Artist cosplay, protesting AI. She wasn’t kidding. When I complimented her on her costume and she posed for this photo, she asked if I were hiring. (Alas, I am but an academic — and so I’m not.) I was last at San Diego Comic-Con in 2017. Fo…
Fantagraphics booth, Comic-Con: Eisner-nominated Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby, Vol. 5, co-edited by Philip Nel and Eric Reynolds It is always a slightly strange feeling to be a nominee. Sitting in the hotel ballroom, as your category approach…
Scholar of children’s literature and comics. Best-known for work on radical and anti-racist children’s literature, Crockett Johnson, and Dr. Seuss – especially Was the Cat in the Hat Black? Books, Selected Articles, and full CV. Recorded le…
The moment you have been waiting for! Or possibly not. But here are my picks for the best music of 2025 — some of which may have changed by the time you are reading this. And my shifting list is one reason I’m only getting around to posting…
The moment you have been waiting for! Or possibly not. But here are my picks for the best music of 2025 — some of which may have changed by the time you are reading this. And my shifting list is one reason I’m only getting around to posting…
The moment you have been waiting for! Or possibly not. But here are my picks for the best music of 2025 — some of which may have changed by the time you are reading this. And my shifting list is one reason I’m only getting around to posting…
Crockett Johnson would turn 119 today, and Harold (of purple crayon fame) turns 70 this fall. What does it mean to celebrate Johnson or Harold today? As I argue in “Turn off AI. Pick up a crayon,” it means to celebrate human creativity. In
Back in April, US Defense Secretary Pete “Signal” Hegseth ordered 381 books removed from the US Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library. These included works read by young people—Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Angie Thomas’ The H…
Back in April, US Defense Secretary Pete “Signal” Hegseth ordered 381 books removed from the US Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library. These included works read by young people—Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Angie Thomas’ The H…
Back in April, US Defense Secretary Pete “Signal” Hegseth ordered 381 books removed from the US Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library. These included works read by young people—Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Angie Thomas’ The H…
An unboxing video that answers two questions: A dozen years ago, I began dreaming up a small book about Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon. It would be a biography of a book, a succinct introduction to how picture books work, a…
Here are some resources for supporting public libraries and defending everyone’s right to read freely. I assembled them for the “Censoring Children’s Literature” class I taught last semester, and am sharing them now in connection with the M…