Every year at it's mid-Winter Conference the American Library Association presents the Caldecott Award "to the artist of the most distinguished American picturebook for children." In addition to the Medal award, several Honor awards are presented to the runner-ups in the category. The awards were announced this past Monday, Jan. 26, 2014. The day of … Read more
2013 Caldecott Medal Winner The 2013 Caldecott Medal winner is This Is Not My Hat illustrated by Jon Klassen (Candlewick Press). This Is Not My Hat is Raschka's second Caldecott Medal, having won the 2006 award for The Hello, Goodbye Window. This Is Not My Hat is a wordless picturebook. From the American Library Association's … Read more
Searching For The First Fifty Newbery Medal Books A bit of a transition for the blog today. To date this site has dealt solely with contemporary American picturebooks, the genre beginning with Wanda Gag's 1927 Millions Of Cats. Since there is little formal information readily available on the internet, I'm going to begin providing first … Read more
Searching For The First Forty Caldecott Medal Books Last year I performed an internet search for the first editions of the first twenty Caldecott Medal books to determine the number of books currently being offered for sale, and similar to past searches, calculate the average selling price. I recently performed a similar search, this time … Read more
First Edition Identification Points – A Wrinkle In Time A Wrinkle In Time – 1963 Newbery Medal Winner A Wrinkle In Time; L’Engle, Madeleine; New York: Ariel Books/Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1962. 8vo, 211pg. A Wrinkle In Time, Madeline L’Engle’s timeless classic, is one of the most beloved contemporary children’s books. Although it won the … Read more
Unobtanium Revisited Last year I wrote a series of articles on the Top 100 Collectible American Picturebooks. In the course of writing the articles I queried the various online bookselling sites to see how many first editions of each book were on the market thereby providing fresh market price and scarcity data. Surprisingly thirty-two … Read more
The Precarious Balance: Scarcity and Demand for First Edition Picturebooks As most experienced book collectors and booksellers know, the scarcity of a book has a major impact on its value in the market. Scarcity in and of itself does not drive value, but instead value results from a combination of scarcity and demand. For books, … Read more
Searching For The Second Twenty Caldecott Medal Books A couple of months ago we performed an internet search for the first editions of the first twenty Caldecott Medal booksto determine the number of books currently being offered for sale, and similar to past searches, calculate the average selling price. This past week we performed a … Read more
While eBay is not the bookselling venue it once was, I continue to regularly purchase collectible children’s books there. I’ve been a buyer of collectible children's books on eBay since 1998 and perform about 50 saved searches weekly. Over the past five years the quality and quantity of collectible children's books listed on eBay had … Read more
2012 Caldecott Medal Winner The 2012 Caldecott Medal winner is A Ball For Daisy illustrated by Chris Raschka (Schwartz and Wade). A Ball For Daisy is Raschka's second Caldecott Medal, having won the 2006 award for The Hello, Goodbye Window. A Ball For Daisy is a wordless picturebook. From the American Library Association's website: "In … Read more