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I recently asked a second-grade boy what he likes to read. He replied, 'Chapter books.' I asked him, 'Do you like humor, adventure, or maybe superheroes?' 'Just chapter books,' he [...]

The immense wildfires that have blazed their way through parts of California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington in 2020 and 2021 are believed to be fueled by climate change. According [...]

This year, Banned Books Week is September 26-October 6, and Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, is the inaugural honorary chair. 'Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us' [...]

Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the House of Representatives, was the founder of the group that became the Congressional Black Caucus; in 1972, she launched an ultimately [...]

In Herat, Afghanistan, a grandmother tells the story of the violence in the city's war-torn streets and how the Taliban has stripped the people of art, music, and learning. She [...]

Caldecott Medalist Pinkney discusses the artistic process behind A Place to Land, his recent collaboration with Barry Wittenstein that's centered around the days leading up to Martin Luther King Jr.'s [...]

Finding Langston (2018), a Coretta Scott King (Author) Honor Book and winner of the 2019 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, takes place in 1946 just after 11-year-old Langston's mother [...]

Lauren Wolk, author of the 2017 Newbery Honor Book Wolf Hollow, discusses Beyond the Bright Sea, her new novel about feeling isolated, searching for family, and experiencing the power of [...]

Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in Washington, D.C., on July 11, 1955. Five weeks later, they were arrested at their home in [...]

Betty before X is historical fiction but is based on the young life of Dr. Betty Shabazz, an American civil rights icon and wife of Malcolm X. The novel relates [...]

'Voice in contemporary fiction requires a finely tuned ear. But no matter how finely tuned your ear may be, you simply don't have the experience of living in a time [...]

In the Nocturnals, a series for middle-grade readers, Tracey Hecht weaves facts about nocturnal animals into engaging fictional plots filled with humor, adventure, and mystery. The three main characters are [...]

Southern California and the Pacific Northwest may not seem far apart to some, but they might as well be separate countries for two of Elana K. Arnold's protagonists: Iris Abernathy [...]

In celebration of 25 years of Book Links, we are taking another look at articles from earlier issues. Pat Scales' examination of father-son relationships in Walter Dean Myers' Newberry Honor [...]

For many families, handling mental illness is a stark reality. These titles look at both parents and children struggling with such disorders. Lisa, Bright and Dark, by John Neufeld, was […]

In Angela Cerrito's The Safest Lie, Anna Bauman is only seven years old when she and her parents are forced to move into a tiny apartment in the Jewish ghetto [...]

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The U.S. suffered thousands of casualties on board the USS Arizona, but Japanese Americans living […]

Set in 1968, Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer (2010) takes three sisters from Brooklyn, where they live with their father and grandmother, to Oakland, California, to meet Cecile, the mother […]

September includes Banned Books Week, and Alan Gratz's new novel, Ban This Book (2017), is ideal for helping young readers understand how censorship affects their lives. Nine-year-old Amy Anne Ollinger [...]

The friendship between Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee was first revealed through the characters of Dill and Scout in Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In many [...]

Children have a natural interest in using blocks, Erector sets, Lincoln Logs, and LEGOs to build things. Sometimes they call upon their own creativity, and other times they follow detailed [...]

Young readers study the civil rights movement in school. Most may know something about the March on Washington, Bloody Sunday, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the bombing of the Sixteenth […]

Steve Sheinkin's Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the Worlds Most Dangerous Weapon (2012) is an amazing account of the Manhattan Project. Its accolades are numerous: it was named a 2013 [...]

I just reread the Alice series in order, and it was a 'Back to the Future' experience. It is evident why this series has been so popular with girls for [...]

As a child, the books that I read that were set in the South were Strawberry Girl, Blue Ridge Billy, and Cotton in My Sack, by Lois Lenski. After that [...]

Susan Cooper's Ghost Hawk begins when 11-year-old Little Hawk, a member of the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Nation, sets out alone for three months with only his tomahawk to […]

I like to teach short stories for so many reasons. They are brief enough to complete a reading assignment in class or in a single night. They appeal to all [...]

This fall marks the thirtieth anniversary of Banned Books Week. In 2011, for the first time in a number of years, And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin [...]

Trent Reedy had never been out of the U.S. when his Iowa Army National Guard unit was called to duty in Afghanistan. At the time, he was terrified because his [...]

When From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, published by Atheneum in 1967, received the 1968 Newbery Medal, author E. L. Konigsburg, a chemist and mother of three, [...]

The article presents various banned books which includes, Nasreen's Secret School by Jeanette Winter, The Girl Who Buried Her Dreams in a Can by Tereai Trent and The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis.

I've been writing the Weighing In column since 2008, when Laura Tillotson, then editor at Book Links, wanted a back-page editorial that would entice readers to read the magazine from [...]

As I reread The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage (2015), written by Selina Alko, illustrated by Sean Qualls and Selina Alko, a particular line in the book [...]

My family has a scrapbook that chronicles my mother's life. In many ways, she was larger than life: she was a college graduate, but during WWII, she went to work [...]

Right here in River City. I was in high school when my parents took me to Birmingham, Alabama, to see the traveling performance of Meredith Wilson's The Music Man. Most [...]

My love affair with books and libraries began in the third grade, when I was allowed to go to the library after I finished my classwork. The 'library' was a [...]

In my city, there is a bronze statue on Main Street of a beloved former mayor, Max Heller, who was a Holocaust survivor. In 1998, he and his wife taped [...]

This year, Book Links celebrates 25 years, and I'm thrilled to have been a part of it since the very beginning. Book Links was Barbara Elleman's brainchild, and I still [...]

In early September of my seventh-grade year, Mrs. Till, my literature teacher, issued a textbook that was simply an anthology of abridged works, including The Thread That Runs So True, [...]

There were a number of kids on my street when I was growing up, and we spent a lot of time together. We played pickup games of softball, raced go-carts […]

As Banned Books Week approaches (September 24-October 1), I am reminded of a conversation I had at a past American Association of School Librarians conference in Birmingham, Alabama. A school [...]

Very large pine trees surrounded the playground at my elementary school. We had recess, instead of physical education, at which time the boys would scatter to a nearby open field […]

I have a distinct childhood memory of a treasure chest in the lobby of a doctor's office. The small items inside were similar to those found in a Cracker Jack [...]

When I was 7 years old, I visited an orphanage in Ohio, where my aunt was a social worker. I have a vivid image of the cottages where the kids [...]

I was a dancing-school dropout. I don't remember one routine, but I can demonstrate the five positions of ballet. There are pictures of me in a long line of five-year-olds [...]

If I were asked to name a favorite year in school, I think I would say fourth grade. That was the year of field trips. I had gone on school [...]

I was an adult before I got an official passport, but I was a child when I first visited another country. The trip didn't require boarding a plane or a [...]

The article describes activity programs for students of Grade 6-12 to implement Common Core State Standards and encourage students towards inquiry and close reading of books and reviews the book "Somewhere in the Darkness" written by Walter Dean Myers.

When my goddaughter was 9 years old, she wanted a diary for her birthday. I purchased it, put it in the mail, and called her on her big day. 'How [...]

I learned to recognize colors long before I started to school. And because I had seen a colorful variety of birds roosting in the trees of our front lawn, I [...]