You Know, for Kids

I don't know if Komako Sakai's 2010 picture book  Mad at Mommy   will be considered a classic or not, but as far as we're ...

Well, I had intended, in advance of our family's recent vacation in western Ontario (where, I was warned by my in-laws, Internet serv...

We've recently reached yet another fascinating stage (aren't they all, really?) of parenting: Our three-year-old, Griffin, is starti...

Three-year-old Griffin is at the stage with books where I can hardly keep up with his current favorites—they literally seem to change every ...

Good picture books—all books, really, I suppose—are usually equal parts brilliant concept and brilliant execution, but most lean more heavil...

It seems all our two-year-old's favorite books right now are about dreams. (It's really kind of fascinating.) Maurice Sendak's I...

There are kids' books that you just know are going to be family favorites from the get-go, the ones whose covers grab you and never let ...

Back when I was a kid, seeing old movies at the various repertory houses conveniently scattered around the Upper West Side of Manhattan, ...

When I was writing the other day about historical-fiction picture books, one of the elite slipped my mind: Ralph Steadman's Garibaldi...

I feel like this choice is cheating a little, since it came out only last year, and got plenty of well-deserved coverage then (including a s...

I am, I know, way behind the curve in my appreciation of Flip cameras, which I first remember hearing colleagues at Cookie rave about thre...

As I've mentioned before (endlessly, I know), my son Dash, now six, is a big fan of all things spooky and scary—ghosts, witches, vampire...

My almost-six-year-old has, from a remarkably early age, been fascinated by all things scary and spooky, and by Halloween in particular. I ...

For his first year-plus, it seemed as if our younger son, Griffin, had no interest in television whatsoever. This was one of those facts th...

Continuing from my recent post: favorite kids’ DVDs, non-Pixar edition. Wallace & Gromit. Another case in which the hype is entirel...

I haven’t posted much about kids’ movies since starting this blog, mainly because I haven’t felt I had much to say beyond the obvious. ( Pix...

Many picture books are what I call “concept” books, in which the author spins a tale around a specific childhood issue—say, anger over a se...

This post is basically an appreciation, since I suspect not too many parents these days are unaware of the Lane Smith oeuvre. Even I, tryin...

Some of my friends call them “loveys”—the especially beloved items that can calm young children when nothing else can. Traditionally, they’...