It’s been 4 years (and a week or so) since The Elephants’ Guide to Hide-And-Seek became a book! Happy (belated) Book Birthday to to this cheerful book that’s been a joy to share with so many kids over the last few years. And Happy Spring too!
Spine Poems
A few poems I posted on Twitter lately that I made using the spines of picture books. Enjoy!
Dear diary,
I want to be the night gardener,
outside,
finding wild sidewalk flowers
stuck over and under the snow,
just because.
Wherever you go
Please bring balloons
Just in case you want to fly
Up, down, and around—In the sky
At nighttime
Like a dandelion Under the lemon moon
Imagine if you had a jetpack—
Whoosh!
Higher! Higher!
Faster! Faster!
Yes, let’s run wild reaching for the
moon,
stars,
life on mars—
The most magnificent thing.
Happy World Read Aloud Day! And where to order a signed copy of my book
Happy World Read Aloud Day! Welcome to any students, teachers, or families who are visiting my website after I visit your classrooms! I’m always grateful to chat about writing and to read with kids. If you have follow-up questions, please feel free to email me!
And for any families or teachers who want to order my book, THE ELEPHANTS’ GUIDE TO HIDE-AND-SEEK, I’ve made arrangements with my local bookstore, Village Books, to sign copies for anyone who orders through Feb 12th. You can order at this link—when you check out make a note in the comments about how you would like your book personalized or who you would like it signed to.
Thanks for visiting my website! Make sure you check out my section with fun stuff for kids. Happy reading!
Sign up for World Read-Aloud Day!
My name is Kjersten Hayes and I love talking books with kids. I look forward to sharing my picture book THE ELEPHANTS' GUIDE TO HIDE-AND-SEEK with classrooms during World Read-Aloud Day on Feb. 3, 2021. Hooray for read-alouds! Teachers or librarians interested in signing up for a free 20-minute virtual classroom visit can get more information and sign-up here. Thanks!
A Tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.” —Ruth Bader Ginsburg ⠀
My life is better because of the many rights Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued for, fought for, and helped realize—this is why, a few weeks ago while mourning her passing, I made a piece of cut paper art to honor her. I based it on the beautiful lace collars she wore as a Supreme Court Justice. After I shared it on social media, things took off in a way I didn’t anticipate or expect. A few friends asked if I might be willing to sell prints, and from there it snowballed and Etsy orders poured in from all over the country. As I’m finally catching up, I thought I’d remember to post it on my blog too. Along with some resources and links as food for thought.
And, a friend who wanted to see t-shirts, library totes, and sticker versions of my RBG art made them happen—the order form is here (orders due 10/23/20). A portion of the proceeds will go to Page Ahead, a literacy organization in Seattle that gets books in the hands of kids in lower-income areas.
Links:
To buy my art: prints, cards, and paper cutouts can be found in my Etsy shop, and also a one-time order a friend arranged for t-shirts and library totes here through 10/23/20 [edited to add that we are doing a second t-shirt/tote order, orders accepted through 11/12/20].
If you are unaware of the rights RBG helped realize, this article from Refinery29 is an easy-to-read article that highlights her contributions. We take these rights for granted now but they are important.
The NYT obit for RBG covers her accomplishments more throughly but still doesn’t take long to read.
A reading list from A Mighty Girl, mostly for kids.
A fantastic Radiolab episode dedicated to one of RBG’s cases.
The RBG movie, which I highly recommend.
And, I want to keep it real by highlighting a critique that a thoughtful friend brought up about a lack of diversity in RBG’s hiring and mentoring. It’s essential that as we celebrate RBG, we also acknowledge that we have a long way to go. RBG has become a mighty icon for good reason but she was not perfect. I’m grateful for invitations to do better, while still honoring her legacy. I hope others will also be open to that same invitation.
One more thing about reading:
As an author, when I write stories, I know that once I hand them off, half the job is then up to the reader. Kids get a similar story from the same book, but the experience differs somewhat depending on readers’ experiences and what they bring to the story themselves. Reading is a sacred exchange in that way. This is also how words evolve and grow over time. This is how the Constitution lives on. Because of us. And what we bring to it. This is how language works. RBG showed the sacred way words can stay alive. She showed the Constitution’s vitality. Let’s make sure we work, fight, and vote, to keep it alive.
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter.
