child a toy on the trip to the store. There is just a mom and a kid learning that...

As the holiday shopping season and its attendant financial panic draw near, let us all reflect on the greatness of David Shannon's new book Too Many Toys , which finds the young character Spencer surrounded by more toys than he can play with in three lifetimes. (Sound familiar?) The last straw comes...

When you live in the city and you tell people you're pregnant, their first question is frequently "Are you moving?" But the city is great for kids, for many of the same reasons it's great for adults . As a child of the suburbs myself, I'm always on the lookout for picture books...

Looking for a way to celebrate Halloween that doesn't involve excess sugar consumption or shopping? Pick up a spooky new book! Here are 3 publishers' 2008 offerings, in the order we liked them: There's No Such Thing as G hosts! by Emmanuelle Eeckhout (Kane/Miller) A diminutive boy with the...

Increasingly, books for children and young adults are being released with related video games. Since 97 percent of children ages 12 to 17 play computer and video games, this seems like a surefire to draw at least some reluctant readers into books. But when libraries host gaming tournaments and elementary...

Banning books is nothing new, of course. Thankfully, morons have been trying it for ages. I say thankfully, because there's no surer way of drawing attention to a book than trying to ban it. When "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was pulled from library shelves, Mark Twain famously said...

One of the highlights of my job as a Babble editor is getting to read lots of children's books and occasionally meeting my favorite authors . When I wrote about the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art a year ago, I was hoping to meet the author-illustrator himself -- but he had fled for the winter...

Is your kid a dreamer? A thinker? A reader? A writer? She's not alone. We're seeing a small boom in creative writing workshops for kids all across the country as more and more book-loving kids get in touch with their inner J.K. Rowling. The mini-trend was likely started by Dave Eggers and his...