Velveteen-Rabbited Book
When a kid loves a book to death!
Dayspring Popup Books
A friend went to her daughter’s house for the holidays. One night, she curled up with her granddaughter to read bedtime books. The granddaughter, Sally, chose my book, THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE. The book has been read so many times, my friend said, that it was Velveteen-Rabitted. Many of the pop-up mechanism no longer worked. But Sally turned the pages and sang the song.
Wow! It makes my heart happy to know a kid has rubbed the velvet off this book.
Dayspring Books, out of Siloam Springs, has sold its book operation to Harpercollins with official announcements today. You can still get this book, and the companion JESUS LOVES ME popup from your preferred retailer. There may be some slight disruption in the delivery, but Harpercollins is confident it will be smoothed out within a month. See also, HE’S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS.
The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman - Available Again
In other exciting news, Harcourt/Harpercollins has put THE JOURNEY OF OLIVER K. WOODMAN out of print after 23 years, which means I will be republishing it via Mims House Books. As a reminder, it was in the Houghton Mifflin Journeys reading textbook, so there are tons of lesson plans on TPT. We’ll be emphasizing its usefulness in teaching U.S. geography and Friendly Letter Writing!
As a reminder, this book received two starred reviews from Kirkus and BCCB.
BCCB Blue Ribbon Picture Book Awards
Starred BCCB review
Starred Kirkus Review
Autumn 2003 Children’s Booksense 76.
Child and Nick Jr. Family Magazine Best Books of the Year 2003.
Irma S. and James H. Black Picture Book Award Honor Book.
Nutmeg Media Children’s Picture Books on Video, June 2005.
2006 ALA Notable Video.
2008 Houghton Mifflin Journeys reading series.
Language Arts Books
One reason I’m SO excited about this is that we are expanding our language arts books in other new ways. We are best known for our STEM/Science titles, but our Read and Write series which teaches kids how to write essays, continues to be popular. We’re going to build on that—and the addition of THE JOURNEY OF OLIVER K. WOODMAN—to round out our English language arts titles.
This is a sneak peek at the first two books in the new Silly Grammar Stories Series, which are currently being illustrated.
Here’s the thing: FROWNS: Nouns, a Few Adjectives is told only using nouns (and a few adjectives. Wow, this is a hard thing to attempt. But we think it works, giving a humorous, fun way to learn about nouns and adjectives. And if you set up a pattern, you have to follow it. VOTE: Verbing Wildly is told only in verbs and adverbs.
We’re still working on the timing—waiting on those illustrations!—but FROWNS should be out in July or August. It should be available for the 2026-2027 school year. VOTE may be a 2027 book—stay tuned for more developments.
These will round out our language arts books—see our current ELA books here.
I love John Joven’s art for this series. He also did the art for A Little Bit of Dinosaur series, and I’m happy to be working with him again.