Betsy Bird's Blog

This past weekend I had the great delight in partaking in a Tomi Ungerer Symposium at The Rabbit hOle in Kansas City. If you’re unfamiliar with the location, it’s essentially the world’s first interactive picture book museum (and a lot more hands on than you’ll usually find with similar institutions). While tooling about its bookstore I happened to notice the book The Genius Under the Table prominently displayed in the middle grade fiction area. It instantly sent me back. When that book was ...

No sane person would disagree with the fact that it is beyond inappropriate to call a female reporter “piggy” in any context. You can understand, though, why I’ve had pigs in children’s literature on my mind since the president’s latest failure in basic human decency.

One pig in particular, actually.

Historically, it was male pigs who dominated the children’s literature landscape. Freddy the Pig. Wilbur. And Animal Farm wasn’t exactly for kids, but Napoleon stands strong (and were th...

If you’ve been following the news at all then you probably know that my town of Evanston, Illinois has been dealing with ICE for the past month or so. Rachel Maddow discussed it. Our mayor has been all over the news. My Little Free Library has been found, more than once, to be full of whistles. We’ve been trained at the library on what to do if ICE comes in. It’s affected so many parts of my city.

So I looked at the books out for kids in 2025. Do any of them touch on what migration from M...

Ya ha, me maties! Tis me! The uptight librarian who, for reasons that have never been adequately explained, is weirdly obsessed with one (and, really, only one) inaccurate form of visual representation in children’s picture books: Stories where the knitting needles are depicted inaccurately. I’m always keeping track, and today I’ll show you my results (just as I did in 2024, 2023 and 2022).

Let us dispense with the usual objections to this post right off the bat:

New General Rule: When a celebrity promotes an already existing picture book, it is rarely a good thing. I am thinking, naturally, of the episode of Friends where they read Love You Forever in its entirety. But it doesn’t just happen on television shows. Recently a Kardashian recommended today’s title, and to my horror and delight it’s 20 years old (if you go by its original self-published publication date). A self-proclaimed books for parents (rather than children) we have to weigh Tillman’...

Hey!

Any of you remember this book?:

It’s strange to consider any kind of a downside to the sheer hoardes of middle grade graphic novels coming out these days, but I am a little sad that sometimes really good and danged funny titles don’t make the splash they could have even a decade ago.

Shiny Misfits was one of those real rarities. It was penned by a female comedian. A female Palestinian-American comedian. A female Palestinian-American comedian with cerebral palsy. And apart from ...

I had someone write me the other day to let me know that they had an acquaintance reach out to them about writing a picture book. This acquaintance wanted the book to specifically be anti-ICE, which is a worthy sentiment but it got me to thinking about picture books with specific messages for specific times. When 9/11 or COVID hit, we got an interesting array of picture books speaking specifically to those moments in history. Yet because of the length of time a publishing cycle takes, one ra...

As National Native American Heritage Month continue apace, I’m indulging in yet another interview today. This time Kevin Maillard is my focus, alongside his latest book And They Walk On. If Kevin’s name sounds familiar, you may know this Professor of Law at��Syracuse University and enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma from his picture book Fry Bread. This latest title is a bit different, and personal in another way.

Today, I’m delighted to inform you that I will be interview...

As the end of the year approaches and the days grow short and dark, thoughts begin to turn to the people we lost during the year. There are a lot of names, beloved by many, that come to mind. Diane Keaton. Robert Redford. David Lynch.

I think losing Jane Goodall was a particularly hard loss, though. Not simply because of the legacy of her life and work, but also because she served as an inspiration for so many. She even, if you’ll recall, starred in a Caldecott Honor winning picture book....

My sister had a baby this year and, as such, introduced me to this earworm of a song:

@hayleyandcolby

Colby does love a banana���. #babyboy #babiesoftiktok #chickenbanana #dancingbaby #fyp #happybaby #firsttimemom #7monthsold #babytrend

��� Chicken Banana – Crazy Music Channel

Seems to me that it’s rather perfectly positioned. Not only was the viral hit of 2025 Steve’s Chicken Lava Song from the Minecraft movie, but bananas are also having their day. For whatever reason,...