A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature

Not a children's book, but a book for anyone who has ever loved children's books, this collection of essays and interviews is designed to help parents foster a love of reading in children, while providing insight into the craft of children's bookmaking. Collected by Sutton and Parravano, editors of the Horn Book (where some of the book's content previously appeared), the contributions—Jon Scieszka on book design, Sarah Ellis on writing humor, Bruce Brooks and Virginia Euwer Wolff on Holden Caulfield, among others—are grouped into sections that mirror the reading life of a child: reading to children becomes reading with them, which gives way to their growth as independent readers. "By the time a kid is ready to read on his own, he's ready to... read on his own," writes Sutton. "Your job is, essentially, to let him." Sutton and Parravano also contribute commentary, discussing the best books for all ages and reading levels, and what makes them so. It's an indispensible guide at a time when, as Sutton writes, "debates about what qualifies as ‘reading' are as noisy as the concurrent fights over what can be called a 'family.'" (Sept.)