#kids lit
My first illustrated book Solitary Animals: Introverts of the wild is out!! Written by Joshua David Stein, it talks about animals that live in groups and those who keep to themselves. Encouraging parents and children that being alone is nothing strange, you can be just as happy doing so!
Copies are available to purchase on Amazon, Target (online only), and Barnes n Nobles.
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Spellbound’s Sea Monsters issue is out now!
Table of Contents
Poetry
- Qalupalik by Gerri Leen
- ASPIDOCHELONE: The Asp Turtle by Laurel Klein
- The Beast of Shandore by B.J. Lee
- The Akhlut by Becky Ward
- The Kraken by Emily Sorensen
- A Whaler’s Tale by Nick Baker
Fiction
- Words Beneath the Waves by Aidan Doyle
- The Claw by Anthony Clark
- Aspidochelone by Elizabeth Spencer
- The Skrímsli by Jennifer Moore
- The Sea-Dragon’s Share by VG Campen
With artwork by Sean Buck, Sara Cuervo, Ward Donovan, Kit Fox, Nilah Magruder, Andrea Radeck, Annalicia Valle and Kevin Vito.
Available from:
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It’s tangyuan season! Happy winter solstice!! ❄️
Seasonals Greasonals ❄️
Another dtiys! This one is from raahatkduji on twitter and insta!
2018 Titles By/For/About Latinx!!
Several YA and kid lit titles here for your entire new year. Read their summaries at the source!
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Dreaming of summer nights and fireflies
Flight / Fight
Birdwatching in the woods. For some reason, despite how easy to spot cardinals are, I always hear them before I see them!
ok i think what gets me about the kind of post that’s like ’[children’s media] has child soldiers, where are their parents!!’ is that those stories really and truly aren’t forpeople who’ll think about that, they’re for the people the children’s age, who don’t, for the most part, want to be kept safe or told they’re too young to participate in the world, they want to be given a sword
i did not anticipate that this post was going to be this popular so like.
- when i said “a sword” i was speaking metaphorically. i mean, literally as well, swords are cool as hell. but metaphorically: agency and the power to do something about their situation and the situation of the world.
- a bunch of people have said that children who do not have supportive parents love this kind of thing, which is very true and part of a thing i was thinking of but is not in the post - often when you feel alone, reading about someone who is alone but in a much more dramatic way, with, again, the power to do something about it, is much more comforting than reading about someone who is kept safe and given the “right” supports. the dragon takes on the face of the fifth grade bully easily and naturally.
- when i said “where are their parents” and “child soldiers” i was generalizing these kind of complaints. “why didn’t any adult step in”/ “these are bad pedagogical techniques” are some of the ones i see a bunch. and the answer is the same. they didn’t step in or teach in a way that would be good in real life because it is the opposite of empowering for a child to hear “when you’re older” in fiction as well as in real life.
- someone reblogged this post with tags about how their younger self would have been furious if the events of one of those “villain gets mad at seer for sending children to fight them” posts had played out in real life, and that’s about right - one of the central things about being a child is not being taken seriously. those posts are by adults who have forgotten that, because being wrapped in a blanket and told to sit this one out means that you are not being taken seriously - as a threat; as an enemy; as a hero; as a person.
- if your “counterexample” is not directed towards people under 20, you’re misreading the post. The new crop of adult fantasy books really examining the post-traumatic stress of child heroes is very much not for me, but if people like it, that’s fine. but that’s very different from stuff focused on kids with heroes who are kid-aged. “wow, the hero of this book is too young, it’s kind of funny that no one else can do anything/this Great Mage War is between a 12 year old and a 10 year old/whatever” is maybe a funny joke but it is not any sort of real or, more importantly, interesting criticism of the work.
- kids’ literature is a great way of exposing kids to the thrill of danger while keeping them absolutely safe.
- kids’ literature where the adults are a problem is a great way of teaching kids that authority is not inherently trustworthy.
- kids deserve to be safe; kids deserve to feel powerful. a kid reading about an 11-year-old taking on the Dark Lord and winning is safe and feelspowerful.
i want to add that there’s still a difference to be made even inside kids’ media.
like sometimes the adult character really does do their best to help and support and protect the kid but the danger / hero quest really cannot be avoided through their effort
(the owl house is a great example of this. edalyn goes all the way out of her way to keep the kids safe but the world is still more dangerous than that)
and sometimes the child character is explicitly denied support, attention and protection from adults when they ask for it / want it / could really use it. in a way that kids recognize as bad of the adult character too. and sometimes it’s normalized by the society in general even though kids are angry about it and this is worth examining is all.
(steven universe is great at examining this, when steven’s moms are explicitly written as just not quite. managing. and steven has to do something about it)
(but that’s a deliberate example and there’s also books that don’t really think about it. like harry potter early books have professors not listening to the kids which gets them into entirely avoidable danger from lack of competent adult support. that is very much worth talking about in the specific way the books didnt)