For anyone looking for resources, my Soaring 20s Picture Book Debut Group put together a thoughtful list at the end of our Statement of Solidarity (which I fully support).
Because I’m passionate about children’s books and read a lot, I especially want to highlight the booklists and places to find booklists (these are the same as provided in the Soaring 20s resource link above). Several of these were new to me and I’m excited to have found them.
Booklists and places to find booklists:
“Because Several Folks Keep Asking for a Reading List for Children (0-12)” by Sujei Lugo Vázquez and Alia Jones
Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham (picture book)
Black Children’s Books and Authors (BCBA), books by categories
Books to explaining racism and protest to your kids from The New York Times
*Editing to add an especially good handful of book stack pics from Here We Read—I think these are all own voices. Make sure you click through to see all the book stack pics.
Because I also want to speak for myself here’s a post I put up for friends and family on IG and Facebook, kind of a 101 for checking your book stack for Black and Diverse voices if you’ve never done so. I’d call myself a passionate reader of books but these thoughts are really not as finely written as others have written them elsewhere. I only post them here on the off-chance that someone I know is digging around on my blog and might not be compelled to click through to better resources. Sometimes it does help to hear from someone you know. In that way, I hope these thoughts below are useful but please if you are considering linking to this, I’d ask that you raise other voices instead or link to the Soaring 20s Statement of Solidarity as my group put a lot of thought into compiling those further resources. Thanks!
Black Lives Matter. ⠀⠀
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And it matters to have Black lives in books. Trying to think of a way I might be useful online (and not just despair or rant), I thought I’d throw out 1. some picture book titles for friends and family and teacher friends who ask me for book suggestions because I read a lot. And 2. A few other thoughts that aren’t exactly original but might be helpful on a 101 level if you aren’t already reading from book experts more knowledgeable than me. ⠀⠀
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Check your kids’ bookshelves for diversity. Do you need to add some? Here are a few book stacks of books I personally love with main characters who are Black (a couple have animals as MCs but the kid characters who love them in those books are Black). Not all of these are own voices—if you can, especially seek out own voices titles—support authors of Color. ⠀⠀
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I acknowledge that it is very basic to offer books with main characters who are Black. And also, basic is a decent place to start if you look at your shelves and realize you’d like to expand.⠀⠀
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Sharing history through books is incredibly important but so is sharing Black joy and present-day Black kids solving problems in the here-and-now. I also like to look for high-interest books—like one of my sons was really into inventors for a long time, so I sought diverse books about inventors for him. ⠀⠀
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Buy diverse books for babies. A board book with diverse characters is a great gift to a new parent—it’s a small thing that can help plant a seed for building more inclusive reading habits. ⠀⠀
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If you can afford to do so, actually buy some books with Black characters in them. The library is great but showing up with money—if you can—helps support a book market with greater diversity. ⠀⠀
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Hey and know that this is just back of the envelope thoughts from me sharing for my loved ones (not really meant for my author or librarian friends who likely have read similar things more expertly written). I’m constantly learning and listening and growing. If I’ve inadvertently fumbled or missed a big hole in these suggestions or in how I’ve presented them, I welcome feedback that I can sit with and from which I can try to learn.
I’ll add that I am listening, learning, and unlearning myself all the time—I don’t always get everything right. But I’m grateful to always do my best to do better.
Grateful for the life of Mary Oliver
The first time I read a Mary Oliver Poem, I was visiting my mom at her college, while I was also in college. Even if I missed our house, the one mom had sold and left for her new career adventure in middle age, we’d moved so many times when I was young, I’d done this before, I could do it again. Home probably could be wherever there were people I loved. But. It was my last semester at school and it had been a difficult few months—I was struggling to let go of a very unhealthy relationship, perfectionism and anxiety raged. I didn’t know how to give myself permission to do the things I knew were calling my name. I didn’t know where I belonged. Still, visiting mom felt like soup on a sick day. I could breathe again. I felt a little more well. And there in the “kitchen” of my mom’s cramped student-housing apartment, I think under a magnet on the waist-high mini-fridge, was a poem. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.
As far as I was aware it was the first time in my then 23 years that I’d read anything by Mary Oliver. When mom wasn’t looking, I copied the poem to take with me. I love my mom to pieces but it’s hard to talk about hard things. I didn’t want to talk about how that poem made me feel—the same feeling of exhale I felt by visiting mom, actually. It was permission to not be perfect or have the answers and still love life anyway, all in a poem, and in a visit to my beloved mother.
