The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2015

Every year since 1952, the Book Review has convened an independent panel of judges to select the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books. Judged purely on artistic merit, it’s the only annual award of its kind.

This year’s judges were Frank Viva, Monica Edinger and Marjorie Ingall. Viva has written and illustrated several acclaimed books for children, including “Along a Long Road” — a previous Times Best Illustrated winner — “Outstanding in the Rain” and “Young Frank, Architect.” He is a frequent cover artist for The New Yorker and the managing director of the design firm Viva & Co. Edinger has been an elementary- and middle-school educator for more than 25 years and currently teaches fourth grade at the Dalton School in New York City. She is also the author of the picture book “Africa Is My Home” and blogs about children’s books at Educating Alice. Ingall is a columnist for Tablet and a frequent contributor of children’s book reviews to The Times and other publications. Her book “Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children” will be published next year.


Here's the list from The New York Times.

Rare print find at Brown University's John Hay Library

Day after day, a tall, shy woman weaves her way unnoticed through the earnest and learned campus swirl of Brown University. She enters the hush of a library, then promptly vanishes from sight.

Down goes Marie Malchodi, 48, who attended but never graduated from Brown, down to the library’s subterranean warrens, where she works as a “book conservation technician.”...

A few weeks ago, Ms. Malchodi opened yet another leather-bound book, one of more than 300,000 rare volumes in the hold of the John Hay Library. With surgical precision, she turned the pages of a medical text once owned by Solomon Drowne, Class of ’73 (1773, that is). And there, in the back, she found a piece of paper depicting the baptism of Jesus. It was signed:

More HERE.

The Book of the Future

New York Times comic strip in the Sunday Book Review by Grant Snider

"Checking Out" by librarian and archivist Shannon O'Neill

From the Sunday, October 16, 2011 NYT, page 9 Sunday Review:

Op-Art Checking Out

"Shannon O'Neill is an archivist and reference librarian at the Atlantic City Free Public Library. "

"AS a librarian and archivist, I am often asked if I believe that, one day, libraries will disappear. While the present situation for many libraries is difficult budget cuts, closings and furloughs I think that libraries will persist.

Libraries are always in a state of transformation: as the means of information production and consumption change, so do libraries. We exist to help you navigate complex systems of information, whether its the bureaucracy of the welfare system or a pile of dusty boxes filled with archival documents. This is an increasingly necessary service in a society that is ever more reliant upon data.

What has changed, and will continue to change, is the library's appearance. The way the library looks today is drastically different from the way it did 50 years ago. Many of the visual cues of library-ness are vanishing. When we moved to automated and integrated library systems, we no longer had a need for iconic items like card catalogs or stamps for due dates.

One of my duties as an archivist is to document history. Given this, I cannot help but preserve the library artifacts that I find."

Library Volunteers: NYT Ethicist Column by Randy Cohen

From a library listserv:

Interesting question and answer in the New York Times Magazine, Sunday, August 29, page 17, The Ethicist by Randy Cohen that concerns library volunteers. From the article:
The Ethicist
Library Volunteers
By RANDY COHEN
Published: August 27, 2010

Community members have responded to our towns tight budget by volunteering at the library, so much so that the library laid off several long-term full-time employees, people who are our friends and neighbors. Having fewer municipal employees means a slight reduction in property taxes for everyone, but it harms those left jobless. Should town residents consider that before volunteering? NAME WITHHELD, NEW JERSEY"

He gives an analysis (remember, he is a humorist) and ends his answer
with:
"There is a sad limitation to this analysis: a laid-off library employee is not apt to be hired to teach 11th-grade calculus. He or she will suffer; someone else will be hired. There are winners and losers here. And it would be unfortunate if this upsurge of civic virtue resulted in only a tiny reduction in some peoples property taxes, an outcome that thwarts the noble motives of those volunteers: to promote civic betterment by reallocating limited resources."

Read the full column with his analysis and answer.

I Love My Librarian Award

Nominate your librarian for the third year of the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award!

Nominations for 2010 stay open through September 20.

Nominate a librarian in a:

School Library

Public Library

College, Community College, University Library

What, no special libraries?

The Times to Charge for Frequent Access to Its Web Site

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for access.

But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand.


Read More HERE.

Monitor New Words/Phrases via Schott’s Vocab

From Ben Schott’s Web Site (New York Times):

Schott’s Vocab is a repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles - some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly newsworthy.

Each day, Schott’s Vocab explores news sites around the world to find words and phrases that encapsulate the times in which we live or shed light on a story of note.

If language is the archives of history, as Emerson believed, then Schott’s Vocab is an attempt to index those archives on the fly.

Yet another article on libraries during these times

One from the NY Times makes for more interesting reading.

Quote from a women who took out a library card for herself for the first time in years (and also her first time in the library for years) and once she taken out her items "instinctively reached for her wallet to pay". "I guess it will take an adjustment period until I realize that some of the best things in life are indeed free," she said.

URL is

Antioch Library keeps going

An interesting article in the NY Times this week regarding the library at Antioch College. The College has been closed since last year but the library (with a smaller staff) has been kept going.

Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp

From the New York Times: "Now a new breed of technologies is taking shape that will extend the reach of search engines into the Web’s hidden corners. When that happens, it will do more than just improve the quality of search results — it may ultimately reshape the way many companies do business online."

Reading Radar

An automated reading list of bestsellers created by combining the New York Times Bestsellers API and the Amazon.com API.

I Love My Librarian Award Announced

From the announcement:

Carnegie Corporation of New York has awarded the American Library Association $489,000 to support a new Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award.

Administered by the ALA’s Public Information Office and Campaign for America’s Libraries, the award will launch this year and will continue annually through 2013. The award encourages library users to recognize the accomplishments of librarians for their efforts to improve the lives of people in their community.

Mad magazine's fold-ins

In honor of Free Comic Book Day tomorrow: Al Jaffee's fold-ins for Mad magazine, from the 1960s to the present, in interactive form from the New York Times. Great social commentary with an artistic flair.

Times to End Charges on Web Site

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

A new type of librarian is emerging: think Dewey Decimal meets Generation X from the New York Times, July 8, 2007.