Every weekend, the first section that I read in the New York Times is the Book Review. No surprise here, I suppose.

Some weeks, though, are even better than others. Those, of course, are the weeks that include the children’s books reviews. Gosh. I guess this is not a post full of surprises.

But then, there are weeks, where it seems I pull out more pages to keep than I put in the recycling bin. This week was one such week.

Here’s a little peek at my pile of clippings…

“Three picture books encourage children to become constructors of their worlds”– Looks like two of my favorite books about reading, now have companion books about writing. I can’t wait to see Dog Loves Drawing by Louise Yates and Rocket Writes a Story by Tad Hills.

Bookshelf: First Day– Esme Raji Codell’s blog Planet Esme, was one of my first visits in to the land of children’s literature blogs. This fall, she has a fun new book called It’s Time for Preschool.

Ian Falconer of Olivia fame is the By the Book interview. While I found him to be a little quiet in some of his responses, it is still always fun to get inside an author’s head- even if only a tiny bit.

Liar and Spy– Rebecca Stead’s latest novel has finally been released. I loved When You Reach Me so I’m anxious to read this one. I’m also glad the book has finally been released. Stead has a heck of a marketing team on her side because I have been reading and reading and reading about this one.

App fun– I’m not sure I have seen apps reviewed in the Book Review before this issue? I may have missed them but I was glad they were there this week. I will certainly be checking out all of atlas-like apps reviewed. Each one looks both fun and informative.

And of course it’s hard to read the Book Review without paying a little bit of attention to the grown up books.

What I discovered when I did was that Molly Ringwald has written a novel. Do with that information what you may… Perhaps what you may do is exactly what I did. Return to the children’s section…