NAKED! helps turn a young reader into a lover of picture books

Kurt Stroh is featuring posts by teachers, librarians, authors, illustrators and booksellers on his blog during November to celebrate Picture Book Month. What a wonderful idea! And I was so moved by this first post by Jim Bailey about the power of picture books, and how NAKED! helped turn his young son into a lover of picture books. Made me all weepy, it did.

NAKED! won the 2015 Missouri Building Block Picture Book Award!!!

WOWOWOWOW!!!!! Totally thrilled to find out that NAKED! has won the 2015 Missouri Building Block Picture Book Award! Especially honored, considering the other nominees.

From the Missouri Library Association:

"The children of Missouri (and neighboring states) have spoken, selecting Naked!, written by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Debbie Ridpath Ohi, as the winner of the 2015 Missouri Building Block Picture Book Award. Over 20,000 preschoolers and kindergarteners participated this year. Naked! was the overwhelming choice, receiving 6,078 votes. Digger Dog, written by William Bee and illustrated by Cecilia Johansson, finished second with 3,227 votes." Read more here.

You can find out more about the award, nominees and past winners here.

Halloween-themed activity sheet featuring boy from NAKED!

What should the little boy from NAKED! wear for Halloween! Draw his costume.

For more Halloween activities, see my brand-new Halloween Activity Sheets For Young Readers page.

Also, my Free Print Archive For Teachers, Librarians, Booksellers and Young Readers.

NAKED! nominated for the Missouri Building Block Picture Book Award

I can't believe I missed seeing this. I'm SO honored that Naked! is one of the nominees for the Missouri Building Block Picture Book Award for 2015. This award is administered by the Youth Services Community of Interest of MLA, is presented annually to the author and illustrator of the picture book voted most popular by preschool children in Missouri’s public libraries. More about the award: http://molib.org/awards/building-block-award/

You can find a list of all the nominees along with activity sheets. Wow, so impressed by all the hard work that must have gone into creating these activity sheets!

Especially tickled that one of the other nominees is my friend Brian Won for his wonderful HOORAY FOR HAT!

Thanks also to DBRL Kids (of Daniel Boone Regional Library) for the great post this month about NAKED! as well as extra discussion topics and suggested activities for young readers.

NAKED! is a picture book written by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by yours truly. You can find a Teacher's Guide by Marcie Colleen and other bonus material at: http://debbieohi.com/naked

Thank you so much to the preschoolers in Missouri who nominated NAKED!

NAKED! has been translated into Japanese!

NAKED! IS IN JAPAN!!!!!! My copies of the Japanese version of Naked! just arrived, woohoooo!!!! I helped Hisakata Child create a new cover illustration and endpapers specifically for this version. Thanks to my friend John Chew for his help (and for providing some of the toys I used as models on the cover) and to Sarah Perillo and Jonathan Lyons of Curtis Brown Ltd's foreign rights team for working with Hisakata Child to get this book into Japan.

Here's the Amazon Japan link for the Japanese version of NAKED!

Here's the Hisakata Child book page for NAKED!

I was highly amused by the results of Google Translate for the Amazon page. Synopsis was translated to: "Boy coming out of the bath, you run around full of vitality do not wear anything. Even chasing mom with clothes, in the state as it is naked, pants also do not need even shirts! But, be cloak want to give a little. Recommended of the picture book to mom to have a boy." :-)