Another one of those surprising "Internet info gaps" has now been filled. The Fairy Tales and Stories of Hans Christian Andersen are now available online from a site in Israel.

February 27, 1997

Thanks to Betsy Fraser for her list of Fractured Fairy Tales-- stories that extend, or parody, or re-cast the traditional fairy tale in a new light.

The annotated list of ALA's Notable Books for Children is now available from the Association for Library Services to Children website. I have added the link to my Best Books of 1996 page. For anyone who is keeping track, we are still missing separate lists for the Notable Sound Recordings for Children, and Notable Computer Software for Children. Those lists are available as part of the Quick Guide to 1997 ALA Awards (which also includes various adult awards, but does not--yet--include the Notable Books for Children).

The excellent newsgroup, rec.arts.books.childrens has an excellent and useful Frequently Asked Questions List.

Aaron Shepard, whose excellent Reader's Theater page you already know and love (don't you?), is now an Author Online! with a site featuring stories online, and information about his published books. This one gets the coveted Knapweed Award (That's a Good Thing, by the way).

February 24, 1997

The Madeleine L'Engle WWW Resource is a new fan page that includes good links to articles, interviews, and reviews. Well done!

February 20, 1997

Update: The "Best Books for Young Adults" list, and the "Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers" have appeared on the ALA Website. Check my Best Books of 1996 page for the URLs.

HarperCollins is featuring a William Joyce website. Get a load of this man's Halloween decorations!

Katherine Paterson has a website with descriptions of her books at http://www.terabithia.com.

Thanks to Harold Farmer for passing on information about the revived National Book Award for Young People's Literature, which was presented last November for the first time since 1983.

Storybook Park publishes original children's stories online.

February 19, 1997

I've done some long-overdue updates to the Lots of Lists page, including grouping annual "Best of the Year" listings into a separate page for each year. The new ALA Notable Lists haven't yet appeared on the American Library Association website; when they do, I'll add them to my Best Books of 1996 page.

The Winter 1996/97 edition of the excellent annual Children's Reader is out. Good articles about children's books by Sheila Egoff, Sarah Ellis, and others.

February 18, 1997

Celebrate the Cat in the Hat's 40th Birthday at Random House. Send the Cat in the Hat a birthday card printed from the site, and the publisher will donate a free book to the National Center for Family Literacy. Also games, recipes, and promotional offers.

Not sure how I missed it, but I've now added the 1996 winner of the Canadian Information Book Award

Thanks to Suzanne Werner for tracking down a proper citation for the story Wunderpants, reviewed elsewhere in these pages. It's included in the collection Unreal! by Paul Jennings (Puffin Books).

Banph is an online novel about an ant-knight.

February 17, 1997

Today's the big day! The American Library Association announced its children's book awards. I'm updating my Newbery, Caldecott and other ALA Awards pages as information becomes available.

Also check our Newbery/Caldecott Forum, and the official Association for Library Services to Children pages.

Also found in my web-travels today:

An extremely useful list of Small Presses Owned and Operated by People of Color: Publishers of Children's Books, compiled by the Cooperative Children's Book Center. Includes mailing addresses, and websites (where available).

Also from the Cooperative Children's Book Center: A listing of the Jane Addams Book Award for the book that most effectively promotes the cause of peace, social justice and world community.

Avi has his own website that even features animated insults from Ereth, everyone's favorite porcupine! (My favourite porcupine, at least).

February 14, 1997

We now have a list of the winners of the U.S. Mildred L. Batchelder Award for outstanding translated book for children. Thanks to Linnea Hendrickson for doing the research.

February 8, 1997

Some of you noticed that my Conference Page disappeared in last month's redesign. It has now been replaced by a do-it-yourself Conference Bulletin Board. Post your book events here in any form you like. Much more timely and reliable that waiting for me to copy the messages out of my e-mail!

January 30, 1997

The 1997 Orbis Pictus Award winner and honor books were selected January 20, 1997. The Orbis Pictus award is for outstanding US nonfiction for children.

(late) January 29, 1997

A Valentine to Kait - Please read this important message from writer Lois Duncan.

January 27, 1997

Lois Duncan, the author of many award-winning young adult suspense novels, has a web page, but she seems skeptical that anyone will visit. C'mon everyone, let's prove her wrong! (Hahahaha. I have such immense power!). Readers are also reminded of the teaching suggestions for Lois Duncan's Who Killed My Daughter?, elsewhere in these pages.

January 26, 1997

New stories on the Classics for Young People page, and the Folklore page.

Also a link to The End of the Rainbow, by Bjarne Reuter (translated by Anthea Bell). This sequel to the award-winning Buster's World and Buster, the Sheikh of Hope Street is the first children's book from a major publisher (Dutton Children's Books) to be published only online.

January 25, 1997

Vicky Cobb's Kid's Science Page includes information about the author and her books, and sample science experiments.

My quest for news of the 1996 winner of the British Whitbread Children's Book of the Year is over. The award went to Anne Fine for The Tulip Touch. I should have known I'd find the information in the Electronic Telegraph. (My only criticism of this online British newspaper is that since I only use it a couple of times a year, I invariably forget my password and have to re-register every time!)

January 23, 1997

I have added a new review to the What We're Reading feature. This one was written by a young Australian reader about Paul Jennings' book Wunderpants.

Snow White is an excellent site by Kay Vandergrift that includes good comparative texts and illustrations, and takes a (primarily academic) look at the fairy tale and its variations.

Mary E. Lyons has written several books for young people, and is now hosting her own page.

I got heck from a fan for announcing Jan Brett's website without giving her site my coveted "Knapweed Award for Excellence." She was right. It deserves the bouquet. I just hope Jan won't let the fame go to her head!

January 22, 1997

Apologies to my regular visitors (if there are any of you still out there) for my long absence from these pages. As you will have already seen though, if you came in through my new front page, I have been busy behind the scenes.

In addition to the redesigned front page (Faster loading! Fewer graphics! Lynx-friendly!), I have set up some discussion boards, and I'm looking for your participation. I get a great deal of interesting e-mail as a result of these pages (and I also get asked a lot of really hard questions that I don't know the answers to!). Too often though, life intervenes, and my e-mail piles up unanswered. That leaves me feeling guilty and my correspondents feeling justly neglected. The message boards are the best solution I can come up with-- I will read the messages posted there, and others will get a chance as well.

Please take part in the discussion groups. Make them your own. Ask your questions there (and let's hope that some of the smarties in the audience know the answers). Another new feature is my Web-Traveller's Toolkit, a selection of Children's Literature websites that are too wide-ranging to fit into my other categories, or just too good to be ignored.