When I was a kid, Roald Dahl was my favorite author. Dude pretty much turned me into a reader. I’ve written about my pre-internet quest to find every last one of his books. I wanted to ride in the great glass elevator. I wanted to live in Danny’s caravan and pull one over on Mr. Hazell.

But I’ve known for a while that he wasn’t someone to look up to. An awful guy, actually. Anti-semitic. Misogynistic. Mean. While he was alive, a number of edits were made to his books to remove racist or otherwise offensive content. After he passed, his estate did more (BTW: This HAS to be the best post title that’s ever appeared on this blog).

While evidence of his indefensible faults and biases is more widely known than ever, his life and work seem to be all around. John Lithgow is playing him (warts and all) on Broadway. Film adaptations of his work are still being released.

What do you do when your favorite childhood author is someone you don’t approve of? It’s the tired “Can you separate the art from the artist?” debate all over again.

My next assignment is to listen to a recently released podcast on Dahl. It’s called The Secret World of Roald Dahl. I’m curious to see if it leads to any new insights on an author I used to love.

In April . . .

. . . we learned that there might be an unexpected new Seuss sequel on the horizon.

It was an April 1st announcement. April 1st.

. . . we learned that there are a lot of new books by past Sibert, Stonewall, Printz, and APAA award winners.

Rounding them all up for your perusal.

. . . I put out a LEGO-fied challenge!

Can you name these three books?

Well I didn’t expect to feel inspired today, but I’m feeling it.

The Today Show did a story on Diary of a Wimpy Kid creator Jeff Kinney, and his plans to revitalize his hometown.

Travis here, digging through the (digital) stacks to bring you all the 2026 books from past winners of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (APAAL).

Did I miss one? Let me know in the comments.

Previously . . .

2026 Books from Newbery Winners

2026 Books from Caldecott Winners

2026 Books from Geisel Winners

2026 Books from Pura Belpré Winners

2026 Books from Coretta Scott King Winners

2026 Books from Sibert Winners

2026 Books from Stonewall Winners

2026 Books from Printz Winners

Can you guess the children’s book by its scathing one-star review on Goodreads?

A child might see the book and have no interest in it because it is so big. The book is in dark colors and it jumps around and it is very hard to follow. I had a hard time following this book and i am a junior in college.

Click here for the answer.

Why do I share these? Click here.

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Stories are equipment for living.

-Kenneth Burke, American literary theorist, poet, essayist, and novelist.

My most recent book, CLAYDATE, illustrated by the incomparable dimensional illustrator Lauren Eldridge, is the long awaited followup to our 2017 book CLAYMATES about two balls of clay who can…and DO…become anything (and everything!). It remains a favorite of librarians and teachers who, to this day, send us pictures of their students’ clay creations. Creating CLAYMATES was an extraordinary experience. It was when I found my voice, my best friend, and where I engaged really authentically with the act of storytelling. It was made from whole cloth. A yarn. A flier. So welcoming its sibling into the world is quite a feeling.

It’s been almost nine years since CLAYMATES, but sometimes it takes a minute to make the book you want to make. I sure hope people respond to CLAYDATE. It’s a story about how playing and telling stories and interacting is more important than things being perfect or who’s better at doing different things. It’s about how we can riff on each other, add, twist, play, trust as we create life-stories together. It’s about a knight made of clay who looks like a potato with a sword shaped like a banana, who has an EPIC battle with a unicorn-dragon with a few twists and turns along the way. It also has…DEEP BREATH…a puppy dog, a bumble bee, a horse, another horse, an aardvark, a speedboat, a fancy rooster, some broccoli, a scepter, a lair, a few things I’m not sure exactly what they are, and a ton of colorful, crazy, creative, collaborative fun.

It came on out Tuesday, April 7, a day where we were all jointly distracted to the brim, collectively holding our breath about very adult-y geopolitical events. I will be honest and tell you it was hard to even post about a book release, to welcome accolades and congratulations, or go through even the most basic of motions one does when they welcome a book to the shelf. I will likewise be honest and tell you

I engaged in a bit of reflection about the relevance of a book about a couple of clay balls creating things and riffing on storytelling and playing together. Given everything…who cares? I gave myself twenty minutes or so to just kind of sit with that, let myself feel a bit glum…and then move on. But in those twenty minutes, I did some thinking. About this story. About stories in general. About storytelling. I came to the conclusion, apart from how self-serving it might be for my sometimes fragile ego, that storytelling is not just something that matters right now, it is everything right now. The end of the first book, CLAYMATES, is one character saying to the other, “What happens now?”

The end of the followup, CLAYDATE, ends with “I can’t wait to find out what happens.”

