エピソード

  • Amy Moore, "The Baker's Dozen" (Sleeping Bear Press, 2025)
    2025/08/09
    In our charming interview, Amy Moore celebrates two new picture books, The Bakers Dozen (illustrated by Andrea Stegmaier) published by Sleeping Bear Press in May. 2025, and Humpty's Great Fall (illustrated by Josh Cleland) published this month by Two Lions. Amy Moore has been writing since childhood. After earning a degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, she went on to proofreading and web development jobs while taking Master’s courses in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. In addition to her writing work, Amy runs a children’s dance program in her hometown. She lives with her family in Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 分
  • Gabriel Ertsgaard, "A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Peace: Crafting Nonviolent Heroism" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
    2025/07/21
    Superhero violence and graphic action sequences are prevalent on the screen and on the page, but this book takes an alternative route with practical guidance, frameworks, and tools for incorporating the principles of peacebuilding and nonviolence into compelling fiction. By mapping a path less travelled but just as vital in divisive times, in n A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Peace: Crafting Nonviolent Heroism (Bloomsbury, 2025) Dr. Gabriel Ertsgaard shows writers how they can enact nonviolent heroism in their characters, model civil resistance in their stories, and create worlds around a mythos that champions redemptive nonviolence. With concepts applicable to writing for fiction, drama, the screen, and narrative poetry, A Fiction Writer's Guide to Peace deconstructs the necessity for violence in popular works, explores key concepts in peace studies, and helps writers establish their own peace poetics. Focused around the narrative craft techniques of character arcs, campaigns, duels, and worldbuilding, the book features numerous creative writing prompts and examples from key works. These include films such as Trading Places, Selma, Lage Raho Munna Bai, and Frozen and literature ranging from Shakespeare's plays to Dickens' A Christmas Carol to Julia Quinn's Bridgerton novels. A timely and important expansion to any writer's toolkit, A Fiction Writer's Guide to Peace allows storytellers to understand the complex dynamics of, and the damage caused by, violent perspectives and actions, giving them a way into considering nonviolence as powerful and preferable. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 分
  • An Interview with Gaby Cabezut
    2025/07/09
    Gaby Cabezut, author and literary agent of the Seymour agency and the Alliance Rights Agency talks about her author journey and internet publishing, how she became a literary agent, her love for children's books, the importance of the Latin American children's book market, and her advice on querying and writing picture book manuscripts. Plus a submission opportunity for pb manuscripts, but be sure to mention NBN and submit here. Query Manager: https://QueryTracker.net/query/339 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 分
  • An Interview with Colby Sharp
    2025/07/01
    Colby Sharp is widely considered one of the leading mavens on children's literature. He is co-author of several books, including Game Changer! Book Access for All Kids (Scholastic, 2018). He started the Nerdy Book Club blog, co-hosts The Yarn podcast with Teacher Librarian Travis Jonker, serves on the Nerd Camp Michigan team and has taught schoolchildren since 2006. Here, we follow his literary life and professional journey to becoming a kidlit guru. Colby shares what he loves in picture books, and offers advice for aspiring authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    44 分
  • Ryan G. Van Cleave, "The Witness Trees: Historic Moments and the Trees Who Watched Them Happen" (Bushel & Peck, 2023)
    2025/06/25
    Dr. Ryan van Cleave is the author of over 100 books for children and adults, editorial director of Bushel & Peck Publishers, college professor and head program (Ringling), writing coach, ghostwriter, poet and more. In our wonderful conversation we celebrate his picture book The Witness Trees: Historic Moments and the Trees Who Watched Them Happen (Bushel & Peck, 2023), and discuss the original initiative "Acquired", a hands-on conference for aspiring authors. Ryan shares the goals of the conference and his tips for authors who want to create books that stand a chance of publication by traditional houses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    46 分
  • Yasmine Motawy, "Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society" (AUC Press, 2025)
    2025/06/22
    Children’s picture books are some of the most transparently ideological materials available to parents and educators, and as cultural objects they are an expression of the zeitgeist of a particular era. They reveal much about the hopes, values, and aspirations of the society that produces them, as well as that society’s vision of its place in the wider world at large.Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society (AUC Press, 2025) by Dr. Yasmine Motawy examines a new wave of Egyptian picture books that was published in the current century to see how these books responded to larger societal trends and transformations in Egypt, as well as to explore the ideologies that lie behind them. Dr. Motawy argues that a host of factors, including the growth of gated communities and international schooling, the proliferation of lucrative literary awards, returning Gulf migrants, television dramas, and nationwide reading advocacy initiatives helped give rise to a new kind of children’s picture book in Egypt.Dr. Motawy focuses on three clusters of selected picture books to investigate the extent to which these books reproduce hegemonic discourses or, alternatively, open up new horizons of childhood agency and societal transformation. The first cluster includes books that directly socialize the child by showing them ‘how things are done,’ in both the domestic sphere and the increasing globalized spaces that children frequent with their families. The second cluster aims at reframing cultural notions around femininity through the retelling of folk and fairy tales, while the third cluster addresses children's abilities to assess the impact of their actions on their environment, and invites them to examine their personal suitability to positions of power and stewardship. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 分
  • Yevgenia Nayberg, "A Party for Florine: Florine Stettheimer and Me" (Neal Porter Books, 2024)
    2025/06/21
    A young girl forms a special connection to the modernist painter Florine Stettheimer, and imagines herself joining in on Florine’s exciting life.When a young girl visits the museum, she finds an unexpected friend in a self-portrait of Florine Stettheimer. They’re both artists; they both have Jewish families; they even look alike!Florine’s life was wild and glamorous. She painted people in flight and buildings that grew from the ground like crooked trees, bright colors and shapes and animals. She threw parties frequented by other famous visionaries like Marcel Duchamp and Carl Van Vechten.Soon, our narrator is dreaming up her own fantastical parties for Florine, with table spreads of colorful treats, and painting and dancing and poetry. With Florine in her life, even a rainy day can’t make the world seem humdrum anymore.A Party for Florine: Florine Stettheimer and Me (Neal Porter Books, 2024) is an unapologetically whimsical fan letter to an artist whose influence is clear in Sydney Taylor Honoree Yevgenia Nayberg’s captivating illustrations. Dreamers, creators, and budding modernists will be drawn into the young protagonist’s party just as strongly as she is drawn into Stettheimer’s paintings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 分
  • Melissa H. Mwai, "I Can Make a Friend!" (Paw Prints, 2025)
    2025/06/20
    Melissa H. Mwai is an author and illustrator, as well as an award-winning poet. She has penned five nonfiction children's books including THE HISTORY OF JAZZ (DK, 2024). As an neurodiverse Afro-Latina, Melissa is thrilled that her books help ethnically and neurodiverse kids learn more deeply about the world around them. In our delightful interview, we celebrate her recent book, I Can Make a Friend! (I Can Do It, 2) (PAW Prints, April, 2025). Melissa talks about her journey to becoming a published author, and her advice for those wishing to pursue a career writing for the educational children's book market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    45 分