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Caldecott Medal Contender: Maybe Something Beautiful
by Sam Juliano She’s an urban Miss Rumphuis, a Lupine Lady who forges her craft with a brush instead of seeds. Yet few can argue Mira’s local beautification program is less effective. In fact, Maybe...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Happiest Book Ever
by Sam Juliano Bob Shea’s latest effervescent confection is titled The Happiest Book Ever and in every manner of its construction it promotes good will and camaraderie. But then Shea himself has done...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Radiant Child
by Sam Juliano Javaka Steptoe’s biographical picture book about the life of the seminal Greenwich Village artist Jean-Michel Basquiat has gone the extra mile. Maybe the extra two miles. Make that...
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J.D. Lafrance on William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A.
By J.D. Lafrance By 1985, William Friedkin had effectively burned all of his bridges in Hollywood with a succession of underperformers that included Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), and Deal of the...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Freedom in Congo Square
by Sam Juliano Picture this. Every Sunday afternoon in a maximum security prison inmates are allowed four hours to mill around in the compound’s yard. Their relatives and friends are allowed to...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Bring Me A Rock!
by Sam Juliano You know the kind. They parade around like the world revolves around them. They issue orders, exhibit zero patience, poor manners and an air of superiority. When they get what they...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Storyteller
by Sam Juliano Rick Blaine: I came to Casablanca for the waters. Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert. Rick Blaine: I was misinformed. Captain Renault’s comeback has...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Ideas Are All Around
by Sam Juliano Writer’s block. There is nothing more deadly to the seasoned purveyor of prose or poetry than that which thwarts or derails the flow of ideas. For some who profess to the chronic...
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Elle, Force One, The Silence and 20th Century Women on Monday Morning Diary...
Screen cap from excellent “20th Century Women” by Sam Juliano My apologies for dropping the ball on the last Monday Morning Diary that published at the site two weeks ago. I did not address the...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Music in George’s Head
by Sam Juliano Bernstein. Barber. Copland. Glass. Ives. Schonberg. Stravinsky. Floyd. Though there can never be a definitive ranking among the most noteworthy of American classical composers,...
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J.D. Lafrance on The Last Detail
by J.D. Lafrance Hal Ashby directed some of the best films to come out of the 1970s, exploding out of the gates with four motion pictures over five years. They were all quirky comedy-drama hybrids...
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DAMIEN CHAZELLE’S ‘LA LA LAND’“You think Mom and Dad would call this home?”
© 2017 by James Clark La La Land (2016) approaches us as a peculiarly naive boy-meets-girl story, with an archaic musical façade. It lulls the viewer into an effervescent Debbie Reynolds’...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Library Day
by Sam Juliano One page turn from the conclusion of Anne Rockwell’s Library Day a beaming fair-haired boy with a red shirt named Don D’Angelo (Italian-Irish perhaps?) is shown holding a...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles
by Sam Juliano The following is a transcript of a student-teacher interview conducted at the beginning of December in an undergraduate class in children’s literature taught by Dr. Katherine Smith at...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Du Iz Tak?
by Sam Juliano It happened again. In the four years I have written the Caldecott Medal Contender series there is always at least one title that doesn’t grab me initially, but when it does kick in the...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Before Morning
by Sam Juliano The Horn Book’s Martha V. Parravano stated in her “Calling Caldecott” review of Before Morning by Joyce Sidman and Beth Krommes, “I’m not sure there’s another 2016 picture book that...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: A Voyage in the Clouds
by Sam Juliano The 2006 Caldecott Medal committee awarded one of their four honor citations to Hot-Air: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Hot-Air Balloon Ride by Marjorie Priceman. The events in...
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Hidden Figures and Singin in the Rain on Monday Morning Diary (January 16)
by Sam Juliano We are five days away from the Trump presidency and many of us are still trying to figure out how and why. But we are there and must come to terms with could well be one of the darkest...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Princess and the Warrior
by Sam Juliano Duncan Tonatiuh’s emotionally enthralling The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes is quite simply one of the most staggeringly beautiful picture books of the year, and to...
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J.D. Lafrance on Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous
By J.D. Lafrance Anybody that bought Zeppelin I knows that the standout song is “Dazed and Confused,” and that’s great. It’s a masterpiece albeit a little too stifled because it is the studio version....
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