Children Archive

The Book with No Pictures - A book for 5-to-8-year-old children. A book for 5-to-8-year-old children with no pictures. A book for 5-to-8-year-old children with no pictures by a writer who’s never written anything for children. And

A Child’s Holiday in America - These selections have the power to re-connect you to your childhood. Not the childhood you had, with its predictable dose of uncertainty and awkwardness, but the childhood you had in

A Really Short History of Nearly Everything - Until she was in fifth grade, our daughter drifted into sleep as her mother delivered a lecture that came to be known as “Bore Me to Sleep.” Our child was probably

A Wrinkle in Time - GUEST BUTLER MICHELLE WATKINS has been a Head Butler reader for so long she has two seats on the aisle for any movie or play I get produced. She and

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince - When Robin Williams died, my Facebook screen lit up with one quote after another from “The Little Prince.” I didn’t understand why so many people responded with lines from this book. And

Beatrice’s Goat - Beatrice Biira's story was turned into a children's book, and she was featured on “60 Minutes”, but I knew nothing about her until I read a New York Times column

Beatrix Potter: The Tales of Peter Rabbit - More than a century after Beatrix Potter first began writing and illustrating stories featuring four rabbits, almost 200 million of her books have made their way into homes where small

Big Fat Little Lit -

Buzz - Press the photo of a mosquito on the cover, and there's that annoying whine. Press the bee, hear a buzz. The cricket chirps. Yes, I'd say

Charlotte’s Web - You all read “Charlotte’s Web” when you were 8. I didn’t. And because no one read it to me, my childhood ended without any knowledge of what seems to be

Curious George - There was no school on Martin Luther King's birthday, so I asked our daughter --- age “four-and-a-half-and-three-quarters” --- to pick out some books that I could

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! - So there's this bus driver. With a small problem. "Hi!," he says. "I'm the bus driver. Listen, I've got to leave for a little while, so can you watch things for

Eloise - Actually, the title is “Kay Thompson’s Eloise” --- like a movie directed by a screen giant. Kay Thompson got her name above the title, as it

Fancy Nancy - Eloise doesn't translate to the new millennium. The Plaza's gone to hotel heaven; might we interest you in a condo? Anyway, a spoiled child terrorizing well-meaning

Five New Picture Books for Children, Spring 2017 - GUEST BUTLER BARBARA BOTTNER has written more than 40 books for children and teenagers. (For her Amazon Author Page, click here.] She’s won national awards and appeared on the

Flotsam - When the child was “four-and-a-half-and-three-quarters-but-in-my-head-I'm-seven,” boy, was she ready to read. Signs, newspaper headlines, the crawl on Fox News --- kidding about Fox News --- captivated

Gift Guide: A Child’s Holiday in America - Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the

I Want My Hat Back - There’s a big fight raging over a very small --- 120 words, 40 pages --- book for kids. Some people say --- along with the New York Times, which named “I

Learning Like a Girl -   Learning Like a Girl:

Love You Forever - “A daughter is her father’s heart, walking away on feet.” Gospel truth. I live it every day. The Child you met in these pages a long, long time ago became The