That’s it! Things happen, folks. There is a next! There is another page, a new chapter, another turn, one more twist. And not to be too deep and on-the-nose about it…just like life. When we tell stories to kids, even messy, difficult, complicated, confusing ones, we show the essence of stories is that there is a next. Things change and move, we are not stuck- even when it feels like we are. So in a very real way, as Burke says, stories are equipment for living. Because life can be bizarre and stranger than fiction. There are twists and turns and things you legit cannot make up.

When our kids were young, my husband and I would tell them “silly stories” before bed. They were anecdotes and silly remembrances of growing up. Water-fights, carnival prizes not won, vomiting on airplanes…you name it. My husband’s family had to dash across an airfield in Morocco because the king was coming! They loved the one about when my dad took our spherical golden retriever on a run much too long and she conked out at the furthest point and he had to carry her six miles. My girls would hang on each word and had a nightly request from our catalog. Sometimes two. Sometimes more.

The Dúchas Project in Ireland ( https://www.duchas.ie/en/info/about ) is a shining example of
committing to the importance of storytelling. It was an nationwide effort to understand the shared folklore and stories of the Irish people. The project resulted in almost 800k manuscript pages and 14k photographs as they surveyed the people of Ireland to describe what stories and folklore they knew. I guarantee you will enjoy a spin around their archives.

We have family stories, fictions, folktales, anecdotes from the cocktail party earlier this evening. All of this leads to our openness to the idea something happened and as such, something happens next. While I can’t say any of my books are “equipment for living” per se. But if they get kids to find stories weird and wonderful and messy and exciting and imperfect and to believe there is page turn after a still day waiting for bad news, sign me up.

I’m SO grateful I get to do this. It is literally the best job in the world. And to the librarians out there who light the fire of storytelling and reading for kids, thank you.

Dev Petty is the author of numerous picture books for children and their people including I DON’T WANT TO BE A FROG, the LIFE LESSONS FROM CHIP THE DOG BOOKS, HOW OLD IS MR.
TORTOISE, among many others. She likes to write books which make you laugh a lot and think a little, and sometimes the reverse.

Dev was a texture painter in film FX, working on The Matrix, Minority Report, Madagascar, and
dozens of other films but now is artistic enough only to be somewhat dangerous. She lives in her hometown, Berkeley, California with her husband, daughters, dogs, cats, and a cornsnake named “Boots.”

You can see more of Dev’s work in the upcoming books: BERRY AND THE MUSHROOMS (Illustrated by Jared Chapman, S&S), THE NIGHT THE BUILDINGS SWITCHED PLACES (Illustrated by Brian Biggs, LBYR), PUPPET & GEORGE and the ALL-NITE DINER (Illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi), and THE BOOK OF VARIOUS CHILDREN (Illustrated by Keiko Hayner, LBYR).

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, Dr. Seuss-related books continue to be released. The books cover all sorts of topics. But I didn’t realize until recently that Tish Rabe is the author behind many of them.

She recently appeared on NBC news, talking about her journey from Sesame Street singer to iambic pentameter legacy-carrier.

I don’t usually cover YA, but I’m making an exception today to share all the 2026 books I could find from past Printz Medal and Honor winners. It’s a pretty eclectic mix of picture books, graphic novels, middle grade, and YA.

Did I miss one? Let me know in the comments.

Previously . . .

2026 Books from Newbery Winners

2026 Books from Caldecott Winners

2026 Books from Geisel Winners

2026 Books from Pura Belpré Winners

2026 Books from Coretta Scott King Winners

2026 Books from Sibert Winners

2026 Books from Stonewall Winners

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is considered the biggest children’s literature award in the world. Imagine ALSCs Legacy Award, except it comes with a cash prize of half a mil. Past winners include Laurie Halse Anderson, Jacqueline Woodson, Maurice Sendak and more.

This year the award went to Jon Klassen. Maybe the best part is that you can listen to “The Call”. It makes me wonder – should we do this for all the Newbery and Caldecott winner calls as well?

So I (finally) did something about it.

For the last few months, I’ve been building The Ultimate Caldecott Database. Sure, it’s a place where you can see all the Medal and Honor winners since 1938, but it’s also a searchable resource that gets IN DEPTH. It also includes:

• Illustrator demographics
• Artistic mediums
• Publisher information
• Page/word counts
• Behind-the-scenes details

And maybe my favorite part: I’ve added archive.org links so you can actually check out and read many of the books online.

I made it so I won’t be pulling my hair out researching my next Caldecott-related blog post here, but it’s also perfect for:

• School/Public librarians
• Library directors (you whole staff would benefit, IMHO)
• Committee members
• Mock Caldecott organizers
• Children’s lit professors, academics, and researchers
• Fans/supporters of the award

It’s a living document, and it’s ready to share. To make it sustainable for me, I’ve made the database accessible to all paid subscribers of my Substack newsletter. Click the link below to head over.