My life is better because of the words Mary Oliver shared with the world and now has left behind—not just that one poem, but so many I’ve fallen in love with since.
Thanks for your words and life Mary. I’m so grateful you were here among us sharing them for so long.
Storystorm!
Sometimes I go to the bookstore having already spent my book budget for the month. I do this because I cannot resist bookstores. Whenever this happens I find myself wondering, why oh why am I doing this to myself? I know I'm going to buy a book—probably more than one. And perhaps even one of those books will NOT even be a picture book. And then not only am I being bad with my budget I'm also going to want to read that long non-picture-book book RIGHT NOW! Only inevitably I will already have a stack as big as my leg (or possibly larger) of non-picture-book books I want to read RIGHT NOW. Also, didn't I just do this, like last week? Yes, I have a problem. I can't help it. I LOVE BOOKS!
So what, you may be asking, does this have to do with the title of this post—Storystorm? Storystorm is this thing in picture book land where picture book writers gather (virtually) over on Tara Lazar's blog and support one another as we each come up with a picture book idea for every day during an entire month. I have no idea how many years I've participated in Storystorm (used to be called PIBOIDMO). I will not go back and look because that will make me feel like I am getting old too fast. Let's just say it's many. And the practice has not only helped me come up with many fun ideas during the month it takes place, it also has taught me to cultivate ideas all year long. And it has to do with my enormously large pile of to-read books because just like books, I have WAY TOO MANY IDEAS!
But joking aside, I actually like having too many books and too many ideas. The abundance of these things matters. I've heard it said that you only need one good idea. Sure. And I suppose I'm supposed to feel satisfied with one book too?
I make my best work when I throw my perfectionism out the window and aim for quantity over quality. Yes, I want quality—but I find that it comes only from vigorous practice. And that vigorous practice only comes from a spirit of quantity. Quantity helps me achieve quality.
This is true especially with ideas. The more ideas I come up with, the more I find the ideas to be interesting. It never fails.
So here's my annual cheers to another month of brainstorming ideas with Storystorm! And while I'm at it I'll raise my glass to brainstorming of all kinds—where quantity cultivates quality. And also I'll raise my glass to the giant mountains of books that are waiting to be read, in my house, in my library, and in my local bookstore. Is there anything better?
Cheers to abundant possibility!
...And a Happy New Year! (or how I'll make picture book Pinterest boards this coming year)
I don't know about you, but one of my favorite parts of this time of year is snuggling in on a cold day (here in the Northwest that usually means a rainy day) with a good book.
Recently, while I was reading my usual gigantic stack of picture books that I had checked out from the library, I was feeling grateful for librarians, writers, and reviewers who take the time to make the recommended-reading lists I often seek out when I'm figuring which picture books to check out.
I love all the best-of-year book lists that take place this time of year, and I always love the mock Caldecott lists, and of course I love various book review lists. But I also love when bloggers and reviewers make to-read lists that are more specific and quirky. Like the to-read lists I look for more as a parent: favorite train books, books about the ocean, books for kids who love purple. These are examples of just a few of the searches I've done myself. Because often when I'm looking for the perfect book for a particular kid of picture book age, I'm also thinking about what they like and what draws them in from a pure hook standpoint. And sometimes best-of to-read lists don't quite hit that mark.
It's a small drop in the sea but I decided that perhaps I might like to cultivate some of my own picture book to-read lists for others who are seeking suggestions too. The more specific kinds of to-read lists like I enjoy finding.
So in the coming year, roughly every month, as part of my reading practice anyway, I'm going to curate a fresh picture book to-read list (of books I've already read) with some kind of quirky focus I think might be helpful for anyone out there who is seeking such a thing. I've decided to do so on Pinterest boards because I like the way I can add to the boards whenever I find a new title and I like the idea of the boards being easy to change if I think of something new. Because how many times has a friend asked me for a suggestion for a book for their kid and even while I gave them a decent to-read list, later I thought of other books that would have been perfect additions.
I don't promise these to-read lists will be perfect or complete, just some favorites for whoever out there looks for these kinds of lists like I do. And as a start I've recently made two new boards with favorites of two kinds of picture books I can't ever seem to get enough of:
and
Picture book sing-longs (or picture books with songs). Enjoy!
Happy reading and happy holidays everyone!