Willie Was Different

Norman Rockwell. Dragonfly Books, $5.99 (27pp) ISBN 978-0-679-88262-6

An awkward wood thrush and a small-town librarian team up in the illustrator's only children's story, originally published in McCall's in 1967. ""Rockwell's effusive color illustrations will warm new generations,"" said PW. All ages. (May)

Featured Children's Reviews

Cheryl Willis Hudson

Willis Hudson movingly exalts the power of African American spirituals in a lyrics showcase that pairs existing verses with feelings they can evoke. On the first page, a Black Continue reading »

Traci N Todd

Todd and Davis’s melodic paean to performer Ella Jenkins (b. 1924) follows a figure who “wants/ to make/ a pretty sound.” Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, musically inclined Continue reading »

Kwame Alexander

“Listen to...” repeats Alexander and Palmer’s entrancing history of Black music. The account begins with an image of brown-skinned people dancing and drumming in “the Continue reading »

Quartez Harris

“The first time James Baldwin read a book, the words clung to him like glitter.” Harris and James home in on the emotional core of the author’s upbringing in this moving work Continue reading »