January 31, 2026

by Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast

Hey newsletter readers! Some great back and forth this week about reading kids’ books as poetry. Some of your emails below. And there’s more kids’ book news down there, too. As always, the inbox is bookoftheday@npr.org. And if you want to hear the latest author interviews from across NPR, subscribe to NPR’s Book of the Day podcast. Here’s this week’s letter!

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Man, shoutout to college newspapers. A piece from the Yale Daily News by Jolynda Wang has been making the rounds in my corner of the internet, and it’s headlined “English professors double down on requiring printed copies of readings.” It’s essentially talking to English professors who require their students to have printed versions of the assigned reading (as opposed to reading on a tablet, laptop, etc.). The argument is that it’s much easier to focus when reading print, and it’s a way to fight against the rising use of AI in the classroom.

I suppose the article got a lot of traction in part because it’s Yale. But also because it’s responding to a feeling academics in the humanities have been feeling for a while now – that their students are disconnected from the material. Not to show my age, but I figure I was among the last to graduate college where reading on paper was the norm. Professors would come in and supplement the novels/textbooks we were using with a big stack of handouts they may or may not have just printed moments before class. You’d pass ‘em around and that’s that. It’s a system that worked fine!

francescoch/Getty Images

But I want to be careful not to wade into nostalgia here. The argument for print has to be stronger than “that’s how we did it in my day!!!” That said, a while back, I did an episode of NPR’s Life Kit about deep reading, and spoke with literacy researcher Maryanne Wolf. She told me that when she needs to read a document deeply, she prints it out. She goes through the science and research in the episode, but in short, screens are for skimming. Print, as Wolf put it, “goes according to our own pace.”

What do you think? I’d especially love to hear from any teachers or students on this. Are you pro printing stuff out? Is there any pushback against this, from students or admin? Let us know at bookoftheday@npr.org.

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TBR Pile

Kind of related to the main topic – social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been one of the biggest proponents of getting phones out of kids’ hands, as the author of The Anxious Generation. His new book is a graphic novel for kids titled The Amazing Generation. In this review, critic Tahneer Oksman writes that the book “feels like an important antidote to the daily pull and messaging of the online world.”

Book covers of: 'Fireworks,' by Matthew Burgess and illustrated by Cátia Chien; 'All the Blues in the Sky,' by Renée Watson

Clarion Books; Bloomsbury Children's Books

Last week we chatted about books for kids. Well, this week, the winners of the Newbery and Caldecott medals were announced. My colleague Ivy Buck has more on the winners.

Mailbag!

Speaking of last week, here’s what you all had to say about connecting the dots between books for really small kids and modernist poetry.

Timothy O. wrote: “There's a reason Goodnight Moon (and a lot of the books it influenced!) sounds like Modernist poetry: Margaret Wise Brown was very influenced by Gertrude Stein. As a poet and a children's bookseller, I'm constantly trying to convince poets to read more children's books and children's authors to read more poetry. After all, a page turn is a stanza break with a little oomph, and poems—like great picture books and board books—make us reassess the world and the language we use to understand it.”

Chad B. wrote: “Two baby books immediately come to mind as poetry: Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle has a delightful rhythm and onomatopoeia/animal sounds that make it a delightful, almost musical read, while still telling a fun story about the importance of kindness and collective action.

And On the Night You Were Born by Nancy Tillman is gorgeous in its imagery (aided by beautiful illustrations), just vividly and economically painting a world coming to life to celebrate the birth of the baby you're reading to. It never failed to pack a little of an emotional wallop, particularly as our boys grew.”

Kimberly D. wrote: “We read to our 3-year-old granddaughter A LOT! One of my favorites is The Pout-Pout Fish. It reminds me of Ogden Nash poetry, which we also read to her. I’ve found that she doesn’t like poorly written books and definitely prefers books with rhythm or poetry. Kids get literature!”

See you next week!